My Neighbor Wants My Car Towed

This story was originally published on Medium.

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Me neighbor either has a hatred for me… or for my car. But in any event, he is trying to get my car towed. And he has been for years. Let me go back to the beginning to provide some context.

When the pandemic hit, I started working from home. I started doing freelance work as well… I also have pets to take care of at home. The working from home has continued for me. So, even to this day, I am home a lot. To give you an idea, before the pandemic, I used to fill up on gas once a week with my usual driving. Now, I fill up on gas once every two to three months. Sure, I still have to drive places here and there, but not as often, and the trip is never as far.

The next point I need to make is that I live in an apartment building where I do not have a designated spot, so, I resort to street parking. There’s usually a good deal of street parking, however, there are a lot of apartment buildings in the area with similar situations. A lot of other people looking for street parking too. I live at the corner of an intersection in this neighborhood. South of the intersecting road, where I am, is mainly all apartments. North is mainly all houses. And if you go North a block… or East several blocks… the houses are amazing. Expensive.

Rich people live in these houses, okay?

The next point I must make… or I think I must make… is that I drive a 2009 hatchback. This all started happening in 2021 or 2022. It’s now 2024. So, you get the idea how old my car is. It’s in fine condition. It’s not in superb shape. It’s 15 years old. It’s not old enough to drive a car… but it almost is. Not that it has any use… it is a car. It’s old enough to know the deal with Santa… it’s old enough to have had its first crush… and probably its second and third ones too. It also has none of its hubcaps. Does this paint the picture?

I am often home and don’t need to leave for days on end. I don’t have my own parking and need to drive around the neighborhood with the expensive houses looking for parking… in my 15-year-old car with no hubcaps.

Again, the car runs fine. But I could imagine some people in the neighborhood looking down on my car. In fact, I already know they do.

The first instance happened a couple years ago. I was home, working. A cop knocked at my door and I was surprised as to what was going on. He came to talk to me about my car, it had been parked in the neighborhood one block North of my location, where the expensive houses were. And it had been parked there for probably a few days. Someone called the cops and reported my car as having been there too long and they said they thought my car was abandoned.

Yes, that was the word used. Abandoned.

My poor car, it’s in fine shape. The cop assured me I wasn’t in trouble, though. I just had to move my car. He explained to me that in this neighborhood you can only be parked in one spot for 72 hours before you could get towed. However, he explained, it’s not like cops or parking attendants are constantly patrolling areas and keeping tabs on cars. So, if a car gets reported… then that’s when the countdown to 72 hours begins. They will give you a notice and you have 72 hours from that point to move your car. Because someone could call the cops and say you’ve been there for a week even if you’ve only been there for a day.

It seemed fair to me. And granted, my car had been parked in that one spot for several days… maybe five? So, technically I needed to move it. But I still couldn’t believe someone actually called the cops about my car. What was it doing? It wasn’t hurting anyone. It wasn’t on your property, it was parked on public property. On the street. But it was in front of these houses and I bet they didn’t like looking at it. Again, technically, my car had overstayed its welcome.

I moved my car. It became a funny story that I told many people. I continued parking wherever I found available spots… which often included that particular section of the neighborhood. Sometimes that was the only spot I could find.

And a few months later… it happened again. Only this time a cop didn’t pay me a visit. This time, I parked my car in the same are of the neighborhood, and a day later I returned to my car to head somewhere, and I had a big notice on my car warning me I had 72 hours to move my car or else it would get towed. I even went back and counted the hours as to when I had last been in my car. I had parked there less than 30 hours before! It hadn’t even been a day and a half and people were claiming I had been there over 72 hours!

This meant… well, not war. Because I couldn’t do anything. But… it became some type of warfare. I couldn’t believe that someone had called the cops on my car twice! Probably the same person, right? And it didn’t affect me. It’s not like my car was in real danger of getting towed. One time I had to talk to a cop and one time I had to peel a warning off my window. So what? It didn’t bother me. But you know who it clearly did bother? That’s right. The nut job who kept calling the cops on me. So, how did I inflict my damage in this warfare? I continued parking in that particular section… even more! Sometimes I’d go out of my way to park over there even when there were closer spots to my apartment. I knew it bothered them… and I didn’t mind the extra steps… made myself a little healthier in the process, didn’t I? So, I improved my cardio and I worsened the life of this individual, clearly. They were so annoyed that I parked near their precious house that they had to call the police on me.

