The Infinite Cosmic Buffet Table

Every day my wife leaves for work at around 7.45am, and I, woken by her wild scurrying for her keys or jacket, wake just before to see her off.

Every day by 8am you pull up. You do not park your car, per se, you merely toss it at the curb and abandon it for nine hours. Although this is a residential area, you work nearby, doing who knows what. I can tell that by the way you carry yourself, the self importance you exude.

To you, this is just free workplace parking, and the spot outside my house is your private parking space.

From my vantage point, glaring from the upstairs bathroom window, the rest of the street has ample parking, yet here we are.

I am not a confrontational man, so this glaring is the full extent of my power. After months and months of this little game, we were no closer to a resolution.

But this morning, as I glare, something is different.

You approach, flying down the street in the general direction of my house. By now you are used to your morning routine of parking in front of my house that you do so without thought or awareness.

But today my wife has taken a day off work, and thus the car remains. Your private parking space is taken. You only notice at last possible moment and you slam on the brakes.

“What’s this? What’s happening?” you say to yourself, idling your engine and staring out your car window. You are thoroughly baffled, at a loss for both words and explanation. You’re also very annoyed. Another car is in your spot, you think. This sort of thing shouldn’t happen. What is a man to do?

You consider your options. There are two of them:

1. You could call the police. This feels wrong, and wrong things are usually illegal and therefore crimes. Perhaps this car could be towed or something, and the owner be heavily fined to teach them an important lesson of respect.

2. You could call your boss, explain the quite hopeless situation, and take a day off work. You can’t be expected to just abandon your vehicle, and with no parking, what other choice would you have?

You elect for option two, hoping your boss may have some answers.

“I’m sorry Frank,” you say when he answers. “I’m going to be late. I’m here, right outside, but there’s a car in my spot. I don’t know what to do. I think maybe I’ll have to go home and take the day off or something?”

Your boss Frank peers out of the window from the house two doors down, sees you there in your car idling in the street. He is more than just your boss. You two are like birds of a feather. You flock together. He was a groomsman at your wedding. Godparent of your eldest son. In turn, you once helped him move. You didn’t want to, feeling this an unfair burden to be placed upon you, but your friendship reached that unavoidable level where men simply have to say yes when asked to move furniture.

As a friend, Frank sympathises with your plight, but as a boss, he needs your butt in a seat right now because these targets aren’t going to hit themselves. You know this is the natural order of friends in the workplace, and this sort of thing has never been a barrier between you and Frank before. Never before has Frank had to step out of friendship and come down on you hard as a boss.

But now Frank hesitates. This is a moment, he feels, where he needs to be boss first and friend second. He wonders if your friendship can survive such a jarring change, but he glances at a spreadsheet, sees those targets not hitting themselves. He wishes they did hit themselves, then his job would be so much easier.

“You’ll have to park somewhere else Larry,” he says reluctantly with a sigh. “There’s plenty of parking around here. I need you today. No excuses.”

“Park somewhere else?” you say. What on Earth does he mean? Why is Frank being like this? You scan your surroundings and see for the first time the ample, unused parking available. “Since when has all this been here?”

“It’s always been there, Larry,” your boss says. His voice is firm. You can tell by his tone he is looking at his spreadsheets.

“But couldn’t we just, you know, leave a note on that car in my spot and ask it to move? Or get it towed?”

“I’m afraid not, Larry,” your boss says.

“How come?”

“Because that car belongs to the person that lives there.”

“And?” you say. This seems an irrelevant point. He might as well have said that he enjoys jam on his crumpets. Stay on topic Frank, this isn’t a time to be getting distracted.

“Well,” Frank says, “people have this general expectation that the street directly outside of their house is for their car to be parked.”

“You don’t say? Since when?”

“Since cars and houses and people were invented.”

“Huh,” you say. “Is that a law or something?”

“No, it’s more of a social decency thing.”

“Social… decency?”

What a strange concept.

You were aware of the two words individually, but placing them together in this context was entirely new.

You don’t have this problem yourself, you have a driveway. Your whole life you’ve always had things exactly how you wanted them, nay, demanded them.

