A story about patience and civility:
While I was living in Bedford, England, about a million years ago, I used to take the train to London just about every chance I got and wander around because, you know, cool! Why wouldn’t I, right? I mean, when was I ever going to get the chance to go to London again? So that’s what I did. And it was dead simple because a major train line ran through Bedford, and the train station was about a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment.
But one day I took the train from Hitchin instead. I don’t remember why. Maybe I missed the last train of the morning commuter rush and I didn’t want to wait for the next one. In any case, I hopped into my little Datsun coupe and drove down to Hitchin, parked in the lot, rode the train down and spent all day wandering in and out of record stores, second-hand clothing shops, probably watched a movie, I don’t know what all. I didn’t come back until very late in the evening, well after dark.
One of the tricks my Datsun coupe could do that made me very proud was get into parking spots so tight that watching me do it would make your eyes cross. The parking lot at the Hitchin train station was full of cars but I’d managed to find one little sliver of space left in a corner and very smugly wedged my Datsun into it. As I was walking back to my car late that evening I noticed what appeared to be a young lady in a business suit sitting on the hood of my car, and I was going to be very cross with her until I got close enough to realize that she was sitting on the hood to her car, which was parked into the corner by my car.
She didn’t tear into me, didn’t scream about how long she’d been waiting, didn’t say a single word until I unlocked the door of my car, whereupon she slid down off the hood of her car and, before turning away, asked me ever so politely, “In future, would you mind not parking so close?”
“Sure,” I answered her, “sorry about that.”
“’S all right,” she said, got into her car, and waited for me to back out of her way. I waited until she was well down the road before I put my car in drive.
This Is Drivel 