Issuing Citizen Tickets For Entitled Rudewads

Issuing Citizen Tickets For Entitled Rudewads
Tuesday night, I was walking across the crosswalk when this biddy in a Prius nearly mowed me down. I jumped backward out of the way and the Prius sped on.

A block later, it stopped briefly and a female passenger got out. (The Prius driver later claimed to me that her passenger was blind, but, in retrospect, I doubt that she was bat-blind vis a vis the speed and lack of help with which she trotted into a neighborhood business.)

I scurried around the corner through the rain after Prius Broad to a parking lot -- where she pulled into one of two handicapped spaces. A young guy who has a wheelchair and drives a Jag sometimes parks in one and a guy with a wheelchair van often parks in another. But, one of them will not have a place to park tonight.

Now, I have no proof that Prius Broad doesn't have some invisible and terrible injury that got her the little handicapped placard she hung on her rear-view. But, I'd bet my lunch money that she's one of the bullshit handicapped that Steve Lopez wrote about in a recent column in the LA Times -- a column I tucked under her windshield with my note (with the headline words "abusers of disabled placards" circled in red Sharpie).

After I photographed her plate and gave her a scolding for nearly mowing me down, I went home and wrote a note to tuck under her windshield wiper. As I wrote, I had an idea -- which most of the time won't pay off, but some of the time just might: The Citizen Ticket.

When people commit small crimes that aren't actual crimes but the things that make the lives of others around them worse through their selfishness, make them pay -- or at least make them feel something other than smug.

Call them out for what they've done, put a price on their rudeness (monetary or perhaps something they need to do for someone else or the neighborhood), then tell them to pay to make up for their bad behavior.

The text of the ticket:

Your friend might be blind, but you dropped her off and used the placard to snare yourself a parking space that a man who comes to this neighborhood needs - a man who's paralyzed from the waist down.

Yay, you didn't have to search for parking in the rain. But, you have two healthy legs to trot around on. I guess since he can't park elsewhere, he can't come here tonight. Because of you, Ms. Selfish.

There's something called "green licensing" that may be at work here. Smug eco buyers think that driving a Prius or buying "green" soap means they are entitled to act like selfish pigs.

You drive like one and you park like one.

Worse yet, when I told you you nearly hit me you told me you were dropping off a blind person. No, you later dropped off a blind person. You tried to lie your way out of it because you apparently think nothing of having accountability.

You're a bad person. Try to change.

Consider this your citizen-issued ticket for behaving with utter entitlement.

You need to donate $100 to theFIRE.org for nearly hitting me, and another $100 for parking in a handicapped space when your only handicap, again, is bad character.

Let's see if you'll atone or if you'll just think you got away with something. I'm betting on the latter, unfortunately.

As long as I was hitting her up for cash, I thought I'd ask her to fund my favorite charity, campus civil liberties defenders, theFIRE.org. If you've got a few extra hundreds you don't know what to do with, you might do the same, even if you haven't nearly run anyone over or parked in a handicapped spot.