I have trouble with parking lots.  Parking lots and banks.  And video stores.  I have trouble with slots where things are to be deposited.  This morning I deposited my Comcast payment in the Hollywood Video slot and was on the way to the mailbox with my DVD rental when I finally realized my mistake.  The thing about parking lots is that I never know how I got in or what I need to do to get out.

Yesterday we stopped at the mall and when it was time to go home I had, as usual, no idea of where we were as regards exits and main streets and freeway entrances.  We may as well have been suddenly in Ohio, a State I have never been to.

As it happens, my wife decided to be uncooperative.  She would not tell me where to turn, right or left. 

"Just think about it," she demanded.  "How may times have you been here?  A hundred?"

But the way it goes with me, it may as well have been the first.  I know all the stores, I know how everything looks inside the mall, I know how the streets look and where they go once you get to them, it's just the parking lot itself that baffles me.  Once I hit the freeway I'm fine.  Once I'm actually on the freeway I could drive nonstop all the way to from the West Coast to the East if there were actually some reason to do so.  But put me into a parking lot, in Boise, in Minneapolis, in Chattanooga or New York City, and I'm a goner.

Finally frustrated beyond the caliber of patience it had taken to be obstinate, my wife gave up and started barking commands.  Left, right, straight, etc.  And then she refused to speak to me the rest of the way home.

She's usually much better, much more helpful.  But I think it's her time of the month.  But I don't think I'll bring it up.  And anyway, I don't blame her.  This is my fault, not hers-and if her frustration is anything like mine, all I can do is sympathize.