My Little Chat With a Policeman

Okay. I've calmed down enough to write this. But let's just say I'm still simmering. A little.


I arrived home from WalMart (where I go only when desperate) this morning around 9 and left the car in the driveway since Tom would need it to run errands shortly. I parked back a bit from the garage door because I needed the extra space so to remove a huge bag of peat moss with a dolly from the garage. So after changing clothes, I removed not only the peat moss, but three bags of garden soil from the car. Then I went about mixing and spreading that new soil. 


As I did so, I noticed a patrol car pull up to our neighbors' house across the street (idling on the wrong side of the road, I might add) and I thought, "Uh-oh! He must have noticed how our neighbors' truck doesn't have a licence plate." I could tell he was writing a report of some type, then he left, but turned around at the end of the street, perhaps when he saw me in his rear view mirror (I'd been behind our hedges all this time).


Well. Mr. Patrol Man pulled over, rolled down his window and asked me (politely, ok) if that was my car in our driveway. I said yes and then he said he'd received a complaint that our car and our neighbors' were blocking the sidewalk and he had to write us up.


Good grief. I saw red. I explained to him that I'd had to back away from the garage door a bit so to remove bags of garden soil with a dolly and the bags were still beside the house if he'd like to look and I'd only been parked there just ten minutes (in actuality, it was probably a tad more, but hey...) and ---


A couple times he said, "I understand, ma'am. I understand." I think they're told at the police academy to say those words when they see wild-eyed women about to go ballistic.


Man, our car is almost never even in the driveway. Usually it's inside the garage or Tom has it at work. But the one time I leave it there, some &^%*&^ neighbor (with no life, Tom added, more calmly than I felt) calls the police. 


I mean, hey--for one thing, I've walked a thousand miles in my life probably around a thousand cards blocking the sidewalk. But have I ever even thought of calling the police on them? Uh, no. And too, it's not like anybody even had to walk on any grass or anything! They could just step upon the blacktop on the other side of the sidewalk then continue on the sidewalk past our house.


Gah.


Anyway, I didn't say a whole lot to the patrol man, but I did defend my actions and the poor guy looked at me and probably thought, "I hate my job. This part of it anyway."


 He said he wouldn't write a ticket, but because of the complaint, I'd need to park farther up the driveway (our car hangs over about a foot when the nose touches the garage door, so we'll have to leave the garage door open and park the nose in the there so to be totally off the sidewalk. Grr.). And he said, if it happens again, he will have to write a ticket.

This is just a test.... this is just a test.... 


Well, I'll be taking another test like this one soon. How do I know? Because I failed this one. Oh, I got mad. Really mad. And you know where that kind of mad comes from, right? It comes from pride. Ugly, ugly pride. "Somebody complained about something I did? Sweet, innocent, salt-of-the-earth moi??? Me who only every day tries to make this world a better place? Just who would dare come along and call the cops on meeee?!!


Yep. Since you can't flunk out of God's school, but must retake tests until you pass, I'm betting I'll be taking this test again. Probably soon. 


Sigh. Hopefully I'll do better next time. Maybe I'll be good and get at least a C+.






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Please don't leave comments listing why the back ends of cars should never block sidewalks, ok? I know, I know already......... :) Sometimes a person just needs to vent in her blog.......




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"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."  ... Proverbs 16:18


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