Judgments

Parking at the BYU – UW game was “stack parking”. You drive in and face forward and the next car comes and parks behind you and so on in rows. We were second in line some where near an exit. Heather asked the attendant if that meant that we would be able to get our easy. He said it just depended on when the people who were around us were leaving. As we got out of our car, cars pulled in the next row beside us. A group pitched a tailgate gazebo in the spot just to our right, with chairs, ice chest, and a barbeque grill. We didn’t think anything about it because we all know that tailgate parties are before the game. We had arrived about three hours before the game because we were working at the BYU tailgate party; we thought we were sitting pretty well for leaving the game! Ha!

Kimberly and Curtis had taken a shuttle in from Bellevue to avoid the congested traffic, plus they didn’t know their way around, it was a great move on their part! They left the minute the game was over, got on the first bus back, which was full of Warden People, Curtis is from Warden! They arrived to their car by the time we reached our car in the University parking lot.

When we got to our car it was hemmed in on all sides and no one was moving. There were no drivers in site, except the people who had set up tailgate camp to our right! We ignored them and they ignored us. After all we were rivals and BYU had just won the game. We waited and waited and waited for some one to come, we were getting more upset by the moment and it was easy to think that everyone was doing this on purpose. Finally after an hour I suggested that we take a walk. Lots of other tailgate parties were going on all over the huge parking lot. Lots of beer drinking also! Finally I got really mad and decided to go take a picture of our parking plot, so I could send a letter to the University President to suggest to him a better system of parking……tailgaters go one way and leavers go the other…..something like that.

I went back to the car and took pictures from all angles and was putting my camera back in my purse in the trunk when I heard a guy on the far side of the tail gate group ask if anyone had an Aspirin or Tylenol because he had a very bad headache. The group was literly one foot away from our car. Well, I can’t have anyone suffer when I can help, so I said, “I have an Ibuprofen.” He didn’t respond, I’m sure he couldn’t believe his ears. So I looked right at him and said, “I have and Ibuprofen, would you like one?” He said, “Oh please!” So I tossed him a bottle, which he caught!

Heather had come back to the car with me and she said, “We’ll trade you an Ibuprofen for a way out of here.” They just laughed and she told them we were serious. They told us they would be glad to help us, easy! Heather got behind the steering wheel and four men flanked the four corners of the car and guided her as she inched her way out of a very tight spot. They had moved their chairs and canopy back a little, at one time the nose of our car was right in the middle of their camp!!!!! They were so nice they even offered us a beer in jest! They explained to us that they always stay after the games because they want to avoid the congested traffic. We think they must have thought that we wanted to wait it out there also. It was such a beautiful day they were probably going to stay there forever! We left feeling like we were best friends.

If I had written to the University President, it would have been to tell him how gracious all the fans had been that day. No one ever jeer or taunted us. It was always comfortable to be a guest on their campus! It would be nice if we could learn not to prejudge people, but I don’t think it is going to happen any time soon. Hopefully I will get better at it after this experience.