A yellow taxi cab was parked in the parking space that is reserved for cripples. I figured he didn’t belong there since I’ve never known there to be a cab driver who was crippled enough to need a reserved parking space.
A man sat in the driver seat. So the person who was with me got out of my vehicle and tapped on the cab’s window. The cab driver eventually turned his head to look at him, reluctantly and resentfully. My guy asked him to move, through the closed window, and explained to him that I had a genuine cripple van with genuine cripple license plates and all and I really needed to park there.
The cab driver reached down and pulled out a cripple parking placard and hung it on the cab’s rearview mirror. He then went back to trying to ignore my guy. Right then the car that occupied the other cripple parking space left so we just pulled into that one. But after I exited my vehicle I gave the cab driver the searing, icy, guilt-inducing stare I save for special occasions like this.
This guy clearly seemed to be one of those guys who commandeers his grandma’s parking placard whenever he goes out and stashes it in his glove box, just in case. I usually give people a big benefit of the doubt about that because I know there are a lot of people who are really and truly crippled who don’t look crippled at all. But this guy sure looked like the shoe fit him just right.
Believe it or not, this was not the most memorable encounter I’ve ever had with a douchebag hogging up a cripple parking space. It still doesn’t beat the time there was a pick up truck parked in a cripple space. The truck didn’t have a cripple license plate or parking placard or anything. Then a guy walked up to the truck. He sure didn’t look crippled but, like I said, you never know. As I shot him my stare, the guy got into the truck, opened the glove box, took out a placard, rolled down the window and said to me, “I’m a black man in America. I was born with one of these.”
The yellow cab was gone and the parking space was empty when we returned to my vehicle. Maybe my guilt-inducing stare worked.
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I know several people who have those parking placards, and exactly none of them hide them in the glove compartment until somebody challenges them.
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