I Am Not A Criminal

I’m actually not a loser but, sometimes I’m an idiot of loser like levels. A few years ago I got a parking ticket. Hardly the crime of the century, I know. Yesterday as I sifted through my mail, which I may or may not actually get out of my mailbox on a regular basis, I saw a letter from some law office. Um, that’s never good. I open it up to find out that I owe Kansas City a little change for an unpaid parking ticket. And that there’s some little thing called a “warrant” for my arrest. In a future post I’ll go over all the things in life that I never want to experience, being arrested is on the list.

It isn’t a huge deal or anything. I don’t have to turn myself in or anything dramatic like that, I simply had to go pay the ticket. For the record, I did so this morning. So really, it’s just an embarrassing oversight on my part. It’s not as if I’m a dead beat dad, and someone was collecting child support. I simply forgot to pay a stupid parking ticket, nearly three years ago. But anytime something happens, and there’s a chance it could lead you to handcuffs and bail, well it’s not a good feeling. I really didn’t even want to post about this but, well I did anyway.

If I were to analyze what lead me to this predicament, I’d say it’s my tendency to duck difficult situations or just un-wanted situations. I’m just guessing here but, this is probably why I sometimes don’t retrieve my snail mail for weeks at a time. There’s nothing good there. Just bills, junk mail, and credit card offers. The bills I pay them online, I don’t want to look at them any more then I need to. As a kid, I used to avoid looking at my report card when I knew it wasn’t going to be good. Luckily I’m not going to analyze the situation, so I don’t have to admit any of that.

Now let me tell you about the lovely people that work at our courthouse. Doors open at 8am, so I got there a good 10-15 minutes early. Finally the doors open and there’s one person ahead of me. He’s being helped, and I see three other people go up to their little windows and get them selves situated. They turn on their computers, put their coffee down. They move so slow, that if they moved any slower I’m sure they’d literally fall down. It looks as if one gentleman is about ready to open his window but, he goes in back again. It took nearly 10 minutes for someone to finally help me. I can’t imagine how bitter these people are. They couldn’t care less, I’m not a “customer” to them, just an idiot. The fact that there’s a meter running and I have to get work means nothing to them. They’d probably get a good laugh if I got a ticket for the meter expiring. Well, that’s assuming they have emotions like joy, and I’m fairly certain that they do not.

Anyway, the ticket is taken care of and I’m back to being an upstanding citizen.