Too close?

Everyday when I arrive home I have the dilemma: stay in the right lane and hope there is a parking spot in front of the door, or go to the left lane and turn off for the parking lot over there. When either one is full I have to move around a full block to return to my point of arrival and make the other choice.

So I always hope that traffic is not busy and that I get a good glance in advance of the parking spaces left on either side. I make a quick visual picture and try to 'see' whether there are cars missing. Yesss, on the right just in front of our house were only 2 cars instead of 3! So I kept right and drove in front of our house to park over there. Only at that point I saw that the second car had left about 2 meters in between himself and the previous car, leaving not much space for me to park. Half pissed off I am determined to park there anyway and that anger probably helped me to squeeze in perfectly parallell at 6 cm of the previous car.

When I get out, the old driver in that car (yes he was in there reading a book!) turns his window down agitatedly "Hey, how do you think I have to get out of here?" "Eum sir, you have 2 meters behind you to back up so that should be no problem" "You are not allowed to park that close to me, you have to leave." "Sir you have 2 meters behind you, you have lots of room since you parked rather unsocial in the first place. "

Quite angry I got in our house. When I left the house for yoga class 10 minutes later, he was signalling again that I had to leave. Pheww, I really needed that yoga class by that time! And I felt sorry for the old man since he probably needed some relaxation exercises as well.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hmm. That's what my 4-year old would classify as "old man rude" behavior.


Mike
http://somethingaboutparenting.typepad.com/
Allie said…
What? I applaud you for keeping your cool. I would have dropped a few remarks about his age and perhaps lack of eyesite regarding his abilities to park his car! :P
Goofball said…
well, I wasn't too polite either, calling him a unsocial parker etc and waving with a big smile when I walked to my yoga class (I walked, so he was still stuck behind my car). In my head I had a whole series remarks that if he could not get out of that parkingspot he shouldn't have a drivers licence at all etc... But I refrained myself from going to tell him that.

...then I got worried that he'd really not have the driving skills to back up properly and that I should have written the numbers of his license plate in case that he'd wreck my car in my absense.

...then I pictured him getting so angry that he'd call the police and I expected a bit the police to wait for me when I got back home.

... and I also felt a bit sorry for him, that he got upset over something so silly.

Much to my relief he was gone when I got home and there was no dent in my car ;-)

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