The NERVE

The ParkingSpaceStealer has reared her self-centered head again. I went out to my LSUV yesterday, and found a ratty envelope stuffed under my driver's side wiper blade. Written on it was: Parking Ticket. Citizen's Complaint: What are you thinkin'? OK, maybe that's not exact. It was not written in stone, but on a ratty envelope. I should have known. My psychic abilities must be on the fritz. You see, there was some foreshadowing which I ignored.

Precisely, the appearance of the ParkingSpaceStealer outside my classroom door after 3rd lunch shift, brandishing a black-handled, serrated knife near my throatal area. "Why did you park in my spot?" she demanded. So I OH SO POLITELY explained, "Oh, you mean the spot that was MINE for the 7 years before you came here? I didn't even think about it. I just wanted to be on level ground instead of on that slippery slope, what with the weather this morning. Because if I started out there after school, and slipped, I would go sailing down the blacktop mound until I came to rest in the frozen-over lake." She countered with, "Well, if that was your parking space, how come you never said anything?" To which I replied, "I did. But not to you. You should have sensed it. Don't you have any psychic ability? Perhaps you should have thought when you pulled in there at 7:00 a.m. on the first day of school 3 years ago, into the space by the door at the building in which you are not even scheduled until 11:00, 'I wonder if any of the hardworking teachers who have been here for years use this spot as their unofficial parking space.'" THE VERY NERVE of that woman! It's not all about her, now is it?

So I had to write her a note for her van windshield today:

Citizen's Automobile Restraining Order.

Please keep 300 yards away from my large SUV. It was here long before you were.

If you want to settle this in an adult manner, I will meet you at ThatPlaceNamedInTheLetterAllTheTravelersGotInTroubleFor at the time of your choosing. (Once I find out where that place is.)

P.S. I am not afraid of your black-handled, serrated, grapefruit knife. Brandish it all you want.

But that was not enough. In the border of the note, which I wrote on a clean piece of paper, not a ratty envelope, because that's how I roll, I added more commentary. She had to turn that paper around in a circle three times to read all that was in the margins. It went a little something like this:

Some people really, really need to take an "It's Not All About Me" class, because then maybe they would know that there is no such thing as a designated parking space, even if you park there twice a day. In fact, a graduate of the "It's Not All About Me" class would have thought, on the very first day of work at a new school, "I wonder if I should park across the street or on the chat behind the school, because maybe the teachers who have been working in this building for the last 5 years have developed their very own parking code, a parking pecking order, perhaps, which I will upset if I go parking willy-nilly, wherever I please, and expect them to adapt to the parking lot world according to ME." And as a graduate of the "It's Not All About Me" course, you would have a diploma to hang on your classroom wall, which might impress some people, which would raise your self-esteem, so you would not find it necessary to roam the halls with a serrated, black-handled grapefruit knife.

Do you think that will get the point across? Or should I take my own knife tomorrow?

Now, to the extortion boys...I showed the the ransom note that I found shoved under my door this morning. The ransom note that I wrote myself and shoved under my own door. They both played dumb. "I did not write that. Really." And the other said, "Why would you think I wrote it?" Hmm...because YOU are the one who asked for a 20 oz. soda in return for the property that rightfully belongs to ME. I showed it to another class, the one with the other kid who has been named. He still swears that my first suspect has the hall pass. He liked the ransom note, though. He said, "What is he, The Riddler?"

I'm trying to get a photo of the purloined pass for tomorrow's note. We'll see. I've got too many pranks in the fire. And then there's that pesky business of teaching 6 lessons per day, every day. Sweet Gummi Mary! I don't know how these school officials think I can get everything done with only 24 hours in a day!