Not that it really did all that much, right? The best I could hope for was that I was annoying some lunatic. Several months later, it happened again! Another notice on my car. That time, maybe I had been there for three days. But jeez! Is this person serious?! How offensive is my hatchback to look at?

Several months after that, I had been parked in that section of the neighborhood… only a day or two… and I saw something on my windshield. There were temporary No Parking signs in the neighborhood because they were trimming trees… and I legitimately had to park in this area because there were very few spots. And someone… I wonder who… had taken one of these temporary paper No Parking signs, ripped it into four pieces, and put it under my windshield wiper like a lunatic! Really? You went through the trouble of getting one of these signs, ripping it up, and putting it on my car because I was parked near your house? You put trash on my car?

So, it got petty at that point, didn’t it?

Life continued on. Hadn’t had any more instances for another few months… until just recently. I was working from home once again and went outside to throw the trash out. I saw a note on my mailbox and figured it was from the postman. I took it off the mailbox and read it.

“Hi Stephen -

Can you please move your car.

It’s now been parked in the same place for almost 2 weeks.

Thanks.”

The first thing this note tells you is that we aren’t dealing with an overly intelligent person. They didn’t even place a question mark after their question. “Can you please move your car.” Is that a command? But before seeing their poor use of punctuation, I already knew this person was stupid. Because I had called them as such several times.

But hold on. How does this person have my name? All they can see is my car. My car is parked in front of their place… and that’s it. They can see my license plate. There’s nothing on my car that showcases my name. And by the way, the correct spelling of my name. Because not everyone gets my name spelled right. Also, how do they have my address? And not just the correct apartment building, the correct unit. Because that note was on my specific mailbox. So, clearly, this person went to some trouble to get my name and my address somehow. All so they could write a note to tell me to move my car. Bypassing the thing they’ve been doing all along… calling the cops. Why not call the cops again? Why go to this trouble?

It felt like a power move. To leave the note on my mailbox, using my name, like they were letting me know, “Hey, I know your name and I know where you live.” But not leaving their name. So, there’s no way I can know who they are.

But wait! I did figure out who it was.

Because just a couple hours before that, while I was home and working, I saw something out the window. As I work, I am situated near the window in the living room so I can see out to the road. And something caught my eye. A white SUV. It caught my eye because of its erratic driving. This white SUV pulled up to a spot right in front of our apartment building really quick, and slammed on the brakes really fast. It really caught my attention the way this SUV stopped so abruptly. Then, a man exited the vehicle in just as quick a fashion. I found it curious so I examined. Wasn’t anyone who lived here. I figured it was probably an Uber Eats driver or something. But as the man exited the vehicle and marched up to our building, he had no bag of food in his hand.

Probably just a neighbor’s friend or family member, right?

He approached the front door and disappeared from my line of sight… also where the mailboxes are… and then less than five seconds later he was marching back down the walkway, jumped in his SUV, and took off. At that point I found it even more curious. What could this guy have even done in that time? He hardly was even at our location, he couldn’t have even gone into the building and approached any of the units in that time. He probably could have only reached the mailboxes. I thought that maybe he got someone’s mail and was dropping it off and was just a stupid, erratic driver.

I didn’t think of it until I got the note and it dawned on me, it could have come from that guy in the white SUV. The vehicle which I got a decent look at. It had a boxy shape to it that I’d recognize.

And sure enough, the next day, I saw it again. I saw it parked right where my car had been the day before… when I got the note about my car having been parked in the same spot for two weeks. (By the way, it was a week tops.)

I then realized that basically every time this had happened, I had been parked in this exact spot, in front of a specific house. And this white SUV was now parked there.

And wouldn’t you know it? That white SUV was still there a few days later, parked right where I was always parked. But a few days of being parked on the street? That’s not allowed! You can’t leave your car there that long! Probably nobody would ever do that… unless of course… they abandoned their car! The more I looked at the white SUV, the more abandoned it looked to me. So, when I jotted down the license plate and called the cops, that was exactly what I told them. That a car had been parked there for several days without having been moved and that it looked like someone abandoned it there.

It felt good to do my civic duty and call out a car breaking the rules.

And I wondered what the man on the power trip doing his power move thought. Feeling so proud of himself for identifying my name and address and leaving me a note, not signed, remaining anonymous. Thinking he was in the clear because he drove so fast and erratically, no one could have possibly seen him approach our building.

Except that was the only reason I knew who he was and what car he drove. And when he got his notification from the police about his car… then he knew… that I knew… I knew his car too.

What a moment that must have been. Just days after his anonymous note. Not so anonymous now.