Mr. B. was a drivers’ education teacher with a strong personality. Sometimes his attitude about certain driving things annoyed him enough that they would slip into his classroom discussions. Recently, something had really annoyed him.

“Do you want to know what almost gives me road rage?” he asked his drivers’ education class.

“What?” Tim asked.

“When someone parks across the middle line between two parking stalls,” Mr. B. answered.

Tim’s twin brother, Jim, asked, “What do you mean?”

“Let me show you the one that annoys me the most,” Mr. B. replied.

He put a picture up on the screen. It showed a big, beautiful car parked across the center line between two parking spots.

“This lady,” Mr. B. grumbled, “parks her car in this area every day, and she always parks right across the middle of two places.”

“Why does she do that?” Tim asked.

“Most people do it to give room on both sides or ends of their car to keep it from being scratched. But it’s selfish and takes a parking spot away from someone else. This lady parks there almost every morning, and her car is there all day.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Jim asked.

Mr. B. shook his head. “Not in this town. But it ought to be. Quite often I’ve needed to park in that area, and there was nothing available, but there her car sat across two spots. I’d give a hundred dollars to anyone who could figure a way to teach her not to do that.”

Mr. B. saw Jim and Tim glance at each other, so he added, “A legal way.”

Every day during drivers’ education, although Mr. B. fretted about his disgust for different things, he always returned to the subject of the lady that parked across two parking spots. When the students started practicing driving, Mr. B. often had them drive past the car that disgusted him. After they had finished drivers’ education, Jim and Tim practiced their driving hours with their parents, looking forward to trading their learner’s permits for real driver’s licenses. The minute they had their licenses, they went to Mr. B.

“Is that hundred-dollar offer still available?” Tim asked.

“What do you have in mind?” Mr. B. asked.

After Jim and Tim had explained their plan, Mr. B. laughed and assured them that if they were able to do it, he’d pay.

The two boys went to their dad, who owned a used car lot. It took a little longer to convince him, but he finally agreed to their plan. Early the next morning, the two boys drove away in the two smallest compact cars their father had on his lot. They waited until the lady had parked her car across two spots as usual. Then, after she left, each of the brothers took turns pulling his car up so their bumpers were just inches from the one’s of the lady’s car. There was no way she could pull out of the parking spot. The little compact cars barely stayed within the lines of the parking spots, making it so there were three cars in the two spots. The two boys locked the cars and walked to school.

Three days later, the police called. Jim and Tim’s dad passed the phone to them. The officer had a chuckle in his voice as he spoke.

“Would you mind removing your cars? Although it’s legal for you to leave them there, the lady whose car you have hemmed in would like her car back, and she has promised she won’t park that way again.”

Jim and Tim removed the cars and became one hundred dollars richer.