You know how when someone catches you off guard and says something nasty to you, it’s only later, after you’ve had a chance to replay the conversation in your head, that you come up with what you should’ve said? Like, for example, I live in the Beaches area of Toronto and if you don’t already know, parking is a little tight around here. So I took my car out in the morning, and when I returned there was nowhere to park. This is a normal occurance. But there was a woman with her 10 year-old kid sitting in an SUV near the top of my road waiting for something, but taking up two parking spots. So I open my window and ask: "Could you do me a favour and either move forward or backward so I can take the other parking spot?"

 

And she responds: "There isn’t enough room." I’ve lived on this road for 11 years. The two spots in question are some of the most spacious spots we have on the road, so I respond "Oh, there is enough room, if you could just pull up a few feet". So she puts the car in drive and budges forward about a foot. Not quite enough room for me, and she still has about four feet in front of her, so I ask her to move forward some more. She budges forward another foot, just enough for me to squeeze behind her, so I wave at her and pull my car in behind.

 

As I get my kids out of the car , I confirm that I’ve parked in very tight so as we pass her, I say "You could even pull forward another 2 feet, if you like". And she says, quite sarcastically, "I’m glad you’re such an authority on this."

 

Now that’s what caught me off-guard. I thought we were two adults being polite to each other. So this is the part of the conversation that I wish I could do over. Since it caught me off-guard, all I said was "I live on the street, so I’m familiar with it." A pretty pathetic response, I realize. But the really witty responses only ever come to you later, after you’ve had time to think. You see, what I really should have said was something else. So in my head she says "I’m glad you’re such an authority on this", and rather than just explaining that I live on the road, what I really should have said, and it took me a while to come up with this… what I really should have said was "F#@* off, bitch." See what I mean? Witty.

 

No really, I think what I should’ve said was "Thanks for helping me out and being so polite about it". Either that or "I’m not an authority, I’m just not a moron". Okay, so anyway, she was driving a beige Toyota SUV, license plate number… no, I’m not going to give you her license plate number.

 

Just be aware that when you visit areas of Toronto that aren’t as spacious as your suburban paradise that parking spots are very important to the residents. It’s tough enough to park around here without someone taking up two spots. I live with the tough parking because I love the beach, the bike path, the local shops, the lake, and many other things. And I deal with the lack of parking many times a week, it’s just the way it is. And it’s fine… people need to park their cars when they come visit the area. But they don’t really need to be bitchy about it, do they?