In case you’re wondering why the site’s been getting stale over the weekend, it’s because I was vacationing on the beaotch, biotch.
Anyway, Monday afternoon my girlfriend and I were departing from our 4 day weekend stay in Ocean City, and we decided to make a small trip up to Atlantic City to do some gambling at The Tropicana before heading home.
In my frustration to find an entrance to the labyrinth they call a parking garage, I must have failed to notice the grandness of their parking infrastructure. This was also impeded by the fact that after praking, we had to follow a stair case/hallway system with as many turns, hallways and doors as a Hollywood movie foot-chase scene to get to the damn casino.
Now let’s be honest, we’ve all gotten out of the car in a parking garage at one point or another without taking much notice of the level or section we park in and have to walk around for a few minutes before we can get our bearings when returning to our car.
This, however, was not the case. After gambling, I had so many numbers and symbols floating around in my head I had completely forgotten what level we had parked on. And to make matters worse, we soon discovered that there was more than one parking garage and neither of us had any idea what floor OR garage we had parked in.
We wandered around aimlessly for over a freaking hour! We’re talking taking multiple stairwells, elevators and jumping goddamn fences.
Eventually, I had to admit my awesome male sense of direction was failing me on this one and only occasion and succumbed to calling security to see if they’d at least play the world’s smallest violin for us. This is how my conversation with security went:
Me: Hi, listen. I’m an idiot and I seem to have lost my car.
Security: Was your car stolen, sir?
Me: No. I mean, maybe. I don’t know.
Security: Is your car where you left it, sir?
Me: Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know where I left it.
Security: Which parking garage did you park in?
Me: There’s more than one?
Security: (silence)
Me: Hello?
Security: What floor did you park on, sir?
Me: I’m not sure, but it was blue. Or maybe greenish. And possibly five.
Security: Where are you now, sir?
Me: I’m not a hundred percent on this, but I think this is some sort of bus terminal. There’s a lot of homeless looking people and seats and stuff. I see a vending machine. It has Pop Tarts.
Security: (long pause) Can you look at the camera to your left sir?
Me: Uh, OK. Hi?
Security: Wait right there, sir.
Now what happened next blew my goddamn mind.
Security sends a courtesy van to come pick us up (we were at a bus terminal, by the way) and as we’re walking with the driver back to the van this guy tells us, and I’m not kidding, exactly where we parked. I asked the bastard at least twice how he knew that, but he kept dodging the question, just saying “It happens a lot”, which leads me to believe that either people commonly forget parking in that exact spot, or The Tropicana’s got surveillance equipment advanced enough to make Big Brother look like a bumbling private eye from a bad 80’s movie.
