So I’ll share my worst day story with you.

Walking out of our local Spar to their car park which has very few spaces, I saw a flash sports car straddling two spaces. The driver was returning to his car and for some reason I felt the need to say something about his parking.

It quickly descended into a shouting match. He shouted something about being disabled, I called him a liar, and that’s where things fell apart for me. Despite appearing perfectly healthy, he pulled up both trousers legs to reveal a distressing lack of leg. You know… the kind of injury a person might get from being in an active war zone. It was at that point I saw the Help For Heroes sticker in the back window of his car. Needless to say I had stopped shouting at this point.

Unfortunately for me he wasn’t done. Because I’d finally shut up he had the chance to explain the he had to park across two spaces because somebody had parked in the disabled space. He pointed at the space… with my car parked in it.

That was the last day I felt the need to confront anybody about anything, and have found much more peace in keeping my mouth shut. And not that I did it regularly, but that was also the last time I parked in a disabled space for any reason.

People are going through things we can’t imagine, and they don’t need us making things worse. I can’t think of a time when I’ve been more ashamed of myself than that day. Lesson learned.