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Dear Emily Poast,
As I got out of my car after loading my kid into the car seat, I was accosted from behind by a boomer who accused me of scratching her car, parked next to mine. Now, I did indeed have my door touching her car, since the spot is pretty tight and even my small car's door couldn't open to the first door check before it touched the car next to it, and it was basically impossible to get into the back seat with an infant while preventing the door from opening too much.
As it turned out there was no scratch on her car but we discoursed for a few minutes on the acceptability of touching other cars with your car door in the parking lot. In my view this is perfectly acceptable, and especially in parking lots with narrow spots if you have an SUV you shouldn't expect your car to be untouchable, though of course slamming doors into cars is unacceptable. Her view was that contact is never acceptable and she informed me that she raised two kids without ever touching another car with her door.
Seeing that we had reached an impasse, I informed her that I disagreed and drove off. My wife doesn't believe I did anything wrong, but she herself would never touch another car with her door.
What do you think, Emily? Is it acceptable to touch another car with your car door?
— Well-formed
American insanity, this entire thread.
Cars are built to handle much, much worse abuse. As long as you don't smack the next car with your door, there will be zero visible changes from leaning a door against it. Touching other cars is normal and acceptable, just take a little care with it.
If the boomer insists, we can both take photos of the crime scene and she's free to call my liability insurance. Further discussion is unnecessary.
After, she can petition the store/city to widen all the parking spaces to better fit modern SUVs. They probably haven't done that since the 80s, when cars where half a foot slimmer. That will only take a little paint, and reduce the number of spots, but by less than 10%.
Until then, I will park in any and all spots I can physically squeeze my car into.
FWIW, germans are also ultra-careful with cars and get easily angered by even the tiniest scratch, which, in their view, needs to get removed ASAP and the guilty party has to pay for it no matter how disproportionate the cost/benefit ratio. It's just what you do.
That said, touching another car is I think considered merely careless and if no scratch results, there is no problem. But I wouldn't be terribly surprised that some boomers would start loudly complaining. Again, it's just what they do.
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