Strange Chemistry

I hesitated for a few days in writing this. I’m still trying to figure it out. I chalk it up to strange chemistry.

I flew back from Chicago last Thursday night. Our flight was delayed a couple of hours because of bad weather in Philadelphia. It was pouring rain, and the wind was howling at 30 mph or so. When I left the parking garage at around 10:30 that night, there was a traffic jam that was all the way inside the garage. It was the most cars I’d ever seen heading to the pay booths.

I waited in line along with hundreds of my closest friends. It was like one of those convergences of cars like you get at a concert. When I was just a few cars from the pay booth, all of a sudden I see a guy dressed from head to toe in dark clothes lunge toward my car. He was making some kind of gesture but I couldn’t see what because of the rain and the darkness and my windshield wipers going at full speed. Well, the dude kept coming toward me and then started pounding on my car like a crazy man. Screaming. Going nuts. I didn’t even know what was up at that point. (Later, I figured out that somehow he didn’t want me to go straight into the pay booth and for some reason wanted me to cut across lanes of stuck cars. Didn’t make sense then; doesn’t now).

Anyways…he kept screaming. Pounding on the hood of my car. The he ran in front of me to block me from moving. And he kept pounding on my car. I couldn’t move left; I couldn’t move right; and I couldn’t go forward. I called 911. I was really rattled. It took me a couple of minutes with this guy screaming his head off to tell the Philadelphia Police where I was. Before they got there, though, the guy had used a walkie-talkie and called several more guys — now I find out they’re from the Parking Authority — and they surround my car. More screaming. The 911 operator tells me to stay on the phone and keeps asking me what they’re screaming about. I tell her I don’t know.

I felt trapped. Who knows what’s wrong with people? I mean, the guy was acting nuts enough, all his friends were surrounding my car. I didn’t know if he had a gun or not. It was that crazy. I was pretty damned scared, I have to say. Calling 911 isn’t my natural instinct. People on both sides of me were honking and yelling at the guy to let me go. The guy — who turns out to be a manager of the Philadelphia Parking Authority — won’t. He has me trapped. At some point he starts screaming that I tried to hit him with my car. Or run him over. I mean, this is just nuts.

So..I finally was able to roll into the pay booth. Now I was really trapped. The gate was down. Guys wouldn’t let me go. It took the police several more minutes to arrive. When they did, they asked the guy first. He claimed I tried to run him over. He wanted to press charges. When the cop asked me what happened, I told him just like this. I have been at that PHL Airport parking dozens of times. Never once was there a guy standing in traffic. I certainly would never try to hit someone with my car. And that guy had me trapped and was going nuts.

The upshot was that the officer wrote down all the stuff. Took my license, but only took the PPA guy’s ID. I didn’t get that at all. Supposedly there’s an “incident report,” but I don’t think there’s anything more. There are no charges. Nothing. But it was one of those creepy situations like in Bonfire of the Vanities. One minute everything is fine, and the next second things can jump off the tracks. While I was sitting in that pay booth, trapped by those guys who were menacing me, I seriously thought about driving through the gate. I was that scared. But I sat there.

I’m glad the guy didn’t have a gun. Because it seemed like one of those nuts times. Strange chemistry for him to be standing in dark clothes out in a rainstorm and then pick my car to be the one where he goes nuts. Scary.