Parking meters are back; let the mayhem begin

We consider ourselves reasonable people. We pride ourselves on being able to sit around, talk things out and come to workable solutions.

This would be a correct assumption if you were perusing a book on logic that was written by some ancient Greek philosopher like Plato. But what these classical works don’t take into account and couldn’t foresee is a modern invention called the parking meter. Throw in a couple of meters that refuse to work or are listed as 30-minute slots and you’ve got an entire species that will go into such a rage they end up looking like they went 10 rounds with Oscar De Le Hoya.

There is something about dealing with an inanimate object that will make you fall down on your artificial knees and bang your head into the ground. It’s sort of like saying I give up, just put me in a pair of sweats and I’ll live out my days watching World Wrestling on television.

Now I know parking meters do serve a useful purpose; after all we do need the income to pay for vital services like picking up all the paper plates and french fries that are thrown next to empty trash cans on the boardwalk.

And living year-round in a resort area, we do have an advantage in that come May, we walk around with enough quarters in our pants to create an arch between our legs that is big enough to drive a an aircraft carrier through. Fortunately out-of-towners write this off as the whole community having a severe case of hemorrhoids, either that or we have watched one too many John Wayne movies.

One of the problems I have is that my phone number is one digit different from that of the Rehoboth Beach Parking Meter Department. I’ve met a lot of nice folks over the telephone, some of whom I’m sure have served 2-4 years at some point in their lifetime.

The messages left for me include demands to get down to where they are parked and fix the meter asap or someone named Vito will be visiting me, a complete oration on the merits of putting my head on a stick because I’ve got the wrong meter number on their ticket and a bunch of foreign language emotional highlights, at least enough to qualify me for a diplomatic post.

One of the problems for tourists is the tiny microscopic information written on the meters. But everyone knows you put a quarter in and a time will appear on the screen, letting you know when you should return to put more quarters in the meter. What befuddles most people who don’t live here is that as soon as that coin hits the meter not only is your time up but you probably owe some back money from the last person.

I’ve seen people mash, cram and pound meters that won’t accept anything because some kid has stuck a bunch of sticky glue in the slot. I’ve seen people talk , yell and plead with meters; eventually a good Samaritan comes along and pries their hands loose from around the neck of the parking meter.

This year I took the plunge and put a parking meter app on my iPhone. It works great. Don’t be ridiculous, I didn’t say I actually use it. That would require my figuring out what to do. So I just have it as a symbol and carry it around to impress my children.

But parking meters aren’t the only inanimate objects that we deal with today. All the electronic devices, iPods, iPads, smartphones, computers not only are annoying, but most of them come with voices that sound exactly like your mother when she asked where you’d been all night, who were you with and what did you do.

So if you are frustrated with the meters, I just have a few words of advice for you from that great philosopher Clemenza, a mob hit man in the movie “The Godfather.” “Take the cannoli and leave the gun.”