I’m all for allowing teenagers to drive; after all, I was a teenager once, and while the town I grew up in was small enough that having my own car wasn’t as necessary as it would be if I lived in Scottsdale, AZ, I remember fondly how important it was to me to be able to get around.What I am against is giving teenagers permission to repeatedly drive and park badly, and one teenager in particular needs to learn what it means to do those things: the son of my next door neighbor.
The first time I had to let my neighbor know that his son wasn’t qualified to drive was at 4:45 am on a weekday morning when I tried to back out of my garage to go to the gym. Thankfully, my brake lights illuminated his car enough before I pulled out of my garage and ran right into his car. Since my neighbor recently moved from Texas and all the family’s cars had a Texas safety inspection sticker in their windows, I knew whose car it belonged to, so I rang my neighbor’s doorbell. Finally, the father of the family came to the door. I asked him if the car parked behind my garage belonged to him and told him that it was parked in my space, preventing me from leaving. He said yes, disappeared inside, and came back with a set of keys and moved the car. He apologized for his son, saying he didn’t think anyone lived in my apartment. I assured him that I have been living in that apartment for almost three years, far longer than they had been living in their place.
As the days passed, I found no hindrance to getting out of my garage, but then, one day, I found my neighbor’s son parking in such a way behind his father’s car that I had to pull forward and back up more than four times just to keep from hitting his car; not only was it dangerously parked, it was illegally parked, too. Every time this happened, I left a message with my apartment complex management, detailing the issue. However, nothing changed, and the boy kept parking his car badly.
I finally got fed up when I noticed how ineptly his parking was performed for the last time. As detailed in the above picture, his car was well in front of my garage, so I left a note on the car, called the police department, and left another message with my apartment complex management (it was one of the few times in my life when my choice of language was rife with not-so-socially-acceptable Anglo-Saxon terms). Finally, I got a response that this poor behavior would not be tolerated. I did get out of my garage, but thankfully, I wasn’t late to my appointment that morning.
The next time it happens (it hasn’t now for four months, thankfully), I’m calling a tow truck.
