There should be a word for this.

So I made one up: borbongled. It means, “the state of mild embarrassment felt when someone discovers you’ve done something stupid under circumstances which were completely beyond your control.”

Let’s say you drive somewhere and, upon arriving at your destination, you find the parking lot is completely full. Well, no, there’s one spot open, but it’s right next to some douchebag in an SUV who doesn’t know how to park.

Also you are driving a Monopoly car for some reason.

Your options aren’t that great. You can drive around for another lap or two and hope someone sensible vacates their spot, or you can just try to squeeze into the 80% of a space you have available to you. You’re lazy, so you figure you’ll take your chances with the narrow spot, but you need to leave a wide berth so you don’t ding the SUV with your door when you get out.

Looks fine to me!

You do the best you can, but despite your best efforts now your tire is hanging a little over the line. Not quite as much or as blatant as SUV douchebag’s, of course, but still enough to make you hate yourself a little bit. Anyway you have more important things to do, so you hurry across the lot into the Best Buy or the Chipotle or the SeXXXcapades DVD Outlet or whatever.

When you emerge two hours later the parking lot is much emptier than it was. The crooked SUV is long gone, and just as you get back in your car you notice someone giving you a weird look from his pickup truck from across the way.

D'oh!

You’re certain that, if you could just explain to the guy what happened, he would totally understand and be perfectly reasonable about the whole thing. But you can’t go explain it to him, because the moment is over. You have to pull out and drive away, and that guy in the pickup truck is just going to go about his life. He’s going to think you’re a shitty car-parker forever and ever, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

And that feeling of borbonglement? That sticks with you for the rest of the day.

6 comments to There should be a word for this.

  • Altair

    If I were the truck driver, I’d be more concerned about the ECONOMY-SIZED JET to my left.

  • Tomm

    Ironically the SUV that started this mess was no doubt in the same situation. NOW who’s borbongled?

    • Knight

      It’s possible, and possibly the person that parked crooked and caused the SUV to park crookedly was in the same situation as well, but somewhere along the line there’s an asshole who doesn’t know how to park, and either doesn’t care, or takes joy in it. There are at least 3 of those people in the section of the parking lot for my apartment complex that I park in, and they consistently park crookedly, or right in the middle of the line. Unfortunately though, since I get home after the front office is closed I can’t report them, and by the time I get upstairs I’m too tired and drained to go back downstairs with a pen and paper and write down the license plate number. One of these days he’ll slip up and do it on my day off, and then I’ll have him.

  • dtsund

    Maybe it sticks with you for the rest of the day. It sticks with me for about five minutes.

  • Destil

    Man, I never got to be the car when I was a kid.

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