By Jim Bowman
ORDER IN THE COURT . . . Got a parking ticket tossed out the other day at Oak Park's Office of Adjudication, where the administrative law judge presided with aplomb. He explained everything. It all made sense. I remember none of it.
Main thing is, I was found "not liable" -- there was never a question of guilt, thank God -- and walked out scot-free of any payment responsibility.
Thank God for that too, as 17th-century super-diarist Samuel Pepys used to say for any good thing that came his way, especially his various windfalls and emoluments. Not for his successes at dalliance, however. He rejoiced in these but left God out of it. On the other hand, he never even approximated regret for them, not to mention firm purpose of amendment, and almost never missed church on Sunday.
He was centered, you might say.
So was my appearance before the administrative law judge. I was on the spot for $21 because my village sticker had missed the attention of a police officer making his or her wee-hours appointed rounds. All the good man or woman saw was blank space in the windshield's lower corner, which spelled violation. He or she missed the sticker in the upper corner, applied BEFORE removing the last three or four years’ stickers.
It was an honest mistake by the officer, I am sure, as by me the spic-and-span man when it came to my darn windshield, which like hundreds throughout the village could have remained cluttered with previous years’ stickers. Nonetheless, once I produced my receipt for the sticker predating the citation, I was a free man.
But first I had to buy a replacement sticker to keep from being cited again due to non-sighting of one that is incorrectly sited. The judge suggested this, in fact, and I got one on the way out for $5. Alas, when I got home, I found I did not need it: the original was easily moved. But it was too late. So I slapped on the replacement in the lower corner and have been sleeping relatively easy ever since.
DISTRACTION . . . There's more. It has to do with the hard-working young women of the Office of Adjudication. The one who signed me in and the one who sat next to the judge as his clerk were each decked out as if for a party, and worthy additions to one, besides. Each wore hip-hugging pedal-pushers. (Cropped pants is the term?) Each was quite attractive – one light brunette, the other dark.
One wore spike-heeled sandals over the barest of feet, her pony tail allowing a strand to slip towards an eye, a good deal of arm and shoulder showing through sleeve slits. The other demonstrated a bit of enchanting just-so-far-and-no-farther decolletage -- enough to draw the wandering male-hetero eye. Shame on him!
There we all were, in more or less a court of law, gathered for a hearing punctuated by learned explanation of various fine points, having our $20 or $30 fines upheld or disallowed in most judicious manner; and there I was, noticing these other things, when my mind should have been on evidence and the law!
Luckily, I was up to the challenge, and so was the appellant who preceded me, contesting his ticket for being parked where the street sweeper made his rounds. His claims that others were not so ticketed, that he is law-abiding and of honorable occupation, etc., were to no avail. But he kept his eyes on the prize of absolution from his parking peccadillo, as did I, no matter the aforementioned distractions.
But what about some other guys not of such steely concentration? Will they be distracted and lose out on a favorable decision? Who knows? Does the village ever think of this? I doubt it. Tsk, tsk.
P.S. NOISE HELPS . . . In the wholly other arena of our nation’s sidewalks, it’s worth noting that skate boards are very noisy, so that the pedestrian can hear them coming from behind and get out of the way. Not so bicycles, in-line skates, joggers’ silent tread, etc. that sneak up and scare the bejesus out of the musing, mild-mannered pedestrian. This is more than just a thought: it’s a great thought.
posted by Jim Bowman @ 9/07/2004 01:00:00 PM
0 comments
links to this post
