Skip to main content

Conversations About Parking

The other day, I drove home and there was no parking.  I drove all the way up my block, and I didn't see anything.  That was surprising, since this was late at night.  It's not like there's a shortage of parking on my street (except for right around church services); there's usually a spot or two free.  Still, I had to circle for a bit to find a space, and I went about my business.  It was mildly annoying, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Apparently, though, I may be alone in my thinking on this.  Recently, I've discovered that people can be very touchy about the parking near their houses.  The public parking near their houses, mind you.  For example, the van I ride to and from work needs to be parked somewhere overnight, so we always park it near the last stop.  I've actually counted, and there are something like 10 spots for 4 houses on each side of the street, for a two-block stretch.  So we park in whatever space we find when we drive home after work.  It's almost never the same spot twice in a row, but we make do.

A few months back, we did that, and a guy started questioning us.  Apparently, he lived in the house in front of which he had parked, and he was less than pleased with our choice of parking spots.  In his defense, he was fairly civilized.  He did however, keep asking why we had parked there instead of "where we lived" (technically, the last stop is right around the corner from one guy's house, but that's none of his business).  In the course of all this, I mentioned that the car would be gone by the time he got up, since we usually leave really early.  This helped make him feel a little better, as he said something along the lines of, "oh yeah, I know.  It's not a problem for tonight."

I didn't think about it at the time, but this really meant that he and his household had managed to park all of their vehicles already.  So this guy wasn't even complaining about not having a spot in which to park his vehicle.  That'd be an understandable concern, even if I'd disagree with his sense of entitlement to the spot in front of his house.  No, he was actually complaining on principle, that someone had the audacity to park in his spot.  I think I'm glad this didn't occur to me at the time, I might have made a smartass remark.

What's even worse is the behavior we've observed from another lady who lives on the corner, about two blocks down from this guy.  She has actually threatened to call the police because we parked in front of her house.  Now, this lady lives in a corner house, so she inherently has more options.  What's more, she has a stretch of about three parking spots in a row in front of her house in addition to her driveway.  And apparently, in her mind, they are her property.

She has complained at least twice, using pretty much every excuse she could think of.  She has complained that we're parking a commercial vehicle (it's not) in a public space (which sort of renders the first part moot), that she needs space to park all of her vehicles (just how many are there, lady?), that parking the van at the corner creates an unsafe condition because cars can't see pedestrians crossing the street (yeah, I rolled my eyes, too), and that the police were going to tow the vehicle (I was tempted to dare her to do it).

Now, the first guy asked us to park elsewhere if it was possible, so I can work with that.  I don't mind spending a couple of extra minutes looking for parking because he was civil and asked for a favor.  This lady?  Not so much.  She has gotten into arguments with other people driving our van, and I don't think she's once used the word "please."  Clearly, she doesn't know me.  =p

Still, we've grudgingly made an intra-vanpool decision not to park in the first two of the three spots, so that she can have her space.  That third spot, the one that borders the house next to hers, is fair game.  I think at some point, we're all willing to chalk up the complaints to her being what we'd call "crazy."

So, I parked the van in the third spot the other day.  I unpacked my stuff, grabbed my headphones, and started walking home.  I heard some shuffling, but I didn't think much of it.  As I walked past the front door of this lady's house, I heard something and then the front door slammed.  It actually took me a couple of seconds to realize that she directed her words at me, since I don't usually have people yelling random things at me from their front doors.  In hindsight, I think this may have pissed her off even more, as I didn't even register a reaction to her yelling.

Regardless, after my brain caught up a little bit, I realized she had yelled out, "park where you live!"  Again, I'm not getting into a discussion about where any of my coworkers live.  On the bright side, at least she was back to making sense.  However, she'd already slammed her door shut and I was a good two or three houses away at this point, so I couldn't compliment her on her new and improved debating skills (generally, I see this as a positive trait).

Oh well, I guess I'll have to pay more attention when walking past her front door.  Maybe I'll have time to respond the next time we get yelled at.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...