a note to all the millions and billions of people who park behind me in my alley parking space, a note which i would post on the back door of this apartment building if i had any guts:
dear person, hello. turn around and look for a second. did you park your car right here in the alley? behind that black acura, maybe? if the answer is no, please carry on, and thank you. if the answer is yes, please continue reading. that’s my car. the alley is my parking space. by nature, a parking space allows one to keep one’s car in a relatively safe and convenient place, a place from which he or she can remove said car at will. if you have parked behind me, thereby blocking me into my parking space, you have rendered me unable to remove my car at will. therefore, since we live in houston and nobody walks, i am unable to go anywhere at all. you, dear reader, are allowed to use my parking space and/or block me in if and only if:- you know me, and you have my permission.
- you are loading or unloading something extremely heavy and need to park close to the building in order to avoid a hernia or other debilitating injury.
- you will not be blocking me in for a period of more than three minutes. one hundred and eighty seconds. blocking me in for more than the aforementioned amount of time means i’m late for work, late for class, late for dinner, late for kicking your ass.
- you will be within my sight so that i can spot you and ask you very nicely to move your car.
- there is an emergency. someone is bleeding or dead or not quite dead or is the recipient of a waxing gone horribly awry.
- you work here and/or are that really nice maintenance guy with the short fuzzy black hair. you are cool.
- you are the police, or the fire department, or one of those pickup trucks from fiesta mart that drives around the neighborhood retrieving the stray shopping carts that are pushed home by people who don’t have cars. it’s so nice, fiesta, that instead of preventing low-income families in the area from getting all their groceries home easily, you’ve organized a pickup program. you are cool, too.
- you are that guy in the red car with the clutch city bumper stickers who is always in the apartment across the hall from me. i know where to find you.
- you are jimmy fallon.
- you are that lady with those two shuffly dogs, the ones that dash over all excited and then stop short and stare up at me like they’re expecting something. your dogs are funny.
- you are that lady with the beagle named regal that ran into my apartment once and bumbled around sniffing everything before running out again. your dog is funny, too.
- you are fixing the dryer so we can dry our clothes, fixing the roof so we don’t get wet, fixing the air conditioner so we don’t melt, or vacuuming the hallway so it doesn’t look like the climax of a low-budget horror movie.
these are all the car-blocking reasons i can think of. if you are blocking me in for any other important and/or entertaining reason, and it is between the hours of noon and midnight, please just knock on my door (apartment # 73,248,234) and ask me. i’d probably be delighted to help. otherwise, please just park in the street or, if you live here, in your own assigned parking space. thank you for your time.
sincerely, alison headley.