Parking at B.U. is like a good ol’ fashioned, pocket-emptying, wallet-draining night in Vegas, especially when there’s a Red Sox game at 7:00 and your class starts at 6:00.

People really need to wear a sign that says, “yes, I am heading to my car to LEAVE!” This goes for anywhere there are many parking spaces, with very few open ones, with lots of people walking around and between them. It’s like a huge, double roulette table — the inside spins one way while the outside spins the opposite way. Your car is going around and around the streets, desperately looking for an open space, waiting for that ball to drop into a space right in front of you. You know if you’re just a centimeter ahead of a car that’s about to leave, the car immediately behind you already has its blinker on. In my book that’s called “double-zeroes” — there’s no way in hell you’d have called that number right.

There are a few lots around the campus that commuters can use, should your odds at the street parking bring you down. These lots however are for the “high rollers”. The odds on these lots change with the rising and sinking with the tides, or more appropriately, depending on who’s in Fenway that night.

Students at B.U. who choose to pay the hundreds of dollars for a parking pass may use these lots “freely”, at any time (I believe). If you opt not to go that route, and you’re lucky enough that Fenway Park remains dark that night, it costs about $8. If the Red Sox are playing that night, the price shoots up to $25. And should Bruce Springsteen be playing that night, and I’m not making this up, it’s $45!

I’ll be sticking to the roulette table of life known as the back streets of Boston University, as my patience certainly pays off in the end. Last week, after a full hour-and-a-half of trying my luck, I finally hit paydirt. Although it’s well known in casino gambling that craps pays the best odds, I’ll stick with what’s working for me now. I think the craps table is really the T, anyway.