Chagrin A La Mode

Wow.

I fell off a really high horse today.

And I still have the wind knocked out of me from hitting the ground so incredibly hard.

But it was pretty funny, so here we go...

Last Sunday, we met my dad and his wife at a restaurant for dinner. When we pulled into the parking lot, I noticed that my dad's car was parked in a handicapped spot.

"Hmmm...that's weird," I thought. "I didn't know they had a handicapped placard."

My step mom had knee surgery about a year ago, so I figured that it was because of that, but as I walked past their car, I saw that there was no

on their license plate nor hanging from their rear view mirror.

Hmmmm...

I suddenly had a few flashbacks, one of which I will share with you.

(You see, you have to understand something about my dad. He's the kind of person who likes to 'get away' with things. I'm not talking criminal activity. I'm just saying that as long as I can remember, my dad has lived by the philosophy, "If you don't know it's forbidden, assume it's not... and even if you know it is forbidden, just feign innocence and see if you can get away with it... and if it's stupid that it's forbidden, just do it anyway." Although this was lived out in front of me consistently, I did not grow up to embrace this ideology for myself. In fact, I feel a little guilty every time I sneak candy into the movie theater or take a sip of Jeff's drink at Subway.)

Okay, back to the flashback...

When I was about 5, we went to Disneyland. For some reason, my parents wanted to watch the Electrical Light Parade. (Is that still going on there? Perhaps the invention of electricity is no longer novel enough to warrant a parade in its honor.) Anyway, of course there was no where left to stand because so many other Disney patrons were lined up on Main Street to gawk at all the dancing lit-up characters, so my dad devised a plan.

We got in line for some ride that was along the parade route and just kept letting people (people who actually wanted to go on the ride) pass us. That way we had a great view of all the happenings.

Well, Disneyland is crawling with plain clothes employees who blend in with the crowds and make sure that everything is running smoothly, so it didn't take long before our minor rebellion was noticed. Some lady informed us we would have to move with the line or get out of it. My dad refused. This apparently elevated us to a higher threat level (orange, perhaps) and some other lady appeared. (She had a walkie talkie so she was truly official.) She told us to move on or move out.

I remember my dad staring ahead blankly at the parade in progress (a twenty foot high blue fairy in an illuminated gown like this



was passing by) and obstinately informing her that she'd have to get somebody to move us. She promised she would and stalked off, barking into her walkie talkie.

In my little child's mind, I thought that a police car with flashing lights was going to pull up any second and haul us all off to jail. Seriously, I felt so sick with worry that I'm surprised I didn't hurl all over the happiest pavement on earth.

I started begging my dad to just get us out of there, insisting that I didn't care about the parade.

Well, I don't exactly recall how that all ended. I have no recollection of being hand cuffed or even tossed out of the park, but one thing I learned that night was that sometimes my dad was a rebel...

...with a very lame cause.

Fast forward to last Sunday...so I went into the restaurant thinking, "Is he just trying to see if he can get away with it? What if a genuinely handicapped person needs that spot?"

All of Monday it gnawed at me and by Tuesday I made the decision to address it.

My dad is not the type of person who is talked into anything he doesn't want to do nor someone who is talked out of anything he does want to do, so I felt I needed to choose my words very carefully. I wanted to prove my case irrefutably and concisely so I planned everything out, almost word for word. (I even wrote some prompts on the back of my grocery shopping list so that I wouldn't forget to include anything in my passionate plea for reason.)

After practicing my speech a couple of times (no, not in front of the mirror), I got him on the phone. Our conversation went something like this:

Me--"Dad, I need to talk to you about something and it might be difficult."

Him--*deep sigh* "Alright, let me adjust my chair so I don't fall over." *shuffle, scoot* "Okay, my elbows are firmly planted on my desk and I'm anxious to hear what you have to say." (I wish you all knew my dad so you could appreciate the subdued humor with which all of this was said.)

Me--"You did something on Sunday that really bothered me.*

Him--"Oh? Tell me what it was."

Me--*furiously scanning my list while taking a deep breath* "When someone who has two perfectly healthy legs parks their car in a spot designated for someone who does not, it embarrasses his wife and sets a bad example for his grand kids. It is illegal and it makes him look foolish, arrogant and inconsiderate. You..."

Him--"Wait, wait. I'm still listening, but I think I should tell you something that might change everything you're thinking...It's not illegal."

Me--*still convinced of the importance of my preaching* "What do you mean it's not illegal?"

Him--"Donna's knees are hurting her so the doctor got us a placard to hang on our rear view mirror."

Me--*my resolve begins to crumble* "Dad, I looked for a placard and didn't see one."

Him--*pausing thoughtfully for a moment* "Oh, that must have been the day that we came back to the car and saw that it had fallen onto the floorboard."

Yeah.

You can only imagine how incredibly stupid I felt.

There I was, thinking that I was going to school my dad in "considerate parking" skills and it turns out that he not only had every right to park there, but that he did so out of consideration for his poor wife.

Yeah.

I'm an idiot.


(Awesome illustration courtesy of Natalie Kocsis's website: www.natty.org)

To make a long story short, I began to apologize profusely for several moments and then I started to laugh harder than I have in a long time.

Not once did he shame me for being a presumptuous goody-goody nor even seem offended at my ill-founded disdain. Rather, he thanked me for being willing to talk to him about it because if he had done that then he would need to be chastised for it. He then complimented my "well thought out" speech and cracked jokes about how it's true that he is arrogant, inconsiderate, an embarrassment to his wife and a bad example to his grand kids, but at least he's not being all those things illegally.

*sigh*

Dad, thank you for dealing so graciously with a pious, ninny such as my self-righteous, imbecilic self.

It's very nice that when you have to eat humble pie, the person serving it to you includes a scoop of ice cream.