An act of courtesy without meaning
An act of courtesy without meaning
One Sunday morning, in the parking lot of a multiple-build office complex near an off-highway hotel where I stay in Ohio.
I'm walking, out for a couple of hours of exercise, listening to the sounds of my own steps. The lot is deserted. It's a kind of place from Monday to Friday, and today there is nobody around.
A car stops. I see that it seems that a medical facility of some kind is open. That's where the car is heading. The parking spaces, none of them marked as reserved, are marked with white lines. The driver, a man who seems to be in his 70s, parks. He leaves slowly, and his wife leaves by the passenger side.
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His is the only car in the lot. Maybe the doctor has made special arrangements to meet with them here today. Maybe 40, 50 or 60 of those white-lined parking spaces are empty. Hundreds of other parking spaces are unoccupied in the extended complex. People who work in the doctor's office must have private spaces behind the structure, because their cars are not visible.
The couple goes to the building and she asks: "Are we too far?"
He turns and looks at the car that has just parked. Your tires on the driver's side extend over the line painted on the side. But barely
"You're right," he says. "We are in another person's space."
He walks to the car. Unlocks it and enters. Start the ignition, go back and then return to space so that your tires are between the lines. It is clear that this is not a type of obsessive-compulsive habit. It's a courtesy gesture for someone you'll never meet, someone who almost certainly will never show up.
"Best?" The flame from the window.
"It's fine now," she replies.
He reappears.
No one would have known, not in this empty lot. Nobody would have cared if their tires were out of line. I was not bothering other motorists, because there were none, not this Sunday morning.
But here was a man and a woman who felt like playing by the rules, all the time. The idea of not repairing that car would never have occurred to them. Maybe it's a generational thing; maybe not. All I knew, when I saw them walking to the office together, was that they had made me a little more optimistic. Those decisions of a second: whether or not to do something the right way, even when it is so small, even when it does not matter. They entered the building, and I would have liked to meet them.
Mr. Greene's books include "Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Nights."
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