Sometimes, I must admit, I let situations that I know are going to get ridiculous just do what they’re going to do, because frankly, it takes more energy to stop them and it’s sort of fun to see how absurd something can get, because then I can write about it for you on this blog. Also, I am old enough to know that once something sets itself in motion, you have to let it just play itself out, and fighting against it is just a waste of energy.
I’m actually not one of those people who loves drama, so when I see a situation starting to go south, instead of fighting it I try to sort of step out of the way, so that I might observe and record for the future. This is true whether I see people fighting in public, or someone at work is being ridiculous, or….I get caught in a bureaucratic tsunami involving a tail light, which I did two weeks ago. I’m positive that this situation is resolved now, so I can laugh about it.
Here’s the setup: a couple of months ago, we were parked at a parking garage in the city when Stephan observed what he thought to be one of the tail lights in our car not working. I was like “that’s fine, I’m taking the car in for service this week anyway, I will tell them to replace it.” When I got to the Toyota place , they did the service, and when they were done I was like “Let’s check the tail light,” because of course I don’t trust people and I wanted to make sure it was done, because my invoice didn’t mention a tail light so I was pretty sure they dismissed my request as that of an hysterical blonde woman (joking, I was not hysterical, I meant that in the Freudian sense).
Now, the plot twist: it was really, sunny outside, so when we examined the tail light, it was unclear as to whether one of them was burned out, and the dealership was closing, and if I’m being honest, they kind of rushed me out of there with a casual “It seems fine—but if you want us to replace the tail lights, we can do that, we have no problem charging you,” which looking back, it seems like they did because they wanted to get out of there and frankly, they did not believe me when I said it was broken. This is the moment when I should have put my foot down, and I didn’t. This is that moment in the film where you see the protagonist making a critical error, and you go "That's going to come back to haunt her one day," and you are absolutely right.
I’m sure you can guess what’s coming next. Actually nothing happened for awhile, so I totally forgot about it. Maybe the problem was actually intermittent, because I do recall seeing the car with both its tail lights illuminated at one point during the interim. So—you can imagine my surprise when I got pulled over at 10:00 at night on a very, VERY fast-moving highway in New York where I kid you not, at least three people had just passed me going over 100 mph. Don’t even get me started on how I am a nerdily safe driver who does not speed, so I was very surprised a) to be getting pulled over, and b) that the guy would choose to pull me over when there were clearly much more lucrative tickets to be written, for speeding. In fact, I am surprised that anyone ever gets pulled over in New York for anything but speeding, because every single day you can see more than one example of people flagrantly violating the speed limit. I am serious, people—the speeding problem here is INSANE and sometimes scary when you are a person who just drives the regular speed limit under all circumstances.
So, it’s nighttime. I’m pulled over