The ticket gets spit out of a machine and then you take into a nearby business and ask them to validate it and it's so simple, they stamp it and its existence has been justified and now you park for free.
After work the couple complains about their job and they're all trying to get each anecdote in and after 15 years of marriage neither one really listens to the other but they're just looking to get validated, to have someone hear their story and maybe, just maybe, they can park for free.
Someone on Twitter or Tumblr or Facebook writes a 5,000 word post about something bad that happened to them and it gets 2 likes and a sad face emote, 1 retweet, and 3 reblogs. You could try to print this off as a receipt and say it grants you authoritative status, or at the very least free parking, but the person in the ticket booth just stares at you and asks for your actual ticket.
If you're quiet and never spill secrets you can collect the complaints all of your friends have for one another and then try to validate them all while not talking bad about anyone. It doesn't matter. The complaints plow onward.
At some point almost everyone in life tries to write something and then get it out there and let an immoral, money-obsessed free market driven entirely by advertising culture's pernicious effect on our brain and corporate preference choose which one amidst the millions is lucky enough to get a glossy cover and a spot at the local bookstore that is going out of business. Every year, 1000s of amazing things are written. Nobody ever reads them, and the authors go back to their day job where they validate parking tickets.
The old cards and photos and the like sit on your nightstand and you can validate a memory by replaying it and just like that it's over. Between drinks you might share it with someone who remembers it differently. Then you might start forgetting it. The ink has worn off the ticket. Your first few cars have already broken down.
On your death bed you might say you wished you worked less. The paycheck you received was what you had been told was the ultimate validation. It got you the camera, the car to park, the dinner at the business where they stamped your ticket. You could have not worked so much but that time would have just been filled by duplicitous attempts to put yourself out there and be validated.
The family nods as you tell them this, realizing that the wisdom you have bestowed upon them is true. Your eyes close for the last time.
Your 16 year old granddaughter goes back to her first job. While not in school, she sits in a small, under heated booth, perched under the roof of a 5 story parking ramp, validating the tickets of the people who come in and hope to have a good time, and leave wondering if, in the end, it was all worth the price of admission.
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