No Good Deed

When I’m driving out and about on my own, I’ll try my best to avoid using a handicapped parking space if there is another (non-handicapped) one reasonably close by. I figure it’s only a little farther to walk and there may be someone else who might need it more, either for its proximity or for its extra entry/egress space. (Admittedly that someone else also could be one who “borrowed” his grandmother’s placard to “just run to the store” and park in an accessible space “just for a sec” and seemingly inconvenience no one since the spot was “just sitting there empty,” but let’s not go there.)

Since I use forearm crutches or a cane for my multiple sclerosis, a little extra room to get in and out of the car is handy but certainly not required—nowhere near the space needed if I was using a wheelchair or walker. So when I went to the gym the other day, I did my civic duty and parked in a space used by the normals. I just forgot to count on one thing: that humankind cannot always be counted on, which I discovered the moment I walked out of the gym after my workout, getting ready to drive home.

Unbelievably, someone had parked their car thisclose to my car. It was amusingly close, almost as if it had to have been planned. Twiggy wouldn’t have fit into my driver’s side door much less a midday shadow. Naturally I looked around for the source of this most incredible parking job. Was I on an episode of Punked? “Ashton, come on out!” Nope. Perhaps someone was videotaping to make this into a YouTube meme complete with an autotuned song of me saying “You have GOT to be kidding me!” (“Kidding me” repeating in the background, with a fade, I can hear it now). But there was not one kid with a camera within shouting distance. Ah, bugger.

Deflated at my Internet fame that was not to be, I recruited a kind staffer to put out an announcement on the gym loudspeaker. Alas, it didn’t start the way I would have started it (“Would the a-hole with license plate…”) but it was apparently effective. Shortly thereafter an older woman sheepishly ran out and moved her car, half apologizing and half being clearly annoyed that I didn’t have the dexterity to climb into the passenger side and hop over the center console. Sigh, the nerve of me.