Damn Speeding Tickets

Earlier this week, I went to the local police department to pay off a $100 speeding

Image by kawaface via Flickr

ticket. I had never been to this particular police station before so I had some BS mapquest directions with me, which was stupid on my part, since mapquest sucks ass 9 times out of 10. If that wasn’t enough of a problem, the whole area was having construction work done, and everywhere I went I had some high school dropout waving an orange flag at me. I eventually found some ‘random’ parking lot around the corner from the station, got out of my car, and started following the other people carrying red slips in their hands. Apparently the cops had been busy…

Once inside, I couldn’t figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. There were close to fifty people waiting in the (small ass) entryway to get into the courtroom, more people walking down a hallway off to the right, and some jackass officer (who wouldn’t shut the hell up) giving directions to people.

A few things this ass kept saying, and what I was thinking:
“Do not talk in the building.” (Yeah right.)

“Do not have your cellphone on in the building.” (Another rule I’ll be breaking…)

“If your cellphone sounds in the courtroom, it will be confiscated.” (Vibrate, bitch!)

“Proper dress is required in the courtroom.” (Coming from the guy who looks more like a redneck than a cop…)

“Close-toed shoes are required in the courtroom.” (Oops, I’m wearing flip-flops, oh well.)

“No hats allowed in the courtroom.” (I don’t wear hats, I’m not a fag.)

“Do not sleep in the courtroom.” (No thoughts, just busted out laughing.)

“I’m a total dip shit who has never touched a woman before and loves to fantasize about strip searching little boys while I touch myself.” (I kind of made that up, but I could tell he was/did.)

Well, I figured there’s no chance in hell that I’m going in that courtroom, So I took off down the hallway. As I navigated this maze of bullshit that is the Memphis Police Department, I noticed that the air condition was broken or something (or maybe they wanted to torture us further…). Well at least they had been nice enough to open up some of the windows…which did jack shit to let fresh air in. Finally, I found the booth to pay my ticket and got in the long as line and waited, and waited, and waited, and fucking waited.

While I was waiting/contemplating suicide, I started talking (whoops, broke another rule) to the people around me. The guy in front of me (around 60 years old) had gotten a ticket for supposedly “running a red light”. He didn’t know anything about it until he got a ticket in the mail; apparently one of those damn intersection cameras got him. Get this, he ran it by .03 seconds (yes, I read his ticket)…which shows that some asshole had way too much time on his hands that day. The BS part is that he could have run it by 10 seconds (or 10 minutes…) and still would have gotten charged the same amount. I felt similar with my ticket (11 mph over the limit), because I could have been going 21 mph over. The man/jackass behind me knew how to get his money’s worth, he was in line for speeding, reckless driving, and running a stop sign…so at least someone wasn’t pissing their money away.

***************
Man behind Me: “Yeah, bastards caught me going 60 in a 40, and running a stop sign.”
Me: “How are you not in jail?”
***************

I finally made it up to the front of the line and paid my $99 ticket with a check for $98 and one dollar in cash (just because I’m a dick), so the lady had to fill out two reports. When I left and started walking back to the entrance, the lobby had been completely jammed with people waiting to see the judge. Instead of crowd surfing, I took a quick step out one of the windows and headed back to my car.

As I entered the lot I had parked in, I noticed a sign that I hadn’t seen before, “Authorized parking only, unauthorized vehicles will be towed.” This set off the “Fuck me sideways” alarm in my head as I saw a bunch of cops getting in and out of their cars. Come to think of it, there were a whole lot of police cars where I parked.

Great, I see another ticket in my near future…

Yeah right, the hell with that.

Using advanced covert and stealth techniques (ducking, crawling, jumping) that would put Tom Clancy to shame, I slowly made my way to my car. Here I am successfully avoiding a parking lot full of police officers and yet I can’t beat one damn level of Splinter Cell (Eat shit Tom Clancy).

Luckily I managed to get into my car, start it, and get the hell out of there without being seen, as far as I know.

Explicit—7
Police—5
(dating back to June, 2004)