Those People With a Lotta Nerve Sure Have a Lotta Relatives. Or Kindred Spirits.

Seems like only yesterday Val was ranting about the NERVE of some people. That's because it WAS only yesterday. Let me be the first to warn you...they're baaaack! And at the scene of the original crime against Val's special parking privileges.

Uh huh. There I was, headed for that parallel-like parking space by the air hose, due to my first and third choice spaces being taken again...when a dude whizzed around the pumps and parked his little blue sports car in the handicapped space.

Of course Val was not headed for the handicapped space. She is not handicapped. And she has no H placard. Just like that SportsMan! Not a plate, not a placard to identify himself as one who needed special parking. People like him are the reason the differently-abled have such a hard time getting gas station chicken!

I pulled T-Hoe around him, cut into the empty space, and backed up so as not to block the dumpster or the air hose. Backed directly into the confines of the lines of that parking space. I looked in T-Hoe's door mirror. Sportsman was still sitting in his blue sports car. I counted up my exact change and opened the door to disembark. Let the record show that I took my own sweet time. No need to jar sore knees by hopping down. I slid my heels past the running board. Leaned a minute on T-Hoe's door to let circulation come back into my joints. We elderly are like that. Then I started walking toward the corner of the building. Toward the blue sports car. Perhaps I favored my sorer knee, my left knee, more than usual. Not-Heaven's Chimes! Is it MY fault if Sportsman might have thought I was indeed differently-abled?

I can assure you that such a false fact would have made him no nevermind. He was out his blue sports car door and around the corner before I got to his bumper. Inside, he went directly to the counter. Never mind that the owner was waiting on someone else, with another lady in line behind her.

"How are you?" The owner is always polite to the customers, even though she rules her oft-turned-over staff with an iron fist.

"Livin' the life! I'm livin' the life!" SportsMan stood there in his khaki shorts, his red-and-blue baseball-jersey-style shirt, and brown flip-flops. I saw nary a flaw on his tanned legs that might have warranted a parking spot for the handicapped. He kind of reminded me of Guy Fieri from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. That kind of attitude. That kind of hair. He was buying PowerBall tickets.

Far be it from Val to deny a dude his right to play the lottery. But I think he could have complied with the parking etiquette of civilized society to do so.