Sunday, June 11, 2006

Saga of Apartment Living: Part 462

It's finally happened: Stacey has had enough.

Oh yes, folks. The saving starts NOW - no more Starbucks (gasp!), no more name-brand grocery items (unless the store brand is inedible), and no more going out - not until I have a reasonable amount of money built up in my "I'm going to buy a house if it kills me" savings account.

The straw that broke the camel's back happened this afternoon, and I am still reeling from the shock of my experience.

Here's the short version of my very long and scary encounter with an irate man in my apartment complex's parking lot this afternoon:

I was driving my car behind the scary man's car heading toward several parking spaces. It appeared to me that he had turned left down another aisle, so I turned into a parking space. A few seconds later, he laid on his horn, whipped into a fire lane beside my car (nearly hitting my car), jumped out of his vehicle and started grabbing for my passenger-side car door to get in. I immediately jumped out of my car - afraid he was going to attack me because every word in the book was coming out of this man's mouth - and it was all directed at me. I was scared to death and absolutely confused.

Apparently, I had "stolen" his parking spot. Bear in mind, we don't have assigned parking spaces where I live, but he said that he was turning into the spot I pulled into when I zipped in front of him - which is not at all what happened!

From what I can gather, he must have been swinging WAY out to turn into the space, making it appear that he was turning away from me. At any rate, he was positive that I had done this on purpose - and that apparently qualified him to call me an "inbred, redneck, mother-f'ing b**** who doesn't deserve to be on the planet."

It got worse from there. In fact, it was so loud and hateful that two of my neighbors came out of their apartment to see what all the yelling was about. All I could do was stand there and say I was sorry (even though I still wasn't quite sure what I was apologizing about).

Finally, I got back into my car when I realized he wanted that space, and pulled into another slot. When I got back out of my car, he was still screaming at me - with his wife and toddler in the car! I am still amazed that a person could have that much anger inside of them - and to vent it over a parking space mix-up is especially disconcerting.

Needless to say, I will be speaking to my landlord tomorrow morning - and thank goodness I have several witnesses who say they are more than willing to talk to my landlord about what they saw.

The most shocking thing about this was that the man looked like your All-American dad. He was well-groomed, drove a nice car and had a very cute little boy. I hope to goodness he doesn't treat his wife and child this way.

It's frightening to think what is living right next door.