The monkey made me do it

Dear Mr. Man,

My aunt and I braved the Swedish modern wilderness (swmonderness?) that is IKEA yesterday, and were highly excited to see a handicapped spot near the entrance. You see, my aunt isn't able to walk more than about 25-30 feet nowadays and therefore relies on a scooter (a sweet, 4WD scooter that can lap me even when I'm really moving - my aunt has a good sense of humor and an agile joystick hand), and that scooter takes some extra space to be able to leave her vehicle on its special motorized crane-thingy. Normally we don't have any issues finding good handicapped parking but IKEA is its own mega beast and even though they have 2 rows of dedicated spots, they were very full and a line of waiting vehicles snaked out of the building. We were waiting for another car to move so we could pull her minivan into the coveted spot, and you swept in from the wrong way in a one-way and stole it with your shiny SUV.

My aunt said "Huh, maybe their handicapped sticker is on the other side of the car." I took a look at your early 20's-aged punk ass and your similarly non-limping friend, realized what was happening, and rolled my window down. "Hey guys, I have a woman here with a scooter who really needs a spot like this. All the other ones are taken, can we have it?" Said with the right intonation (a little sugar, a little acid underneath, a lot of "you know you just got totally busted, healthy boy"), it was very effective. You sputtered that you worked there and were just running in to get something, but if I wanted to pull around again you'd move for us. I knew you were lying, so we continued to search (plus, to "pull around" in the IKEA parking garage takes approximately 20 minutes and sprouts dense thickets of grey hair) and managed to find another handicapped spot farther away on the next row over.

By the time we got her scooter out and headed towards the entrance, we saw that your SUV was firmly in place and you were nowhere to be seen. My aunt is a generally very chipper person and was just thrilled to be out and shopping with me (we have a good friendship and have been close since I was born) so I didn't let it bug me too much that you had shown yourself to be such a typical, selfish, ignorant a-hole (all right, so it did bug me). Then I noticed that a man in a dark blue outfit was paying close attention to your windshield, and I started to laugh. My aunt asked me what was up, and I told her to wait until we got around the corner of the row of cars. She cracked up when she saw the cop car parked directly behind your vehicle with flashers on and officer in the process of entering your info into his computer.

"Oh, I gotta do this..." she said, and zipped out into the lane in her scooter towards the cop car. She reached the window and waited for the officer to see her, then once it rolled down she beamed her hugest smile and said "THANK YOU!!!!!" They chatted for a bit (I was slow to catch up, being non-motorized) and when we went into the store she said that the cop was writing a lovely $250 fine to thank you for your parking generosity.

Her smile lasted for hours, so I'd like to express my appreciation to you for giving my aunt an opportunity to see a little justice in action. For future reference, she did say that if you really wanted to use her parking spaces without getting tickets, she'd be happy to trade her bum legs for your fully working ones anyday. She's generous like that.

posted by LadyJay @ 11:39 AM