Klass Has a Big Problem

Note: This is going to be more of a photo article than anything else. Since we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, how better to tell this story?

Klass has a real problem – with parking.

To be honest, all of Kharkiv has a problem with parking. In fact, all of Ukraine has this affliction. This issue stems basically from two things. The first is having way too many cars for the available infrastructure. The second is a “me-first” mentality among too many people here that says, “I can do what I want, and I don’t care about anyone else.” And the more expensive the car, usually the worse this mentality becomes.

For the unindoctrinated, Klass is a chain of higher-end supermarkets in Kharkiv. I suppose they are in other cities too, but I never go anywhere, so I don’t know. In the spring of last year, a new Klass store opened right across the street from my apartment building. It’s very nice and has everything I could need, although the prices are a bit steep.

In preparation for opening the store, they completely remade the parking lot in front of the building. The lot was expanded, nicely paved, and marked with plenty of parking spots, including 12 handicapped spots close to the store. They even included five special spots with recharging stations for electric cars. Besides Klass, this parking lot services a row of new stores that were built on the southwest side of the lot, and it also services some shops that had already existed on the northeast side.

During that first spring and summer, parking didn’t really seem to be a problem. People pretty much parked where they were supposed to, and at first they even honored the handicapped spots. But this didn’t last for long.

We Don’t Need No Handicapped Spots

Sometime last summer, a few of the “I’m too important to follow rules” types began parking in the handicapped spots. Why not? After all, there are no handicapped people in Ukraine, right? And once this started, the floodgates opened. Now the handicapped spots are often the first to be taken (and never by anyone who really needs them).

To make matters worse, because these spots are wider than the normal spots, it’s not unusual to see three cars take up two of these spots. And it gets even worse: sometimes a car will park with two of its wheels barely in the spot and the rest of the car extended out into the travel lane, making it difficult for traffic to move around it.

And this is made even worse by cars that crowd up to the front of the store – where there are NO parking spaces – and park so that they also contribute to blocking the travel lanes. This has been happening more and more since early last winter.

Another thing that happened was that cars began to park all day long in the travel lanes on the northeast and southwest sides of the lot. They reduce what should be two lanes of travel down to one on each side, making it almost impossible for two cars to pass each other coming in opposite directions.

And, of course the parkers don’t stop with taking handicapped spots or blocking travel lanes. They have occasionally even taken to hiking their vehicles up on to the sidewalks or grassy areas. Often they even block pedestrians' ability to get by.

Of course, there is a grand tradition of parking on sidewalks in Ukraine. You see it all over Kharkiv, and I understand it’s many times worse in Kyiv. Who cares if you block pedestrians on their own sidewalks? If they don’t drive, they aren’t important.

And remember those special parking spots with charging stations for electric cars? Well, imagine owning an electric car and coming to Klass for a recharge, only to find that all the spots are filled with nonelectric cars. Yep, these drivers have no respect for anyone or anything.

Why Has This Happened?

As I mentioned, Ukraine suffers from a lack of parking infrastructure. But even when sufficient parking is available, there are still too many drivers who will park illegally just to save themselves a few steps or perhaps just because they believe rules don’t apply to them.

But I think the bigger issue at Klass, at least from Monday through Friday, is that the parking lot has increasingly come to be seen as “employee parking” for a number of businesses in the area. Every morning, I walk along the northeast side of the lot on my way to work, and I usually walk the same route home. And I have come to recognize a lot of the same cars parked there every day. They are not Klass customers, they are using the lot for all-day parking while they go to their jobs. Sadly, I suspect that a lot of people at my company are guilty of this.

All of this extra parking chokes the parking lot and leaves a lot fewer spaces for store customers, the people for whom the lot was built. And it’s just plain ridiculous to see how the intended purpose of this lot – to service store customers – has been superseded by selfish dolts looking for free all-day parking.

At night and on weekends, it’s an entirely different story. There is plenty of space. In spite of this, people still crowd into the handicapped spots and in the area in front of the store that was not intended for parking. Bad habits are hard to change.

But Klass Does Nothing

What sort of surprises me in all of this is that Klass does nothing about it. They don’t seem to care about what goes on in their parking lot, which shows in turn that they don’t give a damn for their customers. Well, I guess that shouldn’t surprise me: no companies here give a damn about people, even their paying customers, and there is no such thing here as social pressure to do the right thing. And there is certainly no such thing as obeying laws where driving and parking are concerned. If they can’t make money on it, Klass (and the police) could not be bothered.

But this is where Klass is missing a huge opportunity. This parking lot has a single choke-point entrance that would allow them to completely control ingress and egress. It would be a no-brainer to set up a system with gates to control the entry point.