It has been an unspoken agreement between you and the universe that everything should be laid out on a platter for you, like on an infinite cosmic buffet table, and you can come and go as you please, taking what you want, filling your plate as many times as you like until you’re stuffed and need to saunter off for a lie down. Once rested, you are free to come back and take some more. That was the deal.

But now someone, your former friend Frank, is telling you the cosmic buffet table doesn’t work like that. Now you find out the cosmic buffet is all out of tuna sandwiches. They are your favourite, and have always been in ample supply. But it turns someone else likes them too, and they took the last one. You realise that the cosmic buffet table is not infinite at all, and the universe has not been laid out on a platter just for you, but also that there are other people eating from it. Other people who also need to eat.

Your parents never prepared you for this.

They told you: “Larry, whatever you want in life, you have to reach out and take it. Don’t let anyone stand in your way.”

And that’s what you’ve done. Reached out and took and took and took until your plate was full.

Thinking like this made is necessary to adjust your view of other people. You were aware, of course, that other humans lived in the world. You weren’t stupid. You saw them every day. Some of them were your family, friends, Frank, and your wife.

But you only thought about them in a sort of abstract way. Your mind didn’t consider them as living, breathing, functioning people with their own wants, desires and expectations. You didn’t realise they carried on existing when you weren’t around.

“They want to park in front of their house?” you said. Your stomach turned, your head felt light, your face grew warm, sweat started pooling on your forehead. “They think about things like that? Them?”

Frank nodded at the phone. “I’m afraid so,” he said. Then, looking at his spreadsheets one final time, he whispered with regret, “now get your ass in, because if these targets aren’t hit it’s my ass on the line,” and hung up.

You still idled in the middle of the street for several minutes. You tried calling Frank back, but the line was busy. He was already on another call, this time to your wife cancelling plans for a barbeque this weekend. Something had come up. Things would never be the same again.

You hear a little peep from behind you. Another car wanting to get by. They’d been waiting there a few seconds while you blocked the road.

You pull over, to the other side of the street. Another world. The feeling is uncomfortable, the atmosphere thick. Your nose starts bleeding almost immediately. Meanwhile the other driver passes by looking disgruntled. Why? Perhaps they were trying to get to the cosmic buffet table themselves, and you were in the way? That was a new thing you just found out could happen. They were trying to live their life but you were stopping them.

Your mind races with all the days, weeks, months of parking in front of my house, but not just that, all of the other terrible things you had done: all the times you didn’t hold a door open for someone, the times you spoke rudely to the cashier in the bank, the times you ate at a restaurant and didn’t leave a tip.

The guilt started to become overwhelming.

“I have to go apologise,” you mutter to yourself, looking over at my front door, tears now streaming and mixing with the sweat and blood. “I didn’t know! I DIDN’T REALISE!”

You are about to open your car door and run out, when your eyes suddenly pass up to my bathroom window, and you see my glare. But by now, having see all this Larry, it isn’t a glare anymore.

It’s empathy. Basic human empathy. I give you a little shake of my head.

“You don’t need to apologise Larry,” my shake says. “Your apologies can’t make up for the mistakes you have made. It is too late for that. What is done is done. Go forth and be a better man. Leave the past behind you. Make room at the cosmic buffet table for others.”

You nod back, resolute, wipe your face, take a deep breath. You understood everything my shake conveyed, that I am sure. On your long road to repentance, you realise that you must show kindness and consideration for others, and treat people how you want to be treated. That was the secret.

I see that by the look in your eyes, the way you get out of your car and walk away without looking back, the way you twirl your keys and whistle a little tune as if you have no care in the world.

That whistle speaks volumes Larry.

Now you’ve made room at the table.

* * *

“What are you doing?” my wife said, standing at the bathroom door, catching me quite by surprise.

“Oh! Nothing, nothing,” I turned, rubbed my eyes and let out a deep, calm sigh. “He’s going to be all right, you know?”

“Who is? What are you talking about? Put some damn pants on.”

I nod. “Yeah, he’s going to be all right.”

* * *