When I was in St. Petersburg with my son, Derek, we rented a car from the Tampa airport. We drove to St. Petersburg and stayed there. Since he was meeting some of his colleagues at the Tampa Bay Rays, I decided to join him later for a game.
I entered the parking lot. It looked small and part of the stadium. I thought I parked in the front row so that I would find the car when the game was over.
The game
The Tampa Bay Rays played an awesome game against the Minnesota Twins. And, all the meanwhile, Raymond, the mascot kept falling. It wasn’t funny but it was.
As we were leaving, we heard thunder. We left the stadium at Gate 5. I thought the car was between 5 and 6.
Searching for the car in the rain
The rain was coming down in buckets. There was so much water on the ground that our shoes were soaked. The rest of us was pretty soaked too.
“Where’s the car?” Derek asked me.
“I have no idea,” I said as the rain started to gain momentum.
We walked over to Parking Lot 1 and followed a ton of people. But it didn’t look familiar. (Mind you, I have never been to this stadium before and I got the sense from the people I asked about other parking lots, that they hadn’t been there either.)
We walked to the beginning of the lot. I wanted to see if it looked familiar. It didn’t. Now Derek was getting angry. “Mom, where is the car?” he screamed. He was drenched.
“I have no f-ing idea!” I screamed back.
We tried to set off the alarm, but it wouldn’t go off.
Decided to walk to another lot
We decided to walk to another lot closer to Gate 6 but it still didn’t look familiar. It was a much smaller lot but the one I parked in was bigger than that. We kept walking. At this point, both of us were slogging through our shoes in major puddles. We were soaked through everything. Nothing protected us from the elements.
We kept walking past Gate 5, past Gate 6, when suddenly I saw a lot that looked more familiar. I was actually impressed that I recognized it in the pouring rain in the dead of night, but I did.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was over here?” Derek asked.
“You know I’m directionally challenged,” I answered. We both smiled and got into the car.
