…or you are part of the problem. I return to the City, in car with two dogs and have decided I will park in front of my apartment building for the time it takes to unload my luggage [and of course plants], before driving off to return car and dogs to owner. I pull up in front of building and a truck with driver is sitting where I wish to park. When asked if he is leaving, being Mexican, not Turkish, his up and down head movement means yes. He drives away, I pull up and back in. There is Ram-Dodge pickup parked behind me with a big fat orange parking ticket under his window wiper. He is going no where for a while as that is his ‘ticket-to-ride’ as it were. I back up close to his bumper, with just enough space to walk between the two vehicles because I must purchase a parking chit from the machine behind the car on the sidewalk. I have never looked to see what they cost. $3.50 an hour limit 2 hours. I purchase one dollar’s worth of time. I return to the car, get in, put chit on dashboard and pull car forward because the car has a hatchback trunk which will not open parked so closely. While doing this, I notice a late-40’s-+aged woman at an outside restaurant table about 25 feet away intently watching me. The thought passes through my head that she is going to offer to help, as I unload in two trips the contents of the trunk to my front door. My third trip back to the trunk I shut it, get back in the car start the car, and back the car to where originally parked, with minute space between the two vehicles. Had already noted the parking ticket, and seen that his truck bed was about two feet from the grill of the van behind him. I once again must exit the driver’s side, with my purse, water bottle, and maps, open the back door, harness up the two barking dogs get them off the car seat without them springing into the oncoming traffic and walk around the car either front or back to reach my front door. None of the above occurs with any sort of grace. As I am walking around the front of the car, hands full of the above, leashes included, the lady calls to me. Me, thinking she is going to say something nice, looks at her, smiling. She says something again. This time I hear ‘You can’t park like that, the truck behind you can’t get out!” I am flabbergasted. I look at her, I look at the truck, having made all the calculations already that 1. he isn’t going anywhere! and 2. he can get out with the room behind him. I look back at her. “Yes, he can!” I state. And she begins to argue. [Shoot me now!] I cut her off “If you see him getting into his cab, ask him to honk, I’m just going to be a few minutes!’ ‘Oh, I’m not going to be here,” she says. “I’m leaving.” I[Shoot her now!]. The nerve, to mettle in my business, being part of the problem, not the solution. It was only when I returned 15 minutes later and saw she was indeed gone, that I could sling an ‘epitaph’ in her direction.