Superheros all Around?

I hate to use my lunch hour to run errands, it makes my work day seem that much longer, so I try, whenever possible, to run errands on the way to work. This morning I stopped at the post office to mail my Christmas packages (ML its in the male, Meredith sorry it will be late, and Steph I hope it gets to you before your birthday). I then decided to stop at the Wawa (like a 7-11 only WAY better) to get orange juice which is my craving of the moment. Ok, so I also stopped to get an apple fritter another craving of the moment, but that is really here nor there, I stopped at Wawa, that is the important part of the story.

I pulled in the parking lot, parked my car, turned to car off, got out, locked the car and started to walk to the entrance when I noticed that every other car in the parking lot was idling in its parking space. "Strange," I thought to myself thinking there were other people in the cars waiting for someone inside. As I got closer to the building I realized that there was no one in any of these cars, they were still running because their owners were TOO LAZY to turn the car off before getting out of it. An uncharitable thought ran through my head that it would serve them all right to have their cars stolen from the parking lot, but I then thought that I really didn't mean it, even if deep, deep down, I did just a little bit.

Are people really in that big of a hurry? How long does it take to start your car? 2-3 seconds maybe. Not to mention all of the car exhaust being spewed into the environment, all the gas being guzzled as the car sits idle. Why not turn the car off? What is the benefit of leaving it run while you go get your caffeine fix or buy today's newspaper?

I could maybe, possibly understand if this was Alaska and it was -40 degrees and we all ran the risk of having our engines freeze solid if we turned them off for just a minute. I could also understand if you needed to make a quick getaway in the event you were robbing the place, but after that I can't think of why you would need to leave your car running while you are inside the Wawa. Unless of course you are a superhero in disguise and need to get out of the parking lot fast in order to go solve a crime or save a kitten or something like that.

Maybe my Wawa has a disproportionately large population of superheros I don't know.

[Note: New Jersey must not have any superheros as it is illegal to leave your car idling outside of a convenience store].