Vehicularly speaking it's been a bad week.
No, nothing happened to my car. It's what happened to me when parking my car was involved. I became an angry white man with a perm!
Just kidding.
Anyway, anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a bit loopy. But I am a loving mom to two wonderfully, and perhaps miraculously, well adjusted children. I manage to be the C.O.O. of a cluttered, yet clean, well-stocked home where everyone eats, for the most part, healthful food and enjoys clean clothes. I have a job where I am respected. I have many good friends who are themselves accomplished, intelligent, empathetic, rational, loving people.
So why in the past few days have I been behaving like a girl duo featuring Tyler Perry's Madea and Lucy Ricardo?
And no, it's not THAT.
First there was the person who parked his bumper literally up on my grille over the weekend. Ignoring the requests of my husband, I grabbed a piece of paper from my bag, marched into a fancy boutique to borrow a pen, and as the shopgirls nervously peeked at my paper to see if this mad black woman was going to make it their last day on earth, I penned a VERY nasty note. Then I flashed the girls a big grin, thanked them, scurried back outside, stuck my angry missive on the offender's back windshield, and Austin Powersed my car out of the spot.
Then yesterday, after I'd been circling half the South Loop for a free spot for over 30 minutes, I found a space, available except for the fact that a woman was standing there, reserving it. Standing there! I noticed a cop in his cruiser further up the street and I asked him if holding a spot on foot was legal. He said no. He u-turned in front of me warning me not to pull into him, and reprimanded the driver of the now parked car. I u-turned as well, having thought the spot might still be free. I continued on, prepared to give up and put my car in a lot or at a meter.
And then lo and behold, I saw a gorgeous, huge spot, shining like a beacon in the woods.
On the other side of the street.
I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe that I had just done it. Maybe that the cop had just done it. Maybe I thought he wouldn't notice, even though he was 50 yards away, facing me.
Wouldn't notice? Really? How out to lunch without a sandwich could I have been?
So I u-turned, and lined up to park.
"Don't make a u-turn in front of an intersection!" A voice scolded. It was the cop, who'd pulled up beside me. I made the best cute-dumb-sorry face I could muster without having taken acting classes. "I could write you a huge ticket. Go ahead and park." Thank God he let me go. J would have killed me; he's warned me about my u-turn fetish a bajillion times. And how perfect would that have been - a $200+ dollar ticket as the cost of a free space.
No one likes a tattletale. Or a crazy lady who leaves nasty notes on people's cars. I consider myself warned. Karma's a bit--, ain't it?
Do we act worse behind our cars the more out of control we feel? Are there any other folks out there who feel that their driving has become worse, not better, as one would think, since they became a parent?
