Goldilocks' Grieving

in which you deal with some knuckledragger idling their car right next to you

You pull into the battered old carpark and find the last place, so you glide in there like a miracle and say a quick prayer of thanks to ... who, the god of carparks? The kids run off to soccer training, slamming both doors. You pull out an old copy of National Geographic and reach for the crackers and dip. You'll only have a few. Save some for the kids. You wind the window down, and it sounds like the guy next to you is running his engine while parked? The engine is idling and he's laughing on the phone like no fucken worries. Best park in the house and you're right next to an Idler. Rage bubbles into your throat and your heart begins to pound.

Maybe it's not his car, you think. Maybe it's the insects humming in the creek. Maybe he's cold, you think. But this is Queensland, not fucken Greenland. And it's late winter. Surely the neanderthal next door isn't running his heater. You wind up your window, which helps for a while, and you're able to somewhat concentrate on the article, which, no joke, is about how Greenlanders felt optimistic in the noughties because global warming was opening up new access to oil fields in their palatially glacial country.

But you can't concentrate for long, because you can still hear this bloke's engine running. Your throat begins to simmer because you feel a duty to say something. You've done it before, but it always makes you anxious because who are you to interfere in the way people run their lives? But there are kids running around out there, and what the fuck sort of example is idling your engine in a carpark? Your heart keeps beating in your throat. You know you won't be able to live with yourself if you don't say something.

So you wind down your window and stick your head out, just to confirm that, yes, it's his car you can hear.

You're beginning to shake now, because anger has overtaken your willingness to deny that this guy is a moron and it's your duty to intervene. Maybe you're being ridiculous and you need to see a therapist about projection issues. I mean, hey, you didn't cycle the kids to training on a Dutch cargo bike now, did you? But if it's not your responsibility, then whose is it? It pisses you off that the whole of humanity is derided as a cancerous and parasitic tumour because a few people can't get their heads out of their arses, and you're so disenfranchised that your agency has been reduced to a stern conversation with an engine-idling halfwit in the carpark at soccer training.

So it's just a matter of dredging up the courage to act with conviction. You don't have to give him the ol' what for. Just ask him to please turn the car off. It's the only way to shift the anger that's bouncing around inside you, giving you throat cancer and ruining your concentration. There's no way you'll be able to read about climate change in Greenland for an hour while some knuckledragger beside you has a jolly ol' time idling his fucken Magna.

So out you get, and around the car you go to his window.

Oh shit, you think. He really is a neanderthal. Acne scars, cauliflower ears, and moronic dimness in eyes that have never known mirth, just belittlement and schadenfreude. But you can't back out now. So you wave at him to get his attention because you don't want to go rapping on the window like an arsehole. He ignores you. You wait a bit, then tap on the window and say, 'Excuse me,' like he can hear you. You're really shaking now. He winds down the window a fraction.

'Yeah?'

'Heya, um ...' you pause and hope your voice will stop wavering, then spill it in one breath, 'could you turn the car off please?'

'The phone'll cut out.'

The phone? you think. He's on the fucken car phone!?

You try to accept that some people haven't made the connection between extreme self-indulgence and extreme weather events. And you're beginning to accept that denialism is actually still a thing. You do your best to feel compassion for the ignorant. But this cunt is idling his car because he's too lazy to hold a fucking phone to his beat-up ears.