There are a couple of adages in the newspaper business I have always clung to. One suggests that column writing is like marrying a nymphomaniac in that it’s fun for about a week. The other advises that when ideas run short, the writer should always seize upon that which annoys him.

I made the last one up but I’m running with it, anyway. Because a few days ago, I stood in a parking lot along Lisbon Street watching an empty car idling in a handicapped spot in front of the post office near Blockbuster. There were no handicapped plates and no blue tags dangling from the rear-view mirror but there it sat, nonetheless.

You know how it goes. You see something like that and the generous part of you nags that the driver of that car has no handicapped designation but maybe the situation calls for convenient parking, regardless. Perhaps they are driving a disabled person on errands. Perhaps they are suffering from ambulatory distress and simply have not had the time to secure the proper parking permission.

The generous part of your mind is often a rube. Mine, too. I stood watching as a spry young woman in a snowmobile suit came dancing out of the post office and into the warm car. She looked like she might have spent a day on the slopes, but there she was, hogging up the prime parking spot while more decrepit characters made the long march across the icy lot to mail electric bills or letters to grandkids. I dare say she whistled while she walked, guiltless over what many view as among the most despicable transgressions committed on a daily basis.

Hang out in front of Wal-Mart some night and you’ll see it all over the place. Vivacious young men and women wheel into the clearly marked handicapped spaces and skip to their collective Lou on into the store. They appear to reason that people with disabilities don’t shop at night. Perhaps the awesome exertion required to carry on multiple conversations over cell phones while strutting through the store justifies the extreme laziness.

You want to believe that these parking fiends are guilty only of scatterbrained oversight, that they are generally good people when the placement of cars is not at issue. Yet, watch them snatch spots designated for the less-than-able and you can’t help surmising that these are the people who trample the old and the weak when flames flare up in a movie theater. These are the people who will swipe a purse from a shopping cart even though the owner of that purse is a frail old woman who just moments before was fumbling for the last of her change to buy a loaf of bread.

And as is always the case where people do vile things, there is one step lower they can go. I mean those people who are not content to park in the blue zone with the big wheelchair painted into it. Those 30 feet between car and store are still 30 feet too many, so they park directly in front of the doors. Another perky patron dances nimbly from the car and into the store while others stumble around in the slush to get around them. The justification for this ultimate in laziness appears to be that it’s late and anyway, they’re only making a quick stop for a box of wine, a pair of sandals, a fashion magazine, gum, batteries, pimple cream and perhaps a nifty new cover for the iPod.

Someday, when I get canned from the paper after it’s discovered I’ve been embezzling from the Costellos for a decade, I want to be a parking cop. No need for a fancy badge or ticket book, just give me a golf club and something sharp enough to pierce a tire. Because I have a sneaking hunch that those selfish enough to steal a handicapped parking spot are probably the ones who cry the loudest when their tires go flat and the windshield is a galaxy of cracks. And what a sweet sound that would be.

Coming up next: embezzlers who make bonehead confessions in newspaper columns. Legitimate misstep? Or a cry for help?

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can e-mail him at [email protected].