Lemons

It's 12:30PM on a Wednesday afternoon and I have to get to the bank. I love living in Denver, but my bank options are less than ideal. These days, I find myself going to the bank more and more despite the fact that it's 2013 and you would think I'd feel comfortable with mobile banking apps to save me time.

Sadly, I'm not there in the trust and confidence department. Nope. I'm just not. Instead, I keep imaging my phone will be lost or stolen and that will be a criminal's passport to my entire savings. Therefore, brick and mortar banking practices are for me. You'd think I was a Depression-era child. So why am I digressing here? Because for me, the biggest issue with traditional banking is that I can't park. I refuse to pay for street parking (or circle blocks upon blocks for it) when all I need to do is get in and get out. It's nearly warm enough to pass for Spring which means that soon I can bike to the bank, but for now, I'm stuck in the ole Prius, and stuck on the hunt for parking.

So what do I do? I don an oversized hoodie and park in the nearby Whole Foods Lot since street parking in front of the bank is never available.

Recently, I learned this type of bait and switch parking is actually "illegal" and something in my bones knew this all along (hence the special bank-parking hoodie get-up), but I do go through the motions of walking into the Whole Foods store itself and ogling - lets say the lemons at least - before ducking back out and angling around the corner. Wells Fargo, how can you not have accessible parking?

So it's 12:35PM and I've circled the much-too-crowded and much-too-competitively frightening Whole Foods lot in Cherry Creek, going on my 3rd loop when I see…a tweaker.

This guy is totally conspicuous (kind of like me). He's also wearing a hoodie, only his has a brown hood (not elegant black) and his sleeves are pushed up over his tatted forearms. He has the worn-out baggy jeans look (while mine are more fitted) and over-sneakered Van "dawgs" to round out the look. Something is UP with this guy.

And - next thing I know, he darts his eyes at me. I don't think he really saw me, because it was so quick and he was rapidly planning to unleash his parking lot vandalism scheme. Which is what he did! He hastily dug into his hoodie pocket, peeled back a glossy (non-environmentally friendly) backing paper and slapped on a garish bumper sticker to a nearby, nondescript, gray car! I was shocked. What was that tweaker thinking? It all happened so quickly: I was, at once, thrilled at the action and complexly breathless in outrage.

Next, I see the tweaker scurrying into the store! He was heading into the same store, probably with the same plan (to ogle the lemons and then turn right back around and head out to the bank). This was nuts!

In the blink of an eye, I made sure to study the important message on the sticker so violently (and lumpily) applied to the car. It read: "I like to party like an idiot" in sturdy black on a field of mustard yellow.

Huh?

I seriously couldn't believe it. I had just witnessed a true "run-by bumper sticker vandalism incident" and something had to be done about it.

Next thing I know, I hastily head into the Whole Foods store, spot the tweaker stuffing tomatoes in a flimsy plastic produce bag and hurry around the corner. What will he do next?

Also - why did I imagine he was stuffing tomatoes in the bag only to throw them at more cars? Was I re-enacting some weird Groucho Marx sketch that I have never thought was funny or have actually seen in real life and yet remembered that it bothered me to no end that people would conceive of throwing tomatoes at objects/people they don't like? Was I heaping on future vandalistic acts upon this tweaker simply because he was GUILTY in my mind? Interesting to ponder…

Regardless, I flagged down the man in the granola aisle wearing an apron who clearly "whistled while he worked there" to alert him of the vandal.

"Hey, do you work here?" I mouthed in a sideways hiss.

"How can I help you?!" he replied brightly in that granola way as if he harvested each and every oat cluster by hand while cooing at it softly.

I then informed him of the entire crimial saga of which he seemed incredulous.

"So you're saying that he already stuck the bumper sticker ON?" He really placed emphasis on the "on" in the sentence (I silently cringed at the overt sentence-ending with a preposition).

I nodded. "He did".

Then, nothing.

The man exhaled and let the weight of the entirety of the event settle over him. I shook my head with an affirmative, tight smile, before I shook my head again in that "I know. What can you do?" head shake way. Then four eyebrows raised and we do-si-doed a bit of a salute before parting ways.

Then, I flipped up my hoodie for good measure and went to the bank.