Well, that was fun.  I think that was funny.

I went out earlier and pulled into the local shops to pick up some things for dinner tonight only to find that the entire car park was full and the only two disabled car parks were both taken up by two vehicles neither of which are displaying the required Department of Transport parking permits to legally use those spaces.  Fighting down the urge to key the inconsiderate bastards, this then meant I had to park underneath the building and go up a long flight of stairs to get to the shops.

Now, I have been issued with a Dept of Transport Parking Permit because, well, I’m a fucking chronic pain sufferer who has a lot of difficult walking without exacerbating my pain problems.  I also have trouble standing up for more than five minutes which has the rather unfortunate consequence of causing me to hold my breath against the pain, go red in the face and feel like I am going to pass out.  My other major mobility impairment relates to traversing flights of stairs or inclined ground… this literally makes me throw up!

Sometimes into the nearest garden, sometimes into a gutter, and on several occasions, empty cardboard boxes at Bunnings (don’t ask).  This particular problem stems from many years of cyclical spasming pain which has in turn caused maladaptive muscular behaviour and has forced a bony spur in my cervical spine to protrude forwards in such a way that it drags along the back of my oesophagus, triggering a gag reflex and subsequently plenty of up chucking.  It’s not pleasant and I’ve learned to avoid stairs as much as possible over the last few years… because well, it’s kinda fucking inconvenient, not to mention embarrassing to be throwing up everywhere in public all the time!

The only time I use my Transport Disability Parking Permit is at Uni, because my old University campus was all up hill and down dale and impossible to traverse… and my new University campus is so huge I’d end up having to park miles away, and throwing up before every class is hardly optimal.  So, on the odd occasion in other public carparks where I am trying to avoid stairs, if I have no other choice, I will reluctantly use the marked mobility impaired parking spaces and clearly display my Transport Disability Parking Permit as required by law.

As I came out of the shops, I saw the offending driver and asked the woman as she was getting something out of her car if she had a Transport Disability Parking Permit to use the disability parking space where she had left her vehicle. The conversation went something like this:

‘Excuse me, do you have a Disability Parking Permit to be legally parked in that space, as you don’t appear to be displaying one.’
‘I didn’t even know it was a disabled parking space.’
‘Well, it is a space for people with mobility impairments and I just had to walk up a long flight of stairs because you are illegally utilizing the park.’
‘Well, I am leaving soon anyway and I didn’t know.’
‘Well, now you do.  So perhaps you could take more care in future.’

At which point the over coiffed, over made up, besuited, middle aged, mutton-dressed-up-as-lamb, car park hog went to walk off.  And as she did, I decided to take a photograph of her vehicle, you know… just for shits and Twittles, which gained the following reaction:

‘Are you fucking taking a photograph of my car?’
‘Why yes, yes I am.’ I said smiling sweetly.
‘You can’t take a photograph of my car, you fucking bitch!’
‘Well, actually yes… Yes, I can photograph your car.’
‘I’ll fucking photograph your car you arrogant bitch!’
‘Be my guest.  I’m not the one illegally parked. It’s right down the bottom of the flight of stairs which I had to traverse because you are parked in the disabled parking space.’

At which point she said the worst possible thing you can say to someone with a disability of any kind:
‘Look at you!  There’s fucking nothing wrong with you, you stupid lazy bitch!’ (Yeah, I have no idea why she was calling me names all of a sudden… I really hate that.  It just shows a lack of creativity and a decided lack of education.  Not to mention it totally ruins my natural inclination to argue with someone as I immediately peg them as someone with no common sense, no common decency, no useful discourse and a potentially limited ability to comprehend anyone I might say should I be foolish enough to use words of more than three syllables… meh).

I sighed in a resigned and somewhat exasperated manner and said ‘Just because you can’t see someone’s pain, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’  And it was at this point that I uncharacteristically chose to disengage from the conversation because I didn’t have the energy for fighting with some inconsiderate, chicken fucking moron tonight (maybe tomorrow night?  Tonight however, I was just too damn exhausted from my torturous Latin exam today).  But unfortunately for the lady with the cheap crushed suit and the butt ugly shoes… it was too late.

Mr K had heard my conversation with this woman and knew it was a losing battle with a selfish, entitled priss, but at hearing her last statement, he literally flew into a rage, which started with something like, ‘How dare you speak to my wife that way you Fucking. Arrogant. Ignorant woman!?’.  No energy for this!  I started to walk away about now (down the problematic stairs in question) while Mr K and this woman traded barbed accusations and not even remotely veiled insults.  At some point, the stupid bint attempted to impersonate a Qld Police Officer in an effort to intimidate him.  His response of course was to demand to see her ID and inform her that, if she was a police officer, she should know better than to break the law by parking illegally.  Not surprisingly the haggard looking granny/business woman wannabe backed down and oddly enough, did not offer to show Mr K her identification.  They swore at each other a bit more and the woman looked equal parts selfish, arrogant and ridiculous in front of a small crowd outside the shops before they retreated into respective dark clouds of confrontational angst.

