I got “Merry Christmas”ed today — and not in a nice way. I was on the bike at the local mall, navigating my way through the maze of idiot drivers on my way out of the parking lot. As I approached an intersection of sorts where pedestrians were leaving the store and crossing in to the parking lot and cars entering the lot were trying to turn left down one of the parking lot lanes, there were a couple of guys directing traffic.

Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly working as a team.

As Parking Monkey #1 stopped traffic and motioned me to proceed forward, Parking Monkey #2 waved a car to go ahead and turn left — directly in my path. I stopped and waved the car through.

I said to PM1, “You guys need to get on the same page.”

PM1 ignores me, again stops traffic and waves me forward again, and this time PM2 waves a pedestrian across — directly in my path. I stopped and waved the pedestrian through. Then I just sat there until I had both PMs looking at me and said “Are you ready for me yet?”

PM1 waves me through, I start rolling, and — you guessed it — PM2 starts waving another left-turning car through. What an idiot. I gunned it and cut the car off, and as I passed PM2 I said “You need to pay attention to what he’s (PM1) doing.”

Both of them called after me in unison, “Merry Christmas, sir!!!” and it was pretty obvious that they were using it as a euphemism for “Fuck off, you asshole.”

Nice.

So with that in mind… Merry Christmas to all two or three of my readers. Watch out for parking monkeys in the new year.