The last Tuesday was that outside my local drug store something that I can not get out of my head. I recovering from back surgery, and though I don’t like to use my disabled placard, long walks are no longer an option. I’ve done all I can done, hung the tag, I’ve followed all the rules and done my best to stay respectful. But this time, my belief that people would change and my patience were things that were tested.
By the time I drove into the parking lot, both of the accessible spaces had been claimed. One car had a visible tag. The other—a gray SUV with no placard, no disabled plates, no excuse at all—was the other. I waited. I prayed that someone was being dropped off. I circled for ten minutes. Nothing.
I walked in slowly and trying not to wince. I asked the cashier at the counter if she knew who his SUV belonged to. Looking towards the smoothie shop next door, they pointed.
I went there and there was a young woman in gym clothes chatting and laughing with the barista. I approached her and asked her if the SUV was hers kindly. Her glance was up and down me, like I had just said a kind word about her yoga mat.
She rolled her eyes and said: “Wow.” “Some people are so entitled.”
‘That spot’s legally reserved,’ I replied pointing toward my placard. The problem is poorness not entitlement.”
Adopting an equally unconcerned attitude about the five minutes, she simply sipped her smoothie and muttered, ‘Five minutes.’ Calm down.”
Myself, I was too angry to say more and left. Under my windshield was a note when I returned to my car. I didn’t open it. I couldn’t. I left it on my kitchen counter where it took up residence like some kind of dare I was not ready to answer.
By Friday, curiosity won. I unfolded it. One line, sharp and smug:
“Whether you think rules make you better than others? You shouldn’t really be judging other people perhaps you should start looking at your own affairs.”
It didn’t just sting—it burned. Because not surprisingly, it was wrong. Accessible parking isn’t a superior rules thing. They’re about equity. About the freedom to live life unregulated, to not be required to come and ask, to argue.
I had turned that hurt into action.
I called my friend Darnell, head of a local accessibility awareness group that afternoon. I told him what happened. Already he was brainstorming a campaign of the parking fairness sort. With the name “Spot Check,” we now had something.
We got to work. Merchant partnerships, flyers, volunteer meetings, public workshops. It quickly spread into a movement in a matter of few short weeks. In one of life’s odd turns, something unexpected happened.
The same gleaming gray SUV slid into the lot of a grocery store outreach event near my apartment. Gym Clothes Lady emerged, peering out over the bags, hands juggling, on the phone. She saw me. Our eyes met.
She looked away. Then she looked back. Surprisingly, she walked over.
“Hey,” she said quietly. “Uh, I remember you.”
I replied, ‘We know too’. “How’s the smoothie business?”
She gave a half-smile. “I just wanted to say… I’m sorry. For the other day. For the note.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Go on.”
She sighed. “I was rude. Defensive. After I told my dad, he gave me a serious talk: my dad, he has MS and uses a wheelchair. Something about the fact I sounded entitled, and… a little bit of a jerk.”
“He’s not wrong,” I said.
Her cheeks flushed. “I know. Perhaps I thought five minutes would not do much harm. However, now I understand how selfish it was. I really am sorry.”
What she said wasn’t the right words but she said them.
“Apology accepted,” I said. “Ignorance can’t change the fact…” It was someone’s space, but it was someone who truly needed it. Maybe next time, think twice.”
She nodded. “I will. I promise.”
When she was about to leave, she stopped.
“If you’re still trying to get that accessibility thing nailed down….” I’d like to help.”
In fact, I didn’t know if she was serious. But she did. She was one of the most active volunteers over the next few months. She worked to design materials and took to workshop dispensing her story, sometimes honestly and sometimes humbly, to help others see why it matters to have these spaces.
Admitting fault isn’t easy. But she showed up. Again and again.
Before the end of the year, Spot Check was in the thousands. Those conversations really had sparked real talks of empathy, access and accountability.
On that Tuesday, that could have been the day that ended in resentment. Instead it was a matter of turning point.
It’s one thing people have taught me: Compassion is not far from where assumptions end. That even the most painful moments prove to be stepping stones if we take them. We often end up frustrated with the very people that frustrate us to the greatest extent and inevitably we find them to become allies we never expected.
It doesn’t have to divide us when we’ve been in this type of moment—whether standing up or being spoken to. It can open doors. When we select to hear, to discover, and to do with kindness, then we move forward all together.
Share this story if you resonated to this. Keep the conversation going. Because respect, awareness, and kindness? Stand up even in a parking lot for them.