Jennie Smash

Oh boy. Time flies, huh? I have excuses: I was on a business trip this past weekend, and am now totally exhausted. I mean, exhausted. As if I used to be full of many resources, and now those are gone. (It was a good trip, though.)

To make up for my recent neglect, I will tell you a charming anecdote about my new neighbors in Park Slope. Park Slope, if you don’t know, is a bucolic little corner of Brooklyn full of very rich hippies and yuppies of an artistic bent. We also have a few movie stars and some writers, but most of the people I know are like me: 30ish professionals who are tired of living above nightclubs and would like to see a tree now and again. A tree does grow in Park Slope. Unfortunately, beneath it is a $2000 baby carriage, operated by a woman with a trust fund who is wearing a handmade hat.

This woman, who lives across the street from me, takes her kids to school every morning in her car. Why she needs her car, I don’t know. There are 4300 really good schools within walking distance and oh, yeah, we live in New York, so there are, like, trains and stuff. But she takes her car. She bundles the kids in, drives off and drives back 15 minutes later. (Which means it’s nearby, her school. I hope this fossil fuel-wasting harpy gives to many, many ecologically friendly charities. Because irony pleases me.)

Anyway, another thing you should know about my neighborhood is that no one has a driveway and there’s no assigned parking. So if you leave your spot and come right back in 15 minutes, and it’s full up with someone else’s SUV, well, bummer, dude.

FFW Harpy didn’t see it that way. Yesterday morning, instead of waking up to garbage trucks and hollering in Mandarin, as I did in the LES, I woke up to this:

“I WAS GONE 15 MINUTES. 15 MINUTES. I HAD TO DROP OFF MY KIDS. EVERYONE KNOWS I DROP OFF MY KIDS IN THE MORNING AND THAT IT ONLY TAKES 15 MINUTES.”

I didn’t hear what the poor person in her space had to say, but I sure heard her response.

“EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THAT’S MY SPACE AND THAT I ONLY LEAVE IT FOR 15 MINUTES WHEN I DROP OFF MY KIDS. I HOPE YOU’RE REALLY HAPPY THAT YOU STOLE MY SPACE WHEN I WAS ONLY GONE FOR 15 MINUTES.”

Since the hollering stopping, I can only guess that the guy gave up the space. Either that, or she beat him unconscious with her earthern-ware bead necklace and took it anyway.