"I'm old, too, but I am not like THAT son-of-a-bitch!"

I have always known parking lots are the most hazardous places in the city.  Abductions, rapes, infidelity sex, car wrecks, murders,   marital fights, sleep-overs, thefts, child handovers between ex-spouses, skateboard races, little birds searching for crumbs, big birds screeching meanly for the same crumbs, girlfriends meeting for urgent secret gossip, drug deals, child abuse...all those things and more happen in parking lots.
There is parking lot after parking lot after parking lot scattered throughout the city.  You drive by: it looks calm.  Little do you realize what activities are taking place there!

The closest I ever came to throttling a child was in a parking lot!  No joke.  Eighteen years raising Milo taught me nothing.  When a "push comes to a shove", no skills. I was ready to throttle a grandchild!  Only the thought that there might be camera coverage around the parking lot stayed my hand.  I did not want to be on the evening news.

We are all being recorded constantly.  If you didn't pick that information up from the Bible, or the "all seeing eye" cleverly placed on buildings and dollar bills, or from noticing the cameras above the Green-Yellow-Red lights, surely you watch the news enough to know about all those smart-phones with their video capability to capture even your conversation!
Even my cheap little tracfone can photograph you without your permission or without your knowledge.

So last week I was in a parking lot in my car thinking about our recent class on WHEN TO GIVE UP YOUR DRIVER'S LICENSE. I hadn't exited from my car before I spied a man in trouble.  I thought, That old man needs help!....when I should have thought, That man is ill and needs help!

He was stumbling to his truck, having great difficulty.
 
I would have helped him but I was in the middle of a crisis myself.  I was rearranging my blouse.  I had spilled my diet coke float (now THERE'S an oxymoron!) on the front of my blouse.  I had taken off my little jacket and taken my arms out of my blouse and was trying to whisk it around backwards when I saw the ill man.

(I was on the lookout for cops and spies since I don't think you're allowed to change clothes in public and since my car does not have tinted windows (oh, the woes of the poor), I was more or less on display in public.)

By the time I got my back-wards but "clean" blouse adjusted, my jacket back on, my earrings and hair readjusted, the  ill old man had managed to climb into the cab of his very dented up brown truck and had backed into a car, busting out its lights, narrowly missed another car and was slowly maneuvering out of the lot.  He got away.
     I got out of my car since I was a witness (and now dressed decently).  I found there was a second witness, a man who was extremely upset.

     "He drove off!  That bastard!" shouted the male witness.

     Still not up to professional nursing speed, I said, "I don't think he even knew he hit that car.  He is old and sick."  (I can't believe I threw in "old", and I bet you are disappointed in me.  Walk the talk, Riverwatch!)

     "Old!!??  I'm old, too, but I am not like THAT son-of-a-bitch!  I'm 90 and I don't go around acting like a jackass!  I have 4 stents in my heart!  That bastard needs hit in the head with a two by four and if I had one, I would do it!"
     By then the store manager had come out to the parking lot.
 I said, "He's sick."
     And I wasn't just talking about the hit and "run" guy.

     I slunk away, unwilling to be a witness even though I was well dressed.

     So ......remember:  giving up a drivers license is mostly voluntary in a lot of states.  A cop cannot take it.  The DMV can take it, especially if a doc reports a person's diagnosis and behavior....but doctors do not like being cops. Not much reporting takes place.
     Here is my advice to us all:  be careful.
     We may get hit by a truck or a two by four.....by licensed diseased drivers!  In a parking lot!

     In the meantime, have yourself a yummy diet coke float........  while you are not driving...unless you do NOT wear bifocals and can still multi-task!....in which case, pick up that cell phone, too.  I bet you can steer with your elbows!

Remember to always carry a change of clothes.  (That is what a concerned friend said to me one messy day....and it is good advice.)  Remember 100 years ago when our moms told us to wear clean underwear in case we were in a car wreck?  Now that some of us are wrecks, living-breathing-wrecks, it is not the undies thing anymore.
Dang it, it is the whole ensemble thing we have to worry about!
For goodness sakes, get your car windows tinted!
If you are rich and already have tinted windows, donate funds to the Window Tinting for Seniors foundation.

Leave the two by four at home,
Riverwatch