The Tale of Two Mornings in Front of Starbucks
Your narrator is sometimes prone to Larry David-like exchanges, for better and worse.
A couple of weeks back I woke refreshed on a cool July Friday, picked up my phone to start the day—maybe listen to a little Gospels while checking my fantasy lineups—and immediately read a fake tweet about Damian Lillard demanding a trade.
Upon further research, I learned the situation was less dire, and that Dame might eventually request a trade, so this was another reminder to find more productive ways to start my days.
My plan that morning was to get in a round at Lunchtime, since I knew the course was closing soon. First, though, Lana was hungry, so I put in a pickup order for a bacon and gouda breakfast sandwich, and we rode up to the shopping center. The parking lot was crowded, but I wasn’t worried about finding a spot, because there’s a secret bike space next to the dry cleaners which is always accessible through the striped zone next to the disabled parking spot.
So I was surprised upon arrival to find the striped zone blocked by a Lexus RX with the windows down and the engine idling. Fortunately for me, the ADA spot was open so I rode through that, parked, and we disembarked. Lana commented on getting a lungful of exhaust from the Lexus, then went into Starbies for her sandwich.
Meanwhile, I leaned up against a post and waited outside for whoever’d parked in a handicapped1 zone mostly because I’m curious, and also because I’m not entirely opposed to public confrontations. I wanted to see the culprit, and say something if warranted.
Except the more I assessed the situation, the more complex the picture became. Was that a dog in the backseat, looking out the window facing away from me? Something blue hung from the window—was that a tangled disabled drivers tag? There was an old Vanagon Westfalia leaning over the yellow line into the ADA space from the other side. Perhaps the Lexus moved over to avoid the encroaching VeeDub?
Still, someone aware and respectful of ADA laws would know not to park fully in the access aisle. I watched a middle-aged white woman walked past. Then a young Asian man. Neither was the Lexus driver. Then I was bothered at myself for getting so fired up so I took some breaths to calm out of my agitation. I even got to thinking about other stuff for a moment, and my approach shifted, and I was less interested in speaking up than simply learning who this parker was.
Then an older man emerged from the Starbucks. He wore a striped golf shirt and khaki shorts and a black hat with the word Titleist italicized in white across the front. I know this brand well from selling lost golf balls when we were little, and always liked their simple design approach, but in that moment the cursive loops read as another word: Entitled.
Yet I was still calm, past my initial anger, so I watched the man impassively as he opened the car door and he sort of glanced at me, confused why I was looking at him, then he got into the Lexus, started the engine, and backed out, which is when I saw the “dog” in the back was a set of clubs.
Even so, the moment was past, and I felt proud of myself for keeping quiet, for working through that initial charge, for refraining from publicly correcting an elder, and I wasn’t even finished with that thought when a dark blue BMW Series 8 entered the parking lot and pulled into the newly-vacated ADA access aisle.
My righteous fury returned in a flood. There was no hint of bright blue on the rearview mirror. This was a sports car, and the man who got out was my age or younger. He was—I don’t know how else to say this—Standard Professional Guy, dressed in a dark suit, dark hair slicked back.
Of course, I thought. Of course these two specimens are the ones with the audacity to take up the sole handicapped spot in front of a busy Starbucks.
The man clicked his keyless entry as he neared me.
“Hey, man, you know you’re parked in a handicapped spot?” I said.
“Yeah, yeah, we all know,” he said, and brushed past into the dry cleaners. I found this wording curious. Had this man elected to self-identify by they/them pronouns? Was he referring to some dark passenger? Was this a Royal we?
Our exchange was witnessed by a woman leaving Starbucks. She was also white, maybe in her 50s or 60s, a little hippyish. She walked my direction as the man ducked into the cleaners.
“Good for you saying something! I can’t stand the people who do that…” she started in with the cheerleading and kept going.
