Backroads Miz Manners Talks Parking Lot Rage

Time again for the highfalutin advice of Backroads Miz Manners. Please pardon Miz Manners for saying so, but judging from the dearth of etiquette inquiries in past posts, her readers appear to be: A) perfect, B) timid, C) apathetic, or D) nonexistent. In order to salvage a blog post, Miz Manners will proceed with a question that may or may not be authentic. No need to go calling Oprah. She only has three shows left. Oprah and Gayle are busy shopping for couch cushion support inserts to prepare/repair for the return of Tom Cruise.

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Dear Miz Manners:

On a recent outing to Walmart, I was confronted with a huge, crazy, bald, meth-head freak who had parked his black Ford Excursion in the yellow-striped no-parking zone at the end of the row. I, too, would like to park in the yellow-striped no-parking zone, because it is closer to the door, and nobody will dent my shiny $35,000 SUV with the door of their rusty $200 1990 Toyota Tercel. But I don't park there, because, well, it's a NO-parking zone. Which part of no and parking does this dude not understand?  How can I make sure that he gets his just desserts?

Signed,
About to Blow a Gasket

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Dear Gasket-Blower,

Zeb knows the meaning of both no and parking. He does not care. He carefully cultivates his image in order to intimidate the average Joe. Zeb will park his Excursion anywhere Zeb darn well pleases. He knows that nobody will call him on it. The Walmart greeter is long in the tooth, and needs that minimum wage job to survive. Security sits in windowless rooms, watching people attempt to steal Chinese-made Walmart fall-apart goods. The beggars out front are consumed with accosting customers as they enter and exit, clamoring for money to send baseball players to tournaments, buy dance leotards for little girls, and provide transportation for various school clubs to fly to various destinations in order to escape backwoods Missouri.

Your best scenario in providing Zeb with dessert is to glare at him pointedly as you push your loaded cart around his vehicle.  When an elderly woman gives you the stinkeye because she can not drive up your two-way row, due to your SUV being in the middle of it to get around Zeb's Excursion, lift your hands off the wheel and motion towards Zeb. Zeb will glare at you in his side-mirror as you shimmy around his rear bumper. Don't let that concern you. Zeb is not leaving that no-parking spot until Granny comes out with the Sudafed he needs for his next batch.

If, by lucky coincidence, you end up smack-dab behind Zeb ten minutes later at a stoplight, after dropping your son off to a relative at the other end of the parking lot, resume the pointed glare. Zeb will be mesmerized. He will keep checking you out in his side-mirror as he tools along, trapped behind a hoopty blowing white smoke. For all Zeb knows, you are an undercover narc. Let him sweat it. He'll be wishing he hadn't shaved his head when all that sweat pours unobstructed down his bare pate and into the windows to his soul.


Follow Zeb unrelentingly until your paths diverge. Pretending to talk into your cell phone will make Zeb go a little faster, once that hoopty hangs a right. But not over the speed limit. That's a sign that Zeb is up to something. Nobody goes the speed limit unless they are afraid of being stopped. For piloting a rolling meth lab. 

When Zeb rounds the roundabout, veer off towards home. You mission has been accomplished.

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Miz Manners welcomes your questions on proper backwoods social behavior. Won't you please toss her a bone? A etiquette adviser is a terrible thing to waste.