Hey Asshole...

 Note to self, stop parking like an asshole.

It started one crowded holiday weekend morning, the parking lots were near full by 8:30am and people were panicking in a slow roll past filled spots, unsure how to start their beachday if they couldn't put their large piece of metal somewhere nearby. Or did it start when I got the home from the crowded beach morning, proud to have parallel parked in a tight spot right in front of my apartment? I atually wasn't sure how it started.

On the next leg of my day, a section where I was driving to a nice peaceful paddleboard location,  I saw a small note facing me on my windshield.

Hey Asshole...

I couldn't make out the rest of the note because I was driving and it was tucked into the wiper blades, but made out the words "asshole" and "parking" fairly clearly. At first I was offended, who had time and motivation to hand write a note for me on a Saturday morning? Not only did they call me out for my parking, but they started with name calling, thinking that would get me to change my ways? I let my defensiveness subside and then began to ponder which parking job I was being reprimanded for.

It must have been the beach, I knew I had pulled in quickly to avoid backing up the line of cars behind me.  I only straighted out once and it probably wasn't enough. Or was it the parallel parking spot? I think the cars had changed by the time I came back out. Or maybe they hadn't. I thought I did a decent enough job. But maybe I didn't. Or maybe it wasn't my fault, maybe someone else had pulled closer making it appear I did even worse of a parking job than I did.

I guess a note was better than keying my car, but with a 2007 Camry, maybe they knew a long key scratch wouldn't be the proper way to communicate their extreme annoyance. They would have been right, if I barely noticed the note on the windshield, I definitely wasn't going to notice a scratch.

I was angry seeing this blatant verbal rudeness, but then became contemplative and curious for the remaining ten minute drive. I wondered what the rest of the note said and if it would explain which location exactly I was being an asshole -  can you please get more specific in your feedback so that it has potential to create impact and will facilitate a learning opportunity for its intended recipient? I wondered how their day was going now and what their morning at the beach must have been like to have written such a note before 9am. I thought about the studies that show how people are more angry in hotter weather and felt sure that the wildly high temperatures the last few days contibuted to this incident.

I couldn't let curiosity get the best of me though, so before I reached my destination, I stopped at a light, stared at the wiperblades, closed my window, and when the light turned green, I simultaneously sprayed the wiper fluid and hit the gas, leaving the note to float away free to amuse its next recipient. 

That morning, I was reminded, however rudely, that after years of parking like an asshole in a city of people that always park like assholes, I should try not to park like an asshole. Also, I should get my plates changed so I can be a local asshole and not receive the extra out of towner directed anger from the next annoyed early morning parking lot note writer.








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