On the Beetle, in Snow

Note: This isn’t really a blog post, at least not in the way that I conceive of blog posts. During my train commute, many mornings I will write. Sometimes, it’s writing for work. Sometimes, it’s drabbles or other fiction. And sometimes, it’s just whatever happens to be on my mind. I’ve decided to present some of these from time to time, as I don’t normally archive these — or do anything of any sort with them. They may not necessarily be finished pieces, though this one happens to be. Think of this as something from the writer’s journal.

My parking space was covered in snow.

No sign marks the space as mine, but it’s a rare day when anyone else parks there. The parking garage at Metro Centre stands eight storeys tall, plus a basement level. The basement and the first two levels are always full, save for on holidays, when I arrive in the mornings. The third level is perhaps half full and, for a time, that is where I parked the Beetle. But the Beetle needs sunshine to be truly happy, and the gloomy third level of the garage was not a happy place. The sixth level, I noticed from the subway platform many times, has no walls, just a decorative grill bolted to the garage’s brick frame. I decided, many months ago, that I would park there, at the edge so that that Beetle could sit in sunshine all day, where it could smile down upon the motorists on the interstate far below and spread its happiness to all who passed beneath its gaze.

No one parks on the sixth level. At most, I’ve seen a dozen other cars there, all clustered together at the elevators. Occasionally, perhaps once every other week, someone else will park in my part, usually a light blue-grey Prius with handicapped tags. When that happens, I park a little further away from the stairwell, still in a spot along the edge where the Beetle can look out upon the world below.

Today, the sixth floor was covered in snow. Perhaps an inch of snow, mixed with ice and freezing rain, fell locally overnight. The garage’s sixth floor, without walls, saw light accumulation over a car’s length out from the edge.

I parked at the edge anyway. There’s no danger there; besides the grill, there is a barrier of high-tensile wires that cannot be seen from the ground below. The usual dozen or so cars on the sixth level numbered perhaps half that today, and none were parked along the outer edge, save my Beetle. It may get no sun today, what with the overcast skies and the chance of snowfall later today, but it can still spread its happiness, even in snow, and that’s all that truly matters.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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