There’s a crazy lady living on my street who is a parking nazi.
So, last Sunday I’m driving home, and, nuts, there’s only one space left on my narrow little crowded street. Parking enforcement has gone recently from almost zilch to crazy levels of ticketing on my block, and I’m scared to park my own car in front of my own house since I have been ticketed for what I consider to be spurious reasons on multiple occasions that really a smidgen of common sense would have negated. And since I got a ticket before for parking facing the wrong way (okay, this ticket was legitimate, but really goddamn picky), I decide I have to turn the car around before I park. Anyways, I am in the process of doing so when I hit the bumper of a car on the other side of the street. Double nuts. Stupid narrow street. I curse to myself and pull up the front of the street where there is more room to turn around. I pull around and go back to where I was trying to park and get out of my car.
At this point, I hear yelling and look up and there is this older lady (lady, incidentally, is a very generous word to be using in this case) and she’s running down the street screaming at me. She’s yelling all sorts of stuff like did I think I could just drive away and wasn’t I going to leave a note, and two people did the same thing last week, blah blah blah. I tried to point out to her that by RETURNING and GOING TO THE CAR I HIT and LOOKING FOR DAMAGE, the hypothesis that I was just going to drive away and do nothing was pretty much shot, but perhaps she couldn’t hear me over the sound of her own voice.
So anyways, I’m trying to decide what to do over the din of her (really very unpleasant) voice, and she tells me that the car belongs to this house up the street. FINE, I say (caps are because I have to yell over her voice as she is still screaming incessantly), I AM WALKING OVER TO TALK TO THEM, YOU CAN STOP YELLING AT ME NOW. Nope, apparently she can’t. To give you an idea of her craziness in the manner, I knock on the door of the alleged car owner, he opens it, and the first thing out of his mouth is, Oh my god, who the hell is that? I DON’T KNOW, I tell him, BUT I THINK I HIT YOUR CAR. That’s not my car, he says, and why is she yelling at you? I DON’T KNOW, I once again answer, I THINK SHE HAS PARKING ISSUES, AMONG PERHAPS OTHER THINGS. DO YOU KNOW WHO OWNS THAT CAR? At this point, I am getting kind of (okay, very) pissed at crazy parking nazi lady (henceforth known as CPNL). CHILL OUT! I yell, but to no avail. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Okay, so the bumped bumper car is parked in front of this house where the door is open and CPNL walks IN THEIR DOOR (no knocking, incidentally, just strolls right in). Whose car is this, she’s yelling at the guys that live there, and it turns out they say that the car is owned by someone who lives in a neighboring apartment complex. CPNL does not like this one bit, no she does not. They have their own parking spaces, she screams, the city promised when they built those places. They promised! They said! She looks at me (still screaming), they’re not supposed to park there! IT’S NOT MY CAR, I say, OR I WOULD HAVE PARKED IT WHERE I WOULDN’T HAVE HIT THE BUMPER. CPNL says something to me to the tune of, what, you don’t like my attitude, NO, I say, CHILL THE FUCK OUT (I am finally resorting to profanity as my blood pressure soars out of bounds). I ask the guys IS SHE ALWAYS, oops, sorry for yelling, is she always like this? One of them shakes his head. She’s... he doesn’t finish.
I finally run away to my house, figuring I’ll go back and leave a note when CPNL is gone because my ears are ringing and I am pissed off and very probably it would be bad to hit her, or maybe throw a rock at her, even if it’s a fun idea to kick around in my mind. I peek outside my living room window a couple times, and CPNL is out there yelling at the nice boy neighbors for at least half an hour. I finally peek out and she’s gone. I write a note, and go back out and realize, what the fuck, there’s already a note on the car. CPNL left a note! I pull it out and look at it. While I don’t remember the exact words, it was to the tune of I hate you, you shouldn’t park on the street because you have your very own special place to park and parking is limited on this street and plus the city promised and you are a very bad neighbor, and it just serves you right that someone hit your car. I go back in my house and add a p.s. to my note saying by the way, I have NOTHING to do with CPNL’s note.
I realize about a half hour later that when I had called Parking Enforcement the previous week to complain about the excessive ticketing on my block, they told me that there was a crazy person that called them EVERY DAY to complain about parking on my block. Bell went off – ding ding ding, - I know who that person is, yes I do, I do now.
By the way, the people whose bumper I hit never called me about their car. Know why? I hit the bumper. Think about the name. Bumper. What’s it for? Bumping. What’s it made to withstand? Bumping.
I like that anonymous person who owns that car. I don’t like CPNL.
CPNL you gotta chill.