Sometimes Doing the Right Thing Just Takes a Little Nudge

Had a funny experience last night while waiting to meet with friends for dinner. Having arrived at the restaurant early, I sat on a bench outside enjoying the nice weather. A few minutes later, a lady makes an illegal U-turn and pulls into the second parking spot from the end in front of the restaurant. Unfortunately, she parks about 6″-8″ over the line into the last spot. “Way to go,” I think to myself.

After she spends a few minutes fixing her makeup, she gets out and looks at her parking handiwork. Then she takes a few steps toward the front door of the restaurant and stops. She turns around and, walking toward me, asks if I think anyone would mind that she’s taking up two parking spots.

Pretty funny question. It’s as though my agreeing with her would make it all better somehow. Anyway, I tell her that it depends if someone might get annoyed by it. She paused for a moment and then got back in her car to move it over. After she got back out, she rechecked her work and I said, “Much better!” She smiled and said something to the effect of, “some people can get annoyed” (I guess to either imply that getting annoyed by such a thing is unreasonable or that some people can get out of hand about such a little thing).

Shortly after that, someone pulled into the last parking spot. Chalk one up for the forces of good.