Never come between a Cantabridgian and her parking spot

Okay, so I admit that I was a little over the top. Maybe I shouldn’t have threatened to damage his car. But he shouldn’t have tried to sneak into that sweet spot right in front of the restaurant I’ve circled many times before, as I sat there patiently with my fucking blinker on, waiting for the current occupants of the spot to leave.

He had New Hampshire plates. In New Hampshire, at the Home Depot, it’s not a huge deal if Mrs. Neidermeier pulls into that spot before you do. You might have to walk a few extra minutes to get your lumber, or your drain-o, or whatever. But this is not New Hampshire, buddy. This is Cambridge — on a Friday night. If you don’t find a parking spot, you may find yourself circling, circling, circling in traffic limbo forever. There’s a lot of things you can get away with in Boston. You can sleep with whomever you want. You can flip people off, you can cut them off, you can wear T-shirts with obscenities on them, you can use Jesus or Mohammed as justification for all sorts of hatred and bigotry. You can intellectualize yourself into all kinds of trouble. But you do NOT fuck with people’s parking spots. Not if you like your paint job, you windows, or your tires. You just don’t do it.

So I backed into the spot — halfway, because there was a suburban minivan pulled into the other half of the spot. Traffic swirled around us on Cambridge Street. I stepped out of my car. I told him to move.

“What are you gonna go do if I don’t?” he said.

And that’s when things got ugly.

Looking back, I have to say that I really don’t regret a single bit of the confrontation. That bald-headed, arrogant, macho little motherfucker is going to think twice before he decides to tangle with another “stupid cunt” from the city. He shouldn’t have called me a cunt. If he hadn’t uttered that phrase with all the derision and nastiness it implied, I might not have tried to close the door to his minivan while his leg was in the way.

In the end, I called the police and had them mediate for us. It’s a good thing, too, because we came awfully close to real fisticuffs. There was real fear in his eyes. Big Irish dyke from Boston — who knows how many martial arts classes she’s been to? And I would have felt awfully stupid coming up before a judge on assault charges over a parking spot.

The good news?

I got the spot. Looks like my taxes are paying for something after all.