My family has always liked Boothbay Harbor a lot. Yes, it's touristy, and things you can find dirt cheap online are marked up ridiculously high in a lot of stores. I mean, seriously, a book I saw in one place for sixty-five dollars is only twelve on Amazon. Man.
My sister has always loved Enchantments, the extremely new age fairy/magic/wicca/pot/random stuff store. My mother used to really enjoy a yarn shop there, but since it closed she's also discovered a cute little olive oil and vinegar store. My father, I know for a fact, loves being near the ocean. My family used to own a boat, and my father and I actually got licensed as pilots for sailboats years ago.
I'd need a refresher course these days, but I remember a lot.
Then there was the moment we were leaving town, which I've spent a great deal of time reflecting on and really feel the need to express disappointment towards a city that, to that point, had been extremely enjoyable and full of pleasant people, both native and tourists.
That, my friends, is a very expensive car. Like, really, really expensive car.As in "Corvette" expensive.
Which made it all the more surprising to find the front tip of it lodged firmly in the rear bumper of my father's car as we came out. No note anywhere indicating "hey, sorry, my really expensive motor vehicle edged itself into your bumper" or anything like that. We had two families of people standing nearby who were also amazed at the whole thing. One family recommended contacting the police ("They're just a block up the road") in an attempt to find the owner so we could get insurance information. Maybe there was no damage, maybe there was, but having the information would be nice.
Now, I know what you're saying. "Erik," you're saying, quick to disbelieve me, "the cars aren't even touching each other!"
True. We only thought to take a picture of the car and license plate (which I have blurred out out of respect for the owner. However, I can say it rhymes with "Tifty Dash Bun Dundred Dirty Weight.") after my father moved his car forward a little bit to see if there were any marks or anything resulting from the impact. Had I had the foresight to take a picture right when we found it, this might have turned out differently.
We contacted the police, they promised to send someone down, and we waited. I took a couple of pictures, and then a man started walking out towards the car. We asked if it was his, and he jovially said "Nope, it's my wife's!"
Someone married money.
We explained what had occurred, and the man immediately looked incredulous. As he explained, he couldn't possibly have done that because "Why would anybody do that with a car this expensive?" We assured him that we weren't the only people who saw it and asked if he'd be willing to trade information, and he refused. We advised that the police had already been contacted because we didn't know if we were going to be able to reach him, and he shrugged and agreed to wait.
At this point, a "friendly yokel" (for lack of a better term) tried to explain that the guy runs the local food kitchen and that he's an honorable man. I bit back the response to say "mind your own business" and instead pointed out that, as you can clearly see in the above photo, he's illegally parked at a street corner. He isn't that honorable.
Plus, why kind of person who runs a food bank drives a Corvette?
Anyway, between my family's statements that we just wanted to get the information to have it in case we needed to have any fixes done on the bumper and his decision to deride us as people and regularly refer to my father's car as "junk," the police officer finally arrived.
You could not have found a least interested police officer in the city if you tried.
Let me sum up the experience this way: The police officer tried to diffuse the situation, after we explained that we arrived there to find the other man's bumper pressed against my father's car, by stating "You know, parking spaces can be kind of tight here, so you're going to get a bit of bumper bumping sometimes."
I had to use every ounce of energy to not say "That's all well and good, but he's illegally parked. Bumper bumping shouldn't even be an issue right now because there shouldn't have been any vehicles bumping from that direction in the first place."
Between the hostility from the man, the police officer being more interested in random dust particles that flicked across his vision, and the long day we had, my family decided to simply drop the issue. However, it's rather disappointing that we couldn't even get an officer to at least take the situation seriously and that the man driving the car had to be, quite honestly, one of the biggest
I mean, seriously, who parks illegally in a car that expensive and then doesn't even check to make sure you haven't hit someone when you park it?
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