It’s a perfectly human impulse: You are driving around a parking lot looking for a spot when you notice a vehicle without handicapped tags parked in a handicap-designated space. You feel the urge to do what a motorist in Tulsa Hills, Okla., did and dash off an angry note to the inconsiderate driver.
The note, which appears below courtesy of Station KVOO, was the left on the windshield of Colleen Scarlett Stice’s car in the parking lot of a Target earlier this week.
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The anonymous note even mentions that its writer saw the driver emerge from the vehicle on two healthy legs and retrieve a toddler, whom she carried into the store.
What the note writer was unaware of is that the toddler, four-year-old Rowan, was in his mother’s arms because he is a special needs child and his wheelchair — which does carry a handicapped tag — is in the shop for repairs. Rowan is able to walk only a few steps on his own power.
What makes the stranger’s reprimand even more ironic is that Stice seldom parks in wheelchair-accessible spots because she is self-conscious about the absence of a handicapped plate or tag on the rearview mirror.
“I try not to use it,” she told reporters. “Every time I do I feel like people are looking and judging and seeing me get out of the car and thinking I’m perfectly fine, why would I need to use it?”