A Doomed Romance at Traffic Court

I got a ticket because my left headlight periodically takes a little me-time and turns off. The competent people at the trustworthy garage say they can’t fix it until it breaks. And then, they refused to loan me a crowbar or long wrench. When you turn the ignition off and back on, the light mostly remembers its primary mission and illuminates several inches beyond the dust and grime camouflaging the occasional naps it takes.

At one of the more inopportune moments in my recent life, I was accosted by a member of our Harbor Police (“the proud, the few, the airport police, who mostly say, “you can’t park in the pickup zone”).

Habor Policewoman:  I stopped you because I couldn’t read your rear license plate through the…

WISIMH: …perfectly legally installed…

HP:  …scooter lift. So let me check your front plate.

WISIMH:  Please-be-on, please-be-on, please-be-on.

HP: Your front left headlight it out.

WISIMH: (Pretty much goes without saying)

Me:  Can you give me a second, please? (I turn off the car and then turn it back on). Now, could you check again, please?

HP:  What do you know, it’s on!  But I have to give you a fix-it ticket because I saw it was out.

WISIMH:  Or, because you don't believe in miracles! Or because you’re a small-minded authoritarian jackass who likes to wear a pretty uniform and push people around to compensate for your humorously short stature, especially people who clearly live with somebody who drives a scooter, which, you’d think was punishment enough. Your father probably drinks too much, and your mother probably takes too many pills, and probably mainly because you’re a great disappointment to them both and still live in their basement.

So, two weeks later, I drove to the police station, where a nice policeman walked out to my car as I prayed silently to the martyrs and saints of headlight wiring (I’m from a long line of idol-worshipping Papists and we have saints for everything. Pretty sure it’s Saint Mother Theresa, patron saint of human brood cows and poorly wired headlights.) The light went on and he signed the ticket.

He explained I had to take the ticket to the courthouse next door and pay $25 to dismiss the ticket. Which I did. Or tried to do. After waiting in no line at all, I was told I’d have to go to the Superior Court branch where traffic court is and pay there. The so-funny-you’ll-forget-to-laugh thing is that at traffic court there are no winners and losers: no approximately half of the public who win their cases. Everybody at traffic court is a pissed off loser, including the guys manning the security checkpoint, strategically placed immediately inside a south-facing plate glass window in the full glare of the afternoon sun.

So I went through the second metal detector of the day, coincidentally forgetting to take my phone out of my pocket. Again. I do this routinely to tell The Man what I think of his pointless security that has probably already given me a brain tumor. I play the slightly deaf and moderately stupid old lady card and I’m shocked (!) the 50% of the time they catch me sneaking in my cellphone slash WMD detonator through the white turnstile instead of putting it into a clear plastic basket and shoving it into the maw of the Xerox machine. I feel much safer, especially because I’m an old white lady and my pants fit so they won’t shoot me.

The line to pay traffic tickets is a very long cinderblock hallway painted in a lovely two-tone shade of battleship grey on the bottom and desecrated communion wafer white on top, clearly designed to induce despair and abandonment of all hope, and to create maximum ricochet spread of lethal cinderblock debris in the event of a suicide bombing. On one side of the long hall are what suspiciously look like rows of church pews but which, upon reflection are from old courtrooms. You sit yourself down at the end and slowly slide along the hallway to Room 207 (which must be what the sign at the end of the hall says, but it’s too far to read from here) and watch as people who can’t figure out we’re in line march all the way up to the door and then take the walk of shame back down to their proper place in the pew queue.

Except for the guy who made an appointment and walked right in to pay his ticket to hell, and we – by unspoken agreement - hacked him into little pieces with our debit cards as he came out. His remains are even now being spread out beneath the church pews and carried out on the soles of the Crocs of everybody who didn’t make an appointment.

Guy on My Right: (Addressing the Girl on My Left) Are you in Marketing at SDSU?

