The day had been pretty busy. I dropped my ring off to get the pearl re-set then I drove a half hour north to pay rent for a jewelry space, all the while bribing my almost 3-year-old with the promise of going to Chick-Fil-A for lunch. She calls it "Chicka Play". But when we got close to Chick-Fil-A, it was madness. I mean, you would have thought they were giving away free food or something.
The traffic as we approached was intense. One guy decided to make the two lanes into three, and I found myself swerving into the curb to get out of his way. But I managed to wait out the near stand-still and turn into the lot and to my great surprise there was a parking spot. I jerked the wheel and pulled in, which was no feat since I had to snatch at an opening in the drive thru line to make it into the place. Now that I was in a space and out of traffic, I sighed. "Okay girls, you hungry?" I mentally prepared myself for the difficulty of unloading both girls, holding one's hand while I carried the other and balanced the diaper bag. Finding a seat in the restaurant would be an entirely different story. Then my thoughts were interrupted by a woman loudly cussing out some "a**hole driver". "Seriously hun, come look at this. They're on the line! What a moron!" I looked at my back window and sure enough, she was talking about me. She looked at my car and hers and, for the first time, so did I. I almost wondered if she was going to kick my car or something. "Who parks like this and just leaves it?! I hate people like that!" I confess, it was a pretty shady job, but in my defense, she had also parked close to the line. Her cussing continued and since there was no one else there to defend me, I opened my door. "Ma'am," I said. "I'm right here. I can hear you." You should have seen her eyebrows shoot up and her mouth literally open. "And I didn't realize that my parking job was so bad. If you'd like to wait a minute, I can try to back out and pull in again. The parking spots here are pretty narrow, and this car on the right is pretty close to me as well, but there were no other spots--" "Oh no no no, you're fine." she said, backing up. "He's already in the car," she gestured to her husband who had actually climbed in the passenger side door and crawled into the driver's seat. "I drive a big van too and now that I look at it, we are a little close to the side of our space too." "Okay," I shrugged halfway wondering if there was a grizzly bear behind me or something. There wasn't. "Have a nice day," she offered, going to the other side of her car. She even waved goodbye to me once they'd pulled out. I feel there are a few things this story tells about our society. 1- We gripe and complain just for the heck of it. 2- We are rude to the faceless and nameless. I mean, once she'd noticed I was right there, she became apologetic. She decided it wasn't a big deal. Okay lady, either it was a big deal, or it wasn't. I'm grateful that once she saw that I was a human who'd done an imperfect job parking, she stopped cussing me out. What do you think? Do we all jump to criticizing strangers until they have faces? Do we complain as a recreation about things that don't actually matter? One thing is for sure; I must not have looked 17 today. :)
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Lara HuesA place for my unfiltered thoughts and non-fiction stories Archives
April 2018
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