Years back, angry note
Re: taking handicap space
Today we need it.
~Haiku by Michael
When our granddaughter Madison was born (in San Diego, now just over 14 years ago, tempus fugit) we hurriedly parked our car in a handicapped space at the hospital. I don’t remember our particular rush, but we had a new baby girl in our family! I can’t remember exactly if we parked in an actual handicapped space or encroached into a handicapped space, but when we returned to our car there was a huffy note on our windshield.
The note reminded us that handicapped spaces are there for a reason and that we had parked such that we had made it difficult for her to get in and out of her vehicle. We felt so guilty at the time. Obviously I have never forgotten the incident, and have since assiduously observed handicapped parking designations.
Today, we need handicapped spaces. My wife has had multiple surgeries, so she needs her handicapped parking pass. My daughter just had to buy a van to accommodate her son Grayson’s wheelchair. She will need handicap-dedicated space to move him in and out. She will be burdened if others, as we did that day, blithely leave nary a lacuna between her van and their vehicle. This will make something difficult, more difficult. Challenge will build on challenge.
This will occur simply because someone was in a particular rush, perhaps to use grocery coupons or to get a close space in a mall parking lot, or even to see a newly minted member of the family. This will be a greedy act, a selfish one, or perhaps one of simple, unthinking convenience-seeking. No matter. Like us, they won’t be thinking about whose life, already hard, they just made harder.
If I put my mind to it, I could find any number of other karmic, what-goes-around-comes-around, ironic life examples which make the point that what I have taken taken for granted earlier in life had come around to remind me how irresponsible I’ve been. I’m sure it will happen again. Excising self-centeredness will be one of my lifelong undertakings, I fear.
But it won’t again be because I took handicapped space from someone else who needs it.
The Profound Bartender 