♪ Lovely Rita, meter maid, nothing can come between us. ♪

Growing up in Scarsdale, there are lots of parking meters (you don't see too many of them anymore, but Scarsdale still has tons of them). A friend of mine who lives there has a 3-year-old daughter and there was a quarter sitting on the table. She picked it up and looked at her mother all seriously and said "This is mine." and my friend said "Oh yeah? What are you going to do with it?" and her daughter said "Put it in the meter."

Okay, so if you didn't grow up there, it's not funny, but trust me, it is very telling that a 3-year-old is thinking about parking meters. When I was a little kid, I used to always want to put the dimes in it for my mom. It's funny, the little things that get kids excited. LOL.

Although, we didn't have 'Lovely Rita', we had grumpy, mean Loretta. I think she probably hated her job or something. She was always yelling at us. There was always this thing going around that she gave kids tickets for jaywalking, but I'm pretty sure that was out of her realm of jurisdiction. At least, she never gave me a ticket - for anything. Because I was 13 and didn't have a car. She did yell at us for running up the street and being loud though.


Australia Madrid Press Conference/Photocall, Madrid, Spain, December 3, 2008.

If Hugh was parked at a parking meter and didn't have any quarters, I'd probably give him a couple. You know, just to help the poor guy out... anybody else can just bugger off though.