I was telling Jenna about this "prank" (via BoingBoing) some guy pulled in L.A. where he purposefully parked poorly to see what kind of notes people would leave him when Jenna said "That would be cool if you left notes for people who were good at parking their car."

I fell in love with the idea when she mentioned it and couldn't stop thinking about it for days. So we followed through with it today after we finished with our Christmas shopping in the Woodlands Mall area.

We decided that we would pre-write our notes, then walk through the parking lot looking for exceptional parking jobs to reward with the notes. Twenty notes seemed a worthwhile number, but we couldn't come up with more than five semi-unique things to write, so we copied each four times. Here were the notes we left (links to images):

Note 1: Judging from your perfect parking job, I would imagine you are an excellent driver, too! Thank you for keeping our streets safe and being a considerate parker during this stressful season. Merry Christmas!

Note 2: Thank you for your excellent parking job! It's people like you that make the holiday shopping season a little less stressful. Merry Christmas!

Note 3: I saw what a great job you did parking, so I wanted to leave you a note to say "Thank you"! So, thank you for being so considerate and helping make this holiday shopping season a little less stressful. Merry Christmas!

Note 4: I can imagine it is terribly difficult to park such a large vehicle between the lines, so I wanted to express my thanks that you were considerate enough to take the time and do so! It's people like you that make this holiday shopping season a little less stressful. Merry Christmas!

Note 5: Thank you for being considerate of other holiday shoppers with your excellent parking job! Keep up the good work, and maybe together we can make the world a better place! Merry Christmas!

One of the problems with writing the notes was making sure they didn't sound sarcastic. It was pretty hard! (And I'm guessing we weren't entirely successful!) Now I understand why some people are paid full time to think about that kind of stuff.

Once we had copied the notes down, we were ready to go make some positive mischief! We had a strange feeling of sneakiness and kindness.
The fourth note was designed specifically for large vehicles, mainly the huge trucks that are everywhere. It was the hardest note to get rid of.
Actually, it was a lot harder to find 20 exemplary parking jobs than either of us expected. We walked most of the parking lot before we were out of notes.
We were very sneaky about our operation, always checking to make sure no one was in sight.
We felt good about our anti-prank, but unfortunately it's kind of hard to measure how effective it was. How did people react? We didn't stick around to find out.

Here are some more action shots: Jenna: 1, 2 Jason: 1, 2, 3

So that's it. Hopefully people were amused or reaffirmed and not put off by our silliness, BUT I GUESS WE'LL NEVER KNOW. Which is kind of cool.