Lilliana didn’t expect such a strange sight when she decided to walk through the baseball stadium’s parking lot. The empty parking spots stretched for over a mile, and the asphalt warmed her up as she walked down the long sidewalk. She admired the many abandoned e-scooters in the parking lot but made sure to stay on the sidewalk and not go into the deserted road that ran adjacent to the parking spots.
Early in the journey, she noticed something in the middle of that road. She wondered if she saw a parking lot mirage. Was a man sitting there?
As Lilliana moved closer, she became more confused. The man sat staring at her in a beach chair on the double yellow line that divides traffic. He looked like he could be a traveling folk musician with long hair and glasses. He wore newly pressed shorts and a sweatshirt.
Lilliana continued to walk toward him. As she drew closer to the man, she had to say something.
“You’re sitting in the middle of the road,” Lilliana said.
“I know,” the man replied.
“But isn’t there a better place to sit?”
“This is where I have to sit,” the man said, clearly annoyed. Lilliana kept walking but looked back a couple of times. The man sat facing forward and did not turn around to look at her. Lilliana couldn’t believe what was going on. What would cause a person to sit in the middle of a street, even a deserted one?
Last week, I pulled into the parking lot that leads to Coors Field on my way to work. At the halfway point, I approached Marvin, the longtime parking attendant. As I handed him a dollar, he leaned in and said, “You’ll never believe what this lady just said to me.”