By the time this was over, I was nearly back to my car and thinking… why are people such complete and utter arse holes?  I mean seriously?  Name calling and swearing at total strangers?  Can’t we be better than this?  But, I guess if you are the sort of person who is prepared to take up a car park that might be needed by someone with a genuine medical need to be in closer proximity to their destination, then yes… you probably feel that childish name calling and excessive and unnecessary use of profanity in public is entirely appropriate.

Lady, I hope that karma comes and bites you in the arse big time… preferably in the form of a dirty big truck with a huge fuck-off bullbar running up the arse of your gold Toyota Camry Qld licence plate number 102-KLG.  🙂   Have a nice weekend!

There’s this weird phenomena that most of us buy into when it comes to being on the road and driving around in our cars… Psychologist/psychiatrist types call it the ‘delusion of safety’ and it is effectively a self protection mechanism the brain employs in order to not overwhelm itself with the constant stimulus of impending danger.  It’s basically a un-communicated collective delusion whereby we will go about our respective days, doing our regular every day things and, assuming that it is perfectly safe to do so… because to assume otherwise is fucking exhausting!

Well… I don’t have it.  I dont share everyone else’s delusion of safety.  And I especially don’t buy into the delusion that we are safe when it comes to getting into cars, being on the road and engaging any driving related activities.  Every time I get in my car I feel just a little bit anxious and edgy that something dreadful could happen.  All it takes is one idiot changing lanes without checking or someone who doesn’t notice the people in front of them are stopping and it could change your life forever.  In fact, the feeling that ‘bad things’ could, and frequently do, happen has become so persistent and pervasive in my mind, that you could say I’ve become convinced that at some point, this ridiculous situation of repeated shit luck in cars is going to resolve itself, very likely through my untimely death – to the ungodly sound of screeching brakes, the smell of burning rubber and the gut wrenching crunch of tortured twisting metal!  For several years now, I’ve been pretty confident that I was supposed to have died in one of those early accidents and someone has been trying to finish the job off proper-like, ever since!

Anyway, the psychs say I have a ‘trafficphobia’ as an unsurprising result of the four, pretty traumatic, motor vehicle accidents in my past.  Now, I will argue with you until the goddamn cows come home, that it isn’t a fucking phobia at all – a phobia being defined as ‘an irrational fear’.  I mean, you tell me… if you experience a fear reaction as a result of a real and present danger based on first hand experience then that can hardly be called bloody irrational now, can it?  But trafficphobia is what they tend to call it nonetheless.

Except when the moderate disquiet becomes extreme panic or overwhelming anxiety… and then they call that PTSD.  Fine… They can label it whatever they want.  But the nuts and guts of it is this – getting into a car and driving anywhere has a tendency to bring out my worse, as I believe it is an inherently unsafe thing to do.  Getting in the passenger seat and leaving someone else in control of the motor vehicle jus about doubles that sense of impending doom once you add my obsessive personality traits to the mix and dump with a steaming pile of ‘out of control’ to the top of it.   And in fact, driving it is the most dangerous thing we do on a day to day basis, and no one seems to fucking notice!  But once that curtain is lifted and you become aware of just how crazy arse dangerous a seemingly innocuous drive home from work can be… well, that shit just can’t be unseen.

Since Nov 2007, the date of my last major car accident, every near miss, every plonker who thinks they can just make it before the red light, every wanker who has headphones on and can’t hear what’s going on around them, every complete fucktard using their mobile phone while driving, every moron not paying attention to where they are going, every P Plater driving over the speed limit thinking they’re invincible, every uncovered or awkwardly balanced load, every 4WDer up near the school who can’t reverse their monster truck, every granny who can’t stay in their own damn lane, every idiot who seems incapable of operating an indicator and every vehicular middle age crisis sports car loving self indulgent arsehole who thinks he owns the entire road, has reminded me of just how precarious the entire driving thing is!  With these non-contact every day reminders, I have to say, I really, really don’t need anymore reminders thank you very much!

So to the person who nudged into the back of my car and crushed in my rear bumper yesterday afternoon, and who then promptly drove around me and fucked off while I pulled over in a state of rising panic… I’d like to say fuck you and the white corolla thing you rode in on!  I don’t know where someone gets off hitting someone in their car and then failing to stop and exchange details.  I have no idea where someone finds the gall to run into someone in their car and not even bother to check if that person is ok?  What sort of psycho fucking does that?  Just runs into someone and then buggers off?!?  🙁

I then spent the bulk of the day wondering how the hell I am going to face getting back in my car, because it’s not like I was doing so great with it before this jerk off ruined the tenuous grip on the Safety Delusion that I was attempting to claw back into my life.  I’d seriously rather not think about it.  I’d rather be like everyone else and not be constantly hypervigilant for the next chicken fucking moron who is going to come along and attempt to kill me in a car!

But mostly two things have been running through my head since this happened…

1) I have THE most shit luck in cars of anyone I know!  I’ve never had an ‘at fault’ accident, yet have been in four accidents that have been seen all vehicles written off.  I have never damaged my cars, yet between the last two vehicles I have owned, they’ve been in the shop about eight times for repairs that were not of my doing.

And 2) My next car is going to be a goddamn armour plated, Lenvo BearCat!  Complete with monstrous bullbar and huge stonking towball for the radiators of anyone coming from behind. And then I am going to run every basterd who has the audacity to come anywhere near me, clear off the fucking road!  🙁