People could take a ticket when they come in, get it validated when they make a purchase in Klass or one of the other shops, and then use the validated ticket to go back out. It would be fast and easy. And they could even offer longer-term (weekly or monthly) tickets for those who are willing to pay to park there during the day. The price could be high enough to dissuade the casual parkers, and it would reduce stress on the available spaces.

What’s more, Klass needs to clearly mark those travel lanes and the area immediately in front of the store as no-parking areas. Then they need to pay for some real enforcement to keep cars out of those areas and out of the handicapped spots. Enforcement should have teeth: tow the violators away.

Will Klass ever take such action? Of course not. It’s just a dream. Assholes will simply keep on being assholes.

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Dying Alone

This evening is the end of a three-day weekend here in Ukraine. For me, that means three days of hanging around my apartment by myself, rarely going out, having nothing interesting to do and no one interested in doing it with me – almost no social interaction, save for a bit on Saturday.

Under those circumstances, it’s not unusual for my mind to go off in all kinds of directions. And sometimes, when I feel particularly isolated and alone, I get to thinking about my life here in this country and what would happen if the end comes while I am still here. It’s not pretty.

One of my first posts when I started this blog back in 2012 was called Living Alone. It was a partly humorous and partly serious look at the fact that I was living alone at the time and had been for quite some time before that. Seven years later, I still live alone.

One aspect of living alone that I did not touch on back in 2012 was what would happen if I had a sudden, serious medical problem in my apartment or out on the street somewhere. I got to thinking about it the past couple of days, and in that thinking, I imagined dying alone.

Earlier in my time here, I had a pretty wide circle of acquaintances, and I even had a few people I could legitimately call friends. And for years there was at least one person close enough for me to entrust with a key to my place and who usually also had contact with my landlord. That’s not the case any longer.

The last person who I thought was a real friend and who had a key left Ukraine earlier this year for a new life in southern Europe. The sad thing is that since she left she has not even tried to keep in touch. It’s like our friendship never mattered or perhaps never happened. That stings.

My circle has been shrinking for the past few years, and now it’s pretty much empty. I wrote a post about Circles of Friendship almost five years ago. In that post I described how each of us has several circles around us; on the innermost circle there are the closest people, and there are usually a few more circles with less-close friends, acquaintances, and finally just the mass of strangers all around us. I conceded that at time I didn’t think there was anyone on my innermost circle, and now I am not sure there is really anyone on the next circle or even the one after that.

No One Would Know… or Care

I am truly alone here these days. The reasons don’t really matter, but I suppose it has to do with age more than anything and probably also with ways in which I have changed in the past few years – and not for the better. I came to realize this weekend that if I were suddenly gone, no one would miss me. Days or perhaps weeks could pass before anyone might come looking.

I would be missed at work first, not so much because anyone cared but because it would seem strange after a few days that I wasn’t there to open my room for classes. But even then, I’m not sure how many days would pass before anyone got curious enough to try to figure out where I was. And even if someone did, there is almost no one there who knows where I live or how to get in touch. There is no one who has a key, no one who knows how to contact my landlord. There is no one.

And as for “friends” or acquaintances, there is no one who keeps in touch frequently enough to make a difference. Everyone has either left the country or just dropped me off their radar screens (admittedly, in some cases the “dropping” was mutual). There is no one who has a key, no one who knows how to contact my landlord. There is no one.

It occurred to me that if I had a heart attack or something here at home, that would be it. I would stay where I fell for many days, perhaps even weeks. And then what? When someone did finally find a way to get in and check on me, what would they do with my body? And what would happen to my possessions?

I don’t think there is anyone here who would know how to get in touch with my family or who would even feel moved to do so. I have no close friends here now, so the disposition of my body would likely be some kind of cheap grave and then quickly forgotten.

As for my possessions, the worst thing is imagining that my landlord would simply take everything of value – computer, video and audio gear, bicycle, cash, etc. – simply because he controls the apartment. One of my daughters has access to my U.S. bank account, but the money in my Ukraine bank account could not be accessed by anyone and, ultimately, would probably be kept by the bank.

Another Reason to Go

It’s not a pretty picture. And the more I think about it, the more it tells me that I should leave this place before it becomes a reality. Better to be around or at least close to family in this regard. Of course, things can happen to you anywhere – driving far from home, on a trip someplace far away – but at least spending the majority of your time close to people to whom you matter makes it better.

Of course, once you die, you have no reason to care about what happens to you or your stuff, right? You’re gone, and it’s other people’s problems. So it really shouldn’t matter where or how you die, or what happens with your remains and possessions.

Yet somehow… it does.

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The Last Time

For every person, there is a first time to do something. And there is a last time.

We celebrate so many of those firsts: the first day of school, the first time driving a car, the first kiss, the first time having sex. We write stories and songs about them. For many of the firsts, we record them forever in photographs or videos (not the first sex, usually).

