Although I thoroughly enjoyed the week I spent with my family for Christmas, I rushed back to Austin in order to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Part of my preparation, besides attending a few bootcamps to work off the two-desserts-a-day-and-sedentary lifestyle that I had embraced while visiting my family, I went to Goodwill in order to get an inexpensive outfit.
In my haste of rushing around town running various errands, I pulled into the Goodwill parking lot around dusk, which was about a quarter after 5 and dashed into my favorite thrift store. I had a few miscellaneous items to get before looking at the fancy dresses. That only took about ten minutes then I got down to business for the next hour.
Since I was going to a milonga, I wanted something elegant, but I wanted to avoid the cliche tango color combination of red and black. All red would have been fine, but I’ve been trying to avoid buying all black outfits since about once every few years, Mom buys me a black dress anyway. I selected a variety of bright, beautiful colors and dresses of different lenghts, but among all of the styles, the two must haves were both silk.
One, which I knew would be part of my NYE outfit was a creamy dark brown silk skirt that had a flirty ruffled slit up the right side. I already had an elegant white sleeveless top to go with it–a previous Goodwill purchase! The other silky outfit was a light green dress that had an attractive rayon patterned shell over it, which also looked fantastic and I visualized wearing when I see “Wicked” later in January.
As I walked to my car, beaming with pride at yet another good forging at Goodwill, I was mildly annoyed when I saw that some “vendor” had left a flyer under my windshield wiper. I hate that since it always makes me panic initially since it looks like a ticket. Once I reached my car, I retrieved the flyer, glanced at it and saw that my initial panic was correct: it was a parking ticket. I looked in front of my car, lo and behold, there was the handicapped sign just as clear as day even at night!
It was as if my hurry to dash into Goodwill had blinded me from the sign. I read the ticket anxiously to see what the fine was, but instead, I had to call the Justice of the Peace’s office to find out the fine. I’d received the ticket at 5:45, which was 45 minutes after their office had already closed. I was pretty anxious to get the situation resolved since the back of the ticket warned that I may be fined up to $500. My jaw dropped.
I called on Jan. 2nd and of course the office was closed. I called on Jan. 3rd and wished the woman who answered the phone a happy new year. She wasn’t having any of that pleasant greeting shit. She made me get straight to the point. I read the ticket number and she said there wasn’t any record of it in the system. I had to call back the next week.
I promptly called around 8 AM the following Monday. Still no record in the system. I was becoming a little hopeful that it would get lost in the system. This woman asked me what the parking violation was. When I told her, she said that I might as well send in a certified check or money order for $500. I protested that since I was a first time offender that I should get a lesser fine. She then told me that if I wanted to contest the charges, then I had to check the box that read “Not Guilty” and wait for a court date.
According to our screwed up legal system, you’re either guilty or not guilty, but there’s no “I agree I’m guilty, but since it’s my first time, can I pay less than the full violation fee?” She told me that she could not give me legal advice. If I wanted to pay less than the $500 amount, then I had to go to court.
I hung up and angrily filled out the back of the ticket and over the next few days, I ran through my mind how I was going to approach going to court. During my deliberation, I decided to email three male friends who also live in Austin and I figured that any one of them had either done the same thing or knew someone else who had.
Two of them replied within 24 hours that not only would I not be shown leniency, I’d lose both time and money. I spent the next several days figuring out how I was going to cough up $515 (yes, a$15 court fee although I didn’t go to court!). I then remembered that I had another account.
So my new scheme was to get some money out of that account, get the rest from the other account and then go to a third place to get a money order. Afterwards, I went to a mail service store to send the money order via registered mail. The last thing I was going to go through was some “check got lost in the mail” bullshit.
Throughout the hour and a half of getting all that done, I walked around looking like someone who was at a funeral. I’d just paid off Christmas, 6 months worth of insurance and now that. Thank God my next task was going to capoeria music class.
The combination of drumming, singing and feeling the rhythm going through me helped get over my blues of paying the most for a Goodwill outfit or any outfit in my entire life! Then followed by tango class.
The one silver lining is that now that I don’t have any going out money for the month of January and perhaps February, I magically have more time to dedicate to my latest creative scheme: being a political cartoon stripper. I LOVE the sound of that.