I had mixed feelings about this. Backup is nice, but mostly I wanted her to stop talking because Standard Professional Guy could exit the dry cleaners any moment. I didn’t know how that’d go down, and a middle-aged white lady was not the sort of ally I was looking for. The woman kept talking, and that’s when I realized she was headed toward the Vanagon.
Now, I drive a Westy, so in almost any other scenario, I would’ve chatted this woman up and we would’ve formed the Bond of Van Drivers. Instead, an even deeper wave of indignation washed over me, because this fellow enthusiastic Defender of Parking Law was also parked illegally!
“…he shouldn’t even be there!” she concluded.
“No, he shouldn’t be there. You also shouldn’t be this far over into the handicapped spot!” I said as she passed behind me.
I wanted to ignore our exchange after that and just let all my even-handed shaming settle in. Instead, my criticism was like water off a duck’s back, and she went into a story about how she could’ve got a handicapped parking tag at one point. I was half-listening because my peripheral vision was on the cleaners. Then I commented on her van in an attempt to change the subject, but I kept my responses short and she seemed to pick up that my attention was elsewhere.
Lana was still inside waiting for her order.
Then the man emerged from the cleaners, a stream of pressed suits over his shoulder, and I felt a mini wave of regret for the confrontation because he’d only taken, like, a minute or two. I figured I’d validate his expedience and soothe the waters with some diplomatic deftness.
“At least you were quick. I wouldn’t have said anything except a guy parked there right before you.”
Standard Professional Guy avoided eye contact, which was difficult since he had to pass so close. I think he intended this as a power move, but I read it more as shame avoidance. When he reached the latch of his car door, he responded at last with a hefty dose of scorn.
“These stripes are actually a loading zone, and I’m loading my dry-cleaning.”
I tilted my head and squinted at him, confused by this response, because why hadn’t he said that before? And why would he think something so dumb?
“It’s a loading zone for disabled drivers,” I said, dragging the words out to mirror his scorn, and perhaps add a little extra.
“Get a job!” he said, and pulled open his car door and ducked inside and slammed it shut
I snorted and watched him through the windshield as he backed out of the spot. “Oh, look at the big shot in his Beemer,” I said, giving some fancy jazz hands.
“Holy moly, what an a——!” said the woman from the Westy, and I was grateful for her camaraderie at last.
Then Lana came out with her bacon and gouda sandwich and a tall acai-strawberry refresher, and she wanted to sit and eat in the table out front, but I felt tense from the confrontation and wanted to leave, so she loaded up on the backseat of the bike and as we rolled out of the lot, I told her what happened. She laughed when I got to the line about getting a job and said, “If he’d said that a month ago, it could’ve been a sick burn!”
This happened on a Friday, and over the weekend, I told a few friends this story, mostly to process. I told it like above, painting myself as a Larry David-esque social enforcer standing up to twisted privilege. And yet, all those events actually happened! He did say, “Get a job,” like an ‘80s movie villain! The truth was I felt both right and wrong. I didn't feel guilt, exactly, because the altercation was justified. But who was glorified?
The answer, at least partly, was me. I told myself I was serving God or society—and that’s maybe true to some degree—but I served myself, too. I felt fear and sadness about Dame and Lunchtime and so many other more vital things, and that energy wanted an outlet, and that outlet was a stranger who I deemed immoral. In the right time, in the right energy, in face of the right wrongdoing, flipping tables can be Christ-like. I knew my inner motives, though, and they weren’t all Of Christ. So I followed a lesson I learned in the Bible, and practice through online gaming, and I prayed for my enemy.
The following Monday, Lana and I went back to Starbucks so she could fuel up before the final round at Lunchtime. I felt solemn and purposeful that day, wanting to be in the flow and soak up every moment of my last throws through the course. I ordered from my phone as we walked to the shopping center, and I felt some nerves returning to the parking lot, wondering if I’d cross paths with Standard Business Guy again.
