Month: May 2011

I don’t know if this is going to be a controversial post or not, but having watched a lot of Curb Your Enthusiasm lately, this odd scenario jumped out at me as if Larry David himself wrote it and I thought it was amusing enough to share.

I was at the Avenue Commercial shareholder’s meeting last week, and I pulled into the parking lot looking for a spot. I was baffled seeing a car parked in front of two spots, completely blocking access to both of them. It was like this person simply didn’t want the hassle of turning their wheel and it was easier to drive straight into the parking lot and stop the car in that spot. I managed to just barley fit into the third spot, and when I got out I was surpried to see a blue handicapped card hanging from the rear view mirror.

I thought to myself “That card gives you the ability to park in special spots near the door, so why pick the middle of the parking lot to stop your car and get out?” I have to wonder how this person justified blocking two parking spots? Perhaps I’m being unfair and there was a reason for this, but for the life of me I can’t think of what it could be. The ultimate irony in all this? On my way to the door I walked past a handicapped parking spot with no one parked in it.

If this really were a Curb Your Enthusiam episode, it would have gone something like this…

Larry David is in a rush and pulls into a parking lot, looking for a parking spot. The only spot available is the handicapped spot, so Larry pulls into it (and it’s a “straight shot spot” where you can pull in coming off the street without needing to turn the wheel), justifying it by saying no handicapped person needs that spot at that very moment. He tells himself he’ll be quick. After his appointment, Larry comes out of the building to find a handicapped woman in a vehicle waiting for him, angry that Larry had taken the spot. Larry gets into a verbal sparring match with this woman, and she yells that she needs the use of this “straight shot spot” because she can’t manoeuvre her full-sized van with a wheelchair ramp into any other spot  in the lot. Larry yells back that if this she can’t park in any spot but this one, she should just pull into the lot and park perpendicular to other vehicles. He insists that he would be totally OK with her doing this. Discussions with Jeff would later ensue about the “Straight Shot Spot”, and Larry would find himself shortly in a situation where, upon his suggestion, the same woman would have parked perpendicular to his vehicle in a different parking lot, blocking him in his spot and causing him problems. Or something like that. 😉