Backing in...

Why do people persist in backing into parking spots? This is something that I have never ever understood in the 16 years that I've been driving a motor vehicle on the highways and by-ways of America. If you look at the way a parking lot is designed, it is designed for you to pull in and not back in. Being an engineer, I can recognize these designs very easily. The parking space for example. Just large enough for you to fit your car into so that you have enough space to open your door and get out and get to where you're going. The aisle behind your car that drove on to get to said parking space, 2 lanes wide, and very easy to maneuver through. If you pull into a parking space and have to back out, the lane and or aisle behind you is a lot wider, and larger than the parking space to begin with, so it's very much easier to back out into the lane, and pull away. If you back into a parking space, it takes forever. Most of the time I'm a patient person, but if there is someone around me backing into a spot, and I have to wait for them to back in, move forward, correct their position, back in some more, move forward again, correct their position, and then back in again, and then finally open their door to make sure they're not too close to the vehicle behind them, and then once more go through the process of moving forward and finally backing fully into their parking spot. This takes 5-10 minutes for most people that I've seen try to accomplish this task. All the while, I'm waiting because they're half in and half out of the travel lane of the parking lot, and I can't move. When I finally can get past them, I PULL into my parking space, stop my car, get out, lock doors, and walk past them as they struggle with the backing in process further. I don't get it. Why do you need the nose of your car pointing out? Planning on making a quick get-a-way when you do have to leave wherever you are? I do concede though that pulling through (like when there is an open space in front of you and you can have your car nose out towards the travel lane of the parking lot) is a very acceptable means of parking your car. I have also found that for the most part, the people who most often back in to a parking spot, tend to be rednecks.

This brings me to another point I've been thinking of. People I know in North Carolina fail to believe that there is such a thing as a redneck in Maine. I beg to differ. Having lived in both places for a good amount of time, I can firmly and unequivocally state that there are plenty of rednecks in Maine. The only difference between the 2 redneck species is the accent. While the Maine accent sounds something like a Massachusetts accent slowed down and drawn out (Thom Bosley did a very bad impression of it on the Murder She Wrote TV show, and most Stephen King movies have someone doing a bad Maine accent), the Southern accent is, well, Southern y'all. You know what I mean. Rednecks in Maine, and rednecks in North Carolina both love the same things. They rank (in no particular order mind you) as follows:

NASCAR

Huntin'

Fishin'

Beer Drinkin'

Garages (as long as it's bigger than your house)

Pick 'em Up Trucks

Loud Cars

Ball Sports (Football, Basketball, and more or less Baseball - soccer is no good)

I guess the one exception is that rednecks in Maine tend to do a lot of their fishing through sheets of ice in the winter, whereas for the most part in North Carolina you can fish open water the year through. That's it. Those are the only differences (aside from the previously stated accent difference). I'm sure that if somehow we could get the Southern redneck together with the Northern redneck variety, all animosity towards the North for winning the "War of Northern Aggression" (ie The Civil War) would be done and finally over with.