Dude, Where’s My Car?

Yesterday I went to Venice Beach and then ate at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. You’re only allowed to park there for 3 hours, and my time was almost up, so I paid for my food and told my friends (who I’d given a ride) that I was going to hurry back and make sure I didn’t get a ticket. They were supposed to get the bill, pay it, and join me. I walked back to the parking garage and … couldn’t find my car. I was sure I had parked on level 3, but I couldn’t find it. I tried level 2. Nothing. I tried level 4. Nothing. I tried 3 again. Nope. I tried 2 again. Etc. The garage is composed entirely of ramps slanting every which way and is very confusing. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty, and I still couldn’t find my car. I wondered if it’d been towed or stolen. I wondered where my friends were. (I didn’t have my cell phone with me.) Finally, I went up to level 6 and jogged around and around in a corkscrew pattern all the way down to level 1, passing every single car in the garage. Mine wasn’t among them. There was an attendant by the entrance, so I explained my situation. I was obviously not the first person to have this problem, and she explained boredly that there are two completely separate, completely identical parking garages on either side of the building, and that my car was probably in the other one. I walked through the mall and came out in the other parking garage. Almost instantly I spotted my friends, who’d been waiting by my car for twenty minutes. They were like, “Oh, we were getting worried about you.”