The lot was mostly empty this time and we sat down at the table in front of Starbs, and Lana took out a book to read, and I looked at the blue Chevy Blazer parked in front of me, broken-in, the hood paint peeling. Then I noticed a man on the passenger side behind the open driver door. He was a little younger than me, dressed scruffy, with long hair and a beard. I don’t mean scruffy like destitute, but like a blue-collar contractor stretched thin. We gave each other the friendly nod of men of relative age. Then I had the sense he was struggling.
“How’s it going?” I asked, a little wary.
“I’m alright, man. Just trying to get this patch on.”
“Can I help?”
He paused for a second, then nodded.
“Yeah, sure! Please!”
I stood up and walked to him. The scruffy guy’s shirt was up over one shoulder.
“Thanks a lot, man. This is lidocaine, and it’s real sticky on the one side,” he explained, and handed me the patch gingerly. I collected the edges with my fingertips because I knew these types of patches, had placed similar ones on Mindy.
“I need it right about here,” he said, pointing to a spot near his trapezius and I thought about how the same muscle was wounded in me, only on the other side, and I thought about the atypicality of pressing anesthetics onto a stranger in a strip mall parking lot, but how glad I felt to do so, to recall the echoes of a sacred act. I also wondered if the patch, like Mindy’s, held a much stronger painkiller than lidocaine. That didn’t matter. I set the patch against his skin.
Then I felt I should pray for the man, and I wondered if I could be part of his healing, and that’s what I asked God. I pressed, and flattened out the patch against his back, smoothing it down from one edge to the other, and I felt a peace and connection to the man—and to the Man he sort of resembled—and I would call what I felt the Fruit of Gentleness, and I was grateful. I held my hand, pressing, for a heartbeat longer than necessary.
“Thank you so much, man. Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome!” I replied. Maybe I asked his name and shook his hand after that, but I’m not sure. I stepped away, still grateful, but also a little awkward, and I went to sit down across from Lana at the table, and when I looked back, the man was looking my way and smiling.
“Not a lot of guys would’ve done that,” he said.
“Well, I would! And I’m glad to help.”
I felt silly at that last line, like I was taking credit when that moment, for me, was intrinsically tied with God’s presence and timing. I wanted him to understand the context, to know how I felt last time I was in that lot, that to help my neighbor was the opposite. I wanted him to know God used him to heal me also.
I think he knew, though, or sensed, at least partially, our sharing of Goodness in a world craving more.
He backed out his Blazer, and gave a thumbs up and a happy beep before driving away. That’s when Joe, the kind barista, brought out a warm bacon and gouda on ciabatta wrapped in green and white foil paper, and a strawberry-acai refresher with ice rattling, which Lana ate and drank at the table while I jotted down what’d happened. Then a silver Saturn Sky pulled up and the driver was a Boomer wearing a golf hat, but he parked legally and gave us a friendly wave, and had a dog in the back seat panting happily, and when breakfast was finished, we headed out to Lunchtime for the final round.
The term “handicapped” is considered offensive by many disabled persons, and yet it’s a word I used in this situation. Please factor that hypocrisy into the self-righteousness of my actions from here on out.
I'm glad I saw this. I'm wrapping up a transportation degree and it's a nutty to realize that studying the mashup of needs and attitudes around street/off-street parking gives me a capacity for empathy (for select groups) ...and a SUPERSIZED capacity to judge people's transport behavior, especially "select groups."
I have become vigilante crosswalk policer.
I've pulled my bike over after seeing a visually impaired person walk up to the pushbutton to activate the signalized crosswalk. I wait for it, and then yell-blurt "HE'S BLIND YOU ASSHOLE!!" at the BMW that speeds ahead of the white walking stick. Then I realize that the bmw owner probably didn't hear it, the pedestrian definitely did, and I bike away wondering how my outburst made him feel...
Very transparent, and I identify with you, and confess my readiness to judge people base on the kind of cars they drive.