Kickin' Rocks

with Don Pennington

Pyramid Schemes and Power Parking

Have you been stumbling around the garage wondering what you are going to do with your life? Spending great gobs of perfectly good hot rod time on looking for something to hang your hat on, something to make it all worth while? Some have devoted themselves to cash making careers or family building or amassing giant piles of stuff. That's all well and good, but let's settle down here, zero in on the things that really make a difference, things that if you and I don't work on will soon take control of our world. I for one look for the screwball things in life, things that a guy can spend years on, bitching and moaning, something that keeps the light at the end of the tunnel flickering. These things that to most people don't seem worth spit, are my life! There are hundreds of these topics out there like the way we are jerked around by creative advertising (apparently every Chevrolet dealer in the country is number one at something), or counting the number of trucks and city employees it takes to fix a football sized hole in the road, or waiting in an eight mile long traffic jamb merging and re-merging only to find nobody and nothing at the end, or listening to the news people on TV twist those lead-in buzz words, "live ONLY ON 2, mastermind of worldwide theft ring threatens mass hysteria" (the story, when they finally got to it, was about a kid that stole a skate board and was riding it down a busy sidewalk). Me? I pick on... Special People.

Special People (SPs to make it easier) are everywhere, usually parked in front of one of those blue wheelchair signs, windows up, doors locked, kid inside. The note on the windshield says that there'll only be in the store for a second, then return with two shopping carts full of groceries. This is not to say that these SPs are bad people, just almost all of them. We like to think we are all special, it's the line we draw in the sand separating the acceptable from the things in life that are poo pooed on what makes you a "regular special person" as opposed to one of those ego bulbous freaks that can't drawn in the sand. You'd think that the smaller the brain the higher level of sand drawing capability, but not in this case. We, the cool people, know where to draw that line, even though we don't actually draw it. It's a line that your brain says "past this point is where idiots go, people look at you funny and the world of jerkdom begins.

I don't know where that term "power parker" came from but I'll bet it was one of them SPs who came up with it, we would have come up with something like .... "coming in late and parking where nobody else has because that spot was obviously reserved for an SP". Most people come to a parking spot and ask the obvious question... is this a parking spot?  If it looks like parking a car there was inappropriate or would present problems for other people, we drive on by. SPs consider any spot that might have room for a car on any size, including toys, is good enough for them, so park they do. These people think it's fun, we think it's total disrespect for the people around them and lack of the basic rules most of us use to weave around the mud puddles of life.

To embark on the road of ridding the world of the SPs, we must first find them. It's not that  hard to spot these people, in addition to their curious parking skills they are never afraid to tell you who they are, and usually have loud mouths proclaiming the unending things that life owes them and we, the unwashed, should step aside, and the sooner the better! You might think that "they" drive certain kinds of cars, like SAABs, but I recently found that was not true. My endless research has revealed that in every group of, oh say 100 people, there are... 85 SPs and they drive all kinds of stuff. Recently sitting in a comfy chair in the shade near a major cruising intersection at Pleasanton spending equal amounts of time watching the E-Z Up guy put up and take down what must be a specially prepared E-Z Up in 4 seconds flat, and watching the cars roll by, these two SPs slithered up, we'll call them Manny and Moe. Now... it's obvious beyond the smell of a seven day old t-shirt that this... first is a traffic lane, since they had just driven down it... and second there are cars moving in front and behind Manny and Moe using... the same lane... which makes this an active road, but these factors didn't fire any of those brain neuron thingies we hear about. Manny pulls up to the corner and stops. No big deal, we're admiring the car, he's looking around the corner to see if anyone is coming, but pretty soon it seems he may be stalled or something because he's not moving, but no... the motor is running fine, nice little rumpety rump, then the rumpety stops. He has shut the thing off! Then Moe pulls up ALONGSIDE Manny, completely blocking the lane... and shuts his car off too! These guys are parking! They both got out... and walked away!  I think we need a giant red hot branding iron that we can run out and put a little sizzle on their foreheads... and a giant sticker for their car, "I'm an SP and you're not".

Fiberglass bodies are pretty good, but still second best, no matter what the builders do, metal will always reign. SPs should only be allowed to own fiberglass cars. The reason for this is that like in the case of Manny and Moe and their parking exercise, when this happens the righteous can spring from the bushes, branding iron in one hand and one of those new battery powered Skill saws in the other (carbide tipped blade) and begin cutting these road obstructions into moveable souvenir sized fiberglass chips. The deafening sound and the odor of burning and cutting fiberglass travels faster than one can walk and soon reach Manny and Moe. Turning to see where this is coming from, they are just in time to notice their cars breaking up like Titanic on it's last dive.

SP activities are not limited to parking of course. There are so many other things and all are related to not having any consideration for anyone else, it's all about them first. You remember the last time you went to a trade show or anywhere else where there are aisles that need to be at least twice as wide. People are moving along just fine and them... nothing. There is a group of several SPs stopped in the middle of the aisle leaving room for one person to pass "sideways" around them, two of them are reliving high school days while the others, usually the husbands, are just looking around like oversized bobble heads. Hell they're not in the way, they paid to get in the joint and they can do what they want, besides they are only going to be there for about ten minutes, or graduation whatever comes first.

The soft spot of all these people is embarrassment. If you point a finger and yell, they might go away. Or, we could activate the great American tradition of "profit before all else" and set-up a multi level appreciation group (MAG) that would rid the world of these 85 (per hundred) people. I'll tell you what, I'll make some stickers and sell them to you (level 2), you sell them (at a small mark-up) to two people (level 3), then I will pay you a... let's call it an appreciation gift... for selling the MAG members of level 3. If they in turn sell to two each on level MAG 4, you make more! Cool, huh? The important thing in the enterprise is that we can show our appreciation to as many MAG members as possible, so getting those stickers stuck on as many cars as possible is the key, the targets don't need to be convicted SPs, just suspected SPs.

Some people might say... "aha... that's what you are doing, selling stickers, and being the top of the hopefully very successful pyramid scheme. You don't want to rid the world of SPs, you are a money grubber, that's what this is all about!" That of course is not true, my sole aim here is to make things better for all our people, and the more stickers we sell (at a very nominal fee) the more SPs will be found out and done away with. It's all about making our hot rod world a better place. Stickers are $25 each, I take VISA.