my first "animosity"

oh well, I guess sooner or later this had to happen. I had a verbal conflict with a neighbor at our parking lot. Nothing too serious, but still worth telling :)

For those of you that don't know me that well, I guess it's worth mentioning that I'm usually a peaceful guy. Very seldom I am the cause or the start of any conflict. However exceptions do exist; and a gentleman will walk (away) but never run!

From the beginning then.

My parking lot is basically a big street with one lane in each direction. The cars park perpendicularly on that street. I was somewhat in a rush to do some grocery shopping because I wanted to run afterward, and was already in my car rolling away on that street. All of the sudden a guy pulls out of a parking spot. Truth be said that I saw he was coming out, but there is no rule that tells me to yield, so that he can take the car out. If I was not in a hurry I probably would have slowed down so that he could take out the car safely, but at that time I didn't felt like letting him pass. Somehow he didn't saw me or thought I was going to slow down, and we were very close to impact at that time! Fortunately nothing happened. I kept moving thinking to myself: "damn... what a punkass! This is why accidents happen!" Any event, I went to my business and came back one hour later or so. That same driver was getting home as well in the car just in front of me. But I hadn't yet noticed that.

As we are entering our street (him in the front, and myself just behind; recall two directions street, one lane per direction and perpendicular parking on both sides), "Michael Schummacher" decides to pull his car completely to the left (contrary to the flow of traffic) in order to park in a spot on the exact opposite side of the street (right)! Not happy with this reckless driving he did not turn on his blinker signaling the maneuver to the right. Needless to say that I passed right through him, and again we almost hit each other :)

At this point I thought: this is what happens when you give away driver's licenses in raffles. Damn students! What a luck... it's the second jackass in a single afternoon. Very smart young fellows for Phd's and stuff but very stupid for other more common tasks.

My place is around 100 meters down the road. This was where I parked. I took my shopping bags out of the car, and as I was walking I see this big asian-american dude coming towards me, saying stuff like: "dude, that's the second time today that you almost hit me!", to which I replied: "Oh! ... was that you, just a while ago? Man, you need to use your blinkers more often!", and he argued: "I need to use my blinkers? Dude this is not the freeway, this is a parking lot, you should slow down". "True", I replied. Didn't even put down my shopping bags, as we where face to face arguing when he grew an extra inch or two, probably to frighten me. And I continued: "I think we both should slow down. However the priority was still mine a while ago... you must yield! There is no rule that tells me I have to let you through. As for now, if you pull over on the left to turn all the way across the street to park on the right and you don't use your blinkers, there is no way other drivers can guess what you're going to do". "My blinkers? c'mon man... this is no fuc#$%& freeway, just slow down!"
After this he calmed down and moved away back to his car, cursing things like: "this is a fuc#$%* parking lot, man, slowdown!"

Unfortunately there was nothing more than this :(
I know, I know, it's not much and things would probably be more exciting in Portugal. But this is the US! People live in scare of a law suit, or maybe it was just my "killer-look" that frighten him :)
He was way bigger than me, fortunately in my shopping bags I had two jars of marinara sauce that could prove to be very useful in case things would have turned ugly!