by Donna Carroll Batton

Created on: July 22, 2010

The snow was falling slowly as I crawled along Main Street looking for a parking place.  It was early evening, mid-week, and I was meeting my sister for a relaxing movie night.  The plow had piled the snow banks to the side of the road, obscuring the curb and lane markings.

 Finally I spotted a parking place a few doors from the theater.  Looking up I saw the sign indicating two-hour parking for this space.  I maneuvered my minivan into the spot and looked at my watch.  I was a few minutes early so I decided to wait in the warm van until my sister arrived. 

 Seeing Jean pull up two spaces behind me I got out of the van, shut the door and hit the power locks.  We hurried into the warm theater lobby, happy to be out of the cold.  My sister spent much of her time caring for her thirty year old son who was battling leukemia and confined to a wheelchair.  I took care of my ninety-six year old mother and my husband who has health problems.  We were looking forward to a “respite” from the cares and worries of our every day lives.

 The movie was good but the ending was not what we were expecting.  We preferred the guy to get the girl at the end but that didn’t happen.  Thus, we were a little bummed when we walked out through the lobby.  Not as bummed, though, as when we got to our cars and discovered matching parking citations!

 We were both ticketed for parking in handicap parking spots.  Now, this may not seem so bad to some people.  However, to two women who made it a point to never park in a handicap parking place unless we were transporting our ailing family members, this really infuriated us.

 Looking up, and I mean way up, we saw that, perched on top of two other signs was a small sign designating this as a handicap parking place.  The height of this sign compounded by the fact that the street had recently undergone a two-year makeover and all the signs evidently changed, had us both seeing red.

 My sister is not one to vacillate when venting her anger.  She was at town court early the next day and was rewarded with a court appearance date for the following Wednesday.  I wasn’t so lucky.  As my husband had a doctor appointment the next day I couldn’t get to court until the following Monday, thus procuring a court date two weeks from then.

 Not easily daunted, Jean had her husband accompany her to said

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