I still have a fleeting memory of my first day of school so many years ago. I remember being excited and not able to understand why so many other kids were crying and afraid. I remember my first kiss quite clearly, and I also remember my first good kiss (often the two are not the same). My first time potting a goal in a real hockey game is etched in my mind as well.

I will always remember the first girl I fell in "love" with as a teen and how that feeling absolutely carried me away. And I will never forget the pain of the first time I had my heart crushed.

Like so many music lovers, I remember the first time I heard some of my favorite songs and albums. As a kid, I remember listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for the first time and being completely blown away. Some other songs really hit me the first time I heard them: CSN’s Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird, Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way, Phil Collins’s I Don’t Care Anymore, Don Henley’s Heart of the Matter, John Hiatt’s Have a Little Faith in Me, and John Mayer’s Dreaming with a Broken Heart, just to name a few. I have listened to them hundreds of times, but I will always remember the first.

We remember things like the first time flying in a plane, the first time visiting a foreign country, the first time seeing the ocean (unless we went to the ocean all the time practically from birth, as I did), the first time getting drunk (well, we don’t always remember it well), the first time getting a paycheck, and so much more.

First times are so memorable because they bring something new into our lives and often mark significant changes, rites of passage. And they can spark strong emotions, sometimes even explosions of emotion. These first times usually change us in some way; sometimes the ways are small, and sometimes they are huge.

First times more often happen in our childhood, our youth, our early adulthood – times that are the most optimistic in our lives. And they help fuel that optimism, give it form and direction, even when they hurt a bit.

The Last Time

But for every first time, there is also a last time.

We don’t think much about last times, and we don’t celebrate them. And why would we? Last times speak to finality, to reaching the end, and perhaps to death itself. We tend to associate last times with our last years, with diminishing abilities, and often with missed opportunities and regrets.

For most of our lives, we don’t really think about last times because we consider ourselves pretty much immortal and believe that there will, or at least can, always be a “next time.” Besides, we can never really know when the “last time” will really be the last.

Maybe thinking about the last time is a manifestation of getting older, but I do sometimes find myself wondering what song will be the last one I ever hear, what movie might be the last I ever see. I don’t think about this often, but it does cross my mind from time to time.

Have you ever spent time with a person, said goodbye, and wondered if you had just seen that person for the last time? What about other things we do routinely in life? Have you ever had a moment when you haven’t done a particular thing for a while and wondered whether you had done it for the last time ever?

Probably not. As I mentioned, we generally assume there will be a next time, even if we haven’t done that thing for while. But as we get older, the likelihood that there won’t be a next time increases.

Of course, our last times could come at any time. We never know when fate might whisk us away from this life. In this modern age, we are more likely than ever before to make it into our 70s, 80s or even our 90s. And some people get to those ripe old ages in pretty good condition, so they manage to extend their next times beyond when many would have had their last times.

But we all know of people who passed away in their 20s or 30s, or sometimes even earlier. Sometimes their first time is their last time. Sometimes they never have a first time at all.

The point is that we really never know when the last time will be. If you haven’t kissed a woman for some time, you might still be confident that there will be a next time. Or you might look at your life and conclude that you truly have already experienced the last time.

The last time I saw my mother, I had no idea that it really would be the last time. Several years passed as I lived in Colorado and she had become increasingly ill in Massachusetts. I also didn’t imagine that the last time we spoke on the phone before Christmas would be the last time we would talk, as she went into a coma shortly after New Year and passed away six months later. Of course, if we could know these things, we would react differently. But we can’t know.

When I was in my early 20s, I had a best friend when I was stationed on Guam. Frank and I were like brothers, and when my time on the island was up and I left, I naively assumed we would meet up again before long. We never did. It was the last time, and I learned a valuable lesson about how fleeting friendship can be.

More and more, I see that I have already had my last times in many things and that in other things, the last time is not far off. I used to run long distances, but knee damage and back problems stopped that. I don’t even remember when the last time was. I never could have imagined that I played my last game of hockey before I was 30 or that when I played softball one summer night almost two decades ago, it was my last time. I will never do those things again.

I am quite sure that I have known love for the last time in my life, and the sad thing is that I never really knew it well. Although I love someone even now, it can never be mutual, I will never feel its warmth. But that’s been my fate, apparently – the lesson I was meant to learn in this life.

The time is probably not far off when I will have driven a car for the last time. Driving is so important to me that to not be able to do that may feel like the last straw, like I am truly done. But it’s not here yet… so there is that.

The other day I said goodbye to a friend after a usual, casual meeting, and for some reason the thought occurred to me that I might have just seen her for the last time. I certainly hope not.

None of us really knows when the last time will be or if it has already occurred. That is the mystery. And I suppose we need that mystery in our lives. Or maybe we need to just not think about it.

I hope this won’t be the last time I will write a blog post.

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