WISIMH:  This guy must be a right genius. Her SDSU laptop case and Marketing Jargon Workbook sure had me fooled. I had her pegged for a model with her golden skin and perfectly adorable size 3 sundress that cost more than my monthly Social Security check.

Girl on My Left:  Yeah, I’m in Ms. Something German Sounding’s class.

Guy:  I had her, she’s a tough grader but I loved her lectures in How to Understand What Your Boss Meant to Say.

Girl:  Does she grade on a curve?

Guy:  Yeah, I never got higher than a C+ on any tests, but I got a B in the class.

WISIMH:  Passing over the fuckedup-ness of the grading system, are you hitting on this chick? Because I’m sitting right here between you, and sweetie, she’s so far out of your league that even your newest model iPhone and 2012 market-speak isn’t going to impress her. There are rhinestones on her lime green high-tops. The lady has her own Bedazzler, son. Don’t embarrass us all.

Girl:  What a relief (spoken with genuine relief).

There follows a discussion about what class she’s in and what year and we establish that he’s a graduate but strangely reticent wrt/his gainful employment, if any. He then asks her where she went before State. Mesa, she replies, referring to the flagship campus of the local Community College system, the safety school for those who couldn’t push hard enough on the front door to get into DeVry Institute. He then asks her where she went to high school.

WISIMH:  Really? Why not just head straight for what NFL team she favors? This will not end well.

Girl:  I’m not from around here.

WISIMH:  Permit me to translate: I don’t want to talk to you about local high schools because my worldview extends beyond a 20-mile radius of traffic court. In fact, to cut straight to the bottom line: please stop talking to me you yokel.

Guy:  (Cluelessly) Where are you from?

Girl: Brazil.

Me:  (Sotto voce) Swing and a miss.

WISIMH:  Son. You’re talking about “curating a collection” of “marketing material” to “manage customer relations” with a hot chick from Brazil, and not to mention an old tired woman between you who is giving off a vibe of frustration and impatience strong enough to create a local microclimate of misery and oily resentment that is sucking the romance out of the vicinity like a bullet hole sucks atmosphere from a passenger cabin at 55,000 feet. You’re embarrassing our whole pew because we have become a silent unwilling audience to your humiliation.

Girl:  I should figure out if I have all my paperwork here. (Rummaging in designer bag big enough to cater a lunch for the entire waiting hall) Ahh, here it is: $1,200 speeding ticket. 

Murmurs of awe and admiration on both sides of us from people who appear to collectively know this means she was going very fast in a very fast car and thus has earned a certain amount of pew-queue cred only known to the most elite echelon of DUI regulars and muscle-car 18-25 non-marketing majors.

By now, we’re at the head of the line and the three of us are standing up to enter Room 207, and we get to break the news to the idiots who get all the way up here to the end of the hall and think they can simply stand behind us and cross the sacred “Wait here Until Called” line painted on the threshold of Room 207. I gently tell them we’ve been waiting since last Wednesday, and they should have made an appointment. Because we’re all BFFs here at the front of the 45 minute waiting line.

Then, when I receive The Call, I enter the sanctum sanctorum where three of the seven windows are open. Which seems about right, right? If it’s that way it is to get into heaven, I’m so jumping off the cloud.

Bad news, everyone. It turns out my ticket isn’t in the system yet because dickhead harbor policewoman hasn’t filed the paperwork from 3 weeks ago – almost certainly because either her father or her mother OD’d and she has taken leave and at this very moment she’s at their deathbed as they curse her for marrying an unemployed marketing major from SDSU.

And thus the despondent cashier can’t even take my money. I suspect she gets yelled at a lot. I would have asked if she knew the number for the suicide hotline, but I was afraid she might know it by heart; maybe even roll up her sleeve and show me where she has the number tattooed, or hand me a pre-printed card.

Fortunately, the entertainment was worth the wait. I also learned I can make a fucking appointment, and I should wear body armor when I return to pay my $25.