The grudgery: Unreasonably loud litter

What would you do if you were sitting in your car and a pedestrian casually tossed a can on it? Because that happened last week, and I wished I'd been a little more laid back.

I was sitting in our car early on Thursday afternoon, which is something I do twice a week for 90 minutes.

This is the cost of street parking on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Each side of the street has a 90-minute window, twice per week, where there's no parking because of street cleaning, and you can’t just move to other side of the road because this is New York and there are no spots on the other side of the road. This means you go sit in your car so you can move it when the street sweeper comes by and then find that spot -- or perhaps a better one -- after the sweeper passes.

So I'm sitting in my car, talking to my brother on the phone when I see an older lady who is walking her dog casually toss a beverage can -- clang -- onto the red Subaru Outback that is parked directly in front of me -- clang -- and it bounces off the roof of that car onto the hood of our car -- bang -- and then to the gutter.

I was -- as you might imagine -- fairly shocked. It's not every day that an older, dignified looking lady litters so loudly.

"I'm sorry," I said to my brother, "Hold on just a second."