It’s 86 with a “feels like” of 93, and I’ve been home from a trip of errands for about 30 minutes. After I couldn’t find a third of what I wanted at the Lowe’s gardening center and finding out that the prescription I needed to pick up had been filled at my old pharmacy instead of my new one, I negotiated a ridiculous traffic pattern to cross the street to a grocery store. Parking halfway up one aisle, this is what I observed as I got closer to the store:
You know those handicapped parking spaces with the extra wide ‘stripey section’ to assist those who need more room getting out of a vehicle? A nondescript sedan, an older Chevy or something, swung in front of me quickly and parked haphazardly in that space such that it was half in the parking space and half in the stripey section. Sensitive to these things both because my late mother and father both needed handicapped parking, and because one of our closest friends now seriously needs it, I noted it had no handicapped license plate, nor did I see a placard hanging from the rear-view mirror. I saw only a driver, a 25-35 year-old. She popped out of the car without any obvious ambulatory issues, left the car running, and zipped into the store ahead of me. “Oh, probably an employee picking up a paycheck or something,” I thought. A bit cheeky, but at least just a minute or so. Nope. She pulled out a shopping cart and took off into the store.
Seriously? I felt like going back to her car and seeing if I could move it to a different parking space. (No, I didn’t, but it sounds good. People pack lethal force in this state.)
I’m reading Constance by Lawrence Durrell, set in the years immediately prior to and at the beginnings of World War II. It’s the third book of Durrell’s Avignon Quintet. Last night Constance has returned to Avignon as a Red Cross liaison to the Vichy French. In the passage I read last night, she is shocked when she realizes that the Germans stationed there (who in actuality run everything) aren’t embarrassed by their actions in executing 20 villagers because someone fired on a tank; are not embarrassed by collecting all bicycles in the area and destroying them with two tanks because now no one can take messages to the supposed resistance in the hills; are not embarrassed by seriously discussing the processing of Jews for the camps in Vichy.
This lack of embarrassment, exemplified by the young woman this afternoon, continues to defy my brain’s ability to parse many behaviors of the past ten years, mostly political ones. I eschew politics on this blog. I merely will say how disappointed I am that a large majority of centrist politicians have capitulated to their respective fringe elements, and worse, so have voters. The arena of civil discourse demands recognition of differing opinions. It demands certain social niceties.
Whatever. The Curmudgeon has an appointment with the Old Fogey Police. Apparently I need an OF license now that I’m 70.
all the voices in my head 
Rant ripple. I work to be better than mean, but sometimes you know, I may slip a little. Trick is to find just the right measure of statement, but that does no real harm. Saw of Russian videos (don’t mess with Russians, mostly, sorta) regarding people who drove their cars into “pedestrian only” walkways. They had these BIG very sticky stickies they’d slap on the driver’s side windshield. Fair justice I thought. No damage yet not easily removed. Assertive self-defense I think. Maybe some could be printed with a logo, “Now you ARE handicapped”. And I never said any of that and neither did you hear it from me. Honestly, don’t wanna give thoughts like that too much real-estate in my mind. Hard enough leaning into kind.
Beautiful! (Whatever it was you didn’t say)
“Now you ARE handicapped.” Brilliant. I would likely do it to the one person who truly WAS handicapped in a way I didn’t notice.