Scurrying people and parked cars

One morning, as I sat at my computer typing away, I did my usual peek out the window to distract myself before returning to the inevitable. Since I look out onto a park, there’s usually some scurrying squirrel (say that 10x fast) or a lone leaf left over from November that is just getting around to falling that keeps my interest for a period of time.  But one bright morning, I found myself entertained my another phenomenon.  Instead of a scurrying squirrel, I saw scurrying people.  “Where were they going?” I mused.  I watched with amazement as they scurried to their cars, turned them on and sat in them. Yes. Sat in them.  Some of them even went so far as to bring their dogs with them or coffee and a newspaper.  Baffled by this course of events, I craned my neck to find that the culprit of said activity was a little street cleaning sign that stated that every Monday and Thursday between 9:30 and 11:00am cars had to be moved to allow for the street cleaner to come through.  Well, up here, since a parking spot is so hard to come by, people will apparently go, sit in their cars, move them when the street sweeper comes by and will then pull back into the place they just came from.   Mind you, they do this in all weather.  This particular morning happen to be right around freezing, and these people were sitting bundled up, breath fogging up the windows with their dog and coffee for an hour and a half!  Every once in awhile I would peer out to see how things were progressing.  Right at 11, as if punching a clock, everyone turned their cars off, got their dogs and coffees and scurried back to the life they lead.

And the crazy part? The street sweeper never came.