Handicapped Spot

In one of my classes, there is a handicapped student who walks with a special cane. Because of this, the school created a special spot for him outside his classroom. They had to cut some hole into the brick, cement some posts around the spot with chains and a lock to keep others from parking there.

After the school went through this effort, he got transferred to my class, a few hundred meters away. Since then, the classrooms have been exchanged so his spot is right next to his classroom again.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm complaining about the student, because I'm not. In addition, I think that it's great that the school would go to these lengths to make his life easier. I just think that it's a sad state of affairs that the school would have to do anything more than paint a sign on the spot to reserve it for a handicapped student.

When I told my wife about this lack of courtesy, she told me about the time a few days ago when she saw a car double-parked in front of a handicapped spot at a supermarket. The space was empty, but the car was blocking it so when a person with handicapped tags tried parking there, all they could do was circle around the parking lot waiting for the car to be moved. The thing that really gets me about that story is that the person didn't even have the guts to actually park in the spot and risk a fine. Instead, they blocked the spot for their own selfish convenience, completely missing the point.