Being somewhat distracted this evening as I was heading out for a yummy Taco Tuesday, I did not notice the note that was in my windshield until I was nearly at dinner. When I arrived, I picked up the note and saw that the person who wrote it had sought to remain anonymous but the note clearly deserved a reply. My first instincts were to fire off a rather sarcastic response to the note, but after reading a book and reflecting a bit I felt in a much calmer mood. After all, I am no stranger to writing notes and letters, most of which do not receive a particularly glorious response [1], and I know that if someone is driven to write a note, that there is likely some irritation involved. In fact, it is quite possible that this has been building for a while. The note read as follows, unedited except for changing the all caps in the note to a a less irate style: “Hi! I hope you’re having a good day! –Please! Please! Stop parking so close to my vehicle. It makes it difficult to get out or in my vehicle. You most always park crooked next to me. Thanks!”
In reflecting upon this letter, some context is perhaps useful. The note itself is written on a small gray piece of paper with the bottom right corner of the note cut out and the text written in dark blue pen ink. The author is apparently not a very articulate person but there are few grammatical mistakes even if the vocabulary is a bit basic and the all caps is really annoying. The author of course, did not realize that reading material in all caps is as much an irritation to me as my crooked parking is to him or her. Be that as it may, as far as irritated notes go it is a remarkably polite one. A perusal of my own notes and writings when irritated will suggest that I am usually not the most gracious person when I sit down to write someone this sort of letter. So, all of this counts in favor of the author in terms of being a decent sort of human being who deserves to have their complaint treated in a decent sort of manner.
Being a creature of habit, as most people are, I tend to park as close as I can to the entrance along the row of my parking lot that leads directly to the exit from the parking lot to Compton Drive. As this is a very convenient place to park, it is likely the person who parks next to me is of the same mindset. Most of the time I park within a few parking spaces among the spaces that face the building where I work and an open green space where people sometimes come to fly remote controlled airplanes. Since at present I arrive and depart towards the later end most days, there are not many open spaces here when I do get to parking, and most of the time I am parked next to a fairly large vehicle (presumably the complainant) who parks very close to the line of his own space and probably would prefer for the spot to his left, where I usually park, to remain open. Since I leave late, though, I tend not to be particularly concerned about such matters since most of the spaces are empty when I leave anyway, even when I leave earliest on Fridays before sunset.
That is the context. Since the person did not leave a name and since I do not care to play a game of anonymous note passing, I must now think of what I am to do about this irksome situation. It would, of course, be easiest for one of us to park somewhere else. Between my crooked parking and the large amount of space taken up by the other vehicle, neither of which is something that is going to change, it is clear that parking next to each other is bothersome at least for one person. Since the other person comes in earlier, they have a larger choice of spots which to take, but likely they value convenience as much as I do, and so they don’t park in a place with plenty of space around so that they aren’t next to anyone. I’ll have to ponder this a bit, to be sure.
[1] See, for example:
While You Were Away, Or, An Open Letter To My Former Desk Neighbor
Edge Induced Cohesion 
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