It’s 12:30 a.m. I am rolling up to my dorm in my Forester, exhausted from the day’s work and play. If you’ve ever lived on campus, you know what a pain it is to try to find parking at any hour of the day. But then I see it—a spot! Do my eyes deceive me? … Yes, yes, they do. The space is just not quite big enough. I have fallen victim to the “cushioner.”

A “cushioner” is a person who parks their car so god-awfully that they leave wasted cushions of space around the vehicle and take up a section of parking space slightly smaller than Grave Digger the monster truck. Usually it’s someone who owns a smaller car too, with their horrendous parking job proudly saying, “Look at me and my ’95 Taurus! With 215,000 miles and no muffler, we are far too good to reverse or to be stationed within 10 feet of another vehicle on either end!” For the love of all that is good on this green earth, pull that beater car up to the one in front of you! It’s not that hard—parallel parking is practically a mandatory skill for anyone who has a legitimate driver’s license and half a brain. No, I do not care if you get boxed in. That is why you leave a LITTLE space between you and the other car—not superfluous, wasted airspace that some poor, tired student can’t utilize for his poor, tired car.

Parking is already hard enough. We don’t need “cushioners” selfishly claiming parking space like covered wagons in Oklahoma trying to stake out the most prairie—and therefore making people walk half a mile to the dorms from their car. Be courteous and give others the chance to park close to home too.