ga-rage

i don't park in front of my garage.

under terms of the association, each of us has three legal parking places: the driveway, the garage, and the spot in front of the garage. each of us, if we exceed the three legal parking places assigned to us, may park in the big parking lots at either end of the complex.

if i'm not parked in the driveway, i'm parked IN the garage, not in front of it. since moving the car in and out of the garage or even loading bikes and boats and such takes much less time than the stationary activity of being parked on that little bit of real estate, it appears my neighbors are sometimes confused as to whether or not i'm using that little piece of ground.

even if i'm NOT using that little territory, though, it's still MINE.

more than a few times recently, however, my neighbors have either been parked directly in front of my garage or parked so carelessly in their spaces as to take up enough of mine to make the actual passage of my car in or out of the garage impossible.

just because it looks like i'm not using the space most of the time doesn't mean i don't need it. i do not care if you have more than three vehicles and have exceeded your allotted parking, nor do i care if you have so much stuff that your garage is filled with it. you can walk to the parking lot.

...which is, by the way, very near my garage.

anyway, yesterday morning when i wanted to use my garage one of my neighbors was parked directly in front of it. when i came home last night to find him still parked there, i did the only thing i knew how to do: i parked him in.

yes, i did.

and when he came to apologize i was asleep. sick and asleep. and he was very nice. and he had been up all day and night at work. at a job for which he wears scrubs and carries shears and tape in his pockets.

so. i have asserted my territorial rights.

and i have been less kind than i might have been.

the sad thing is that i probably will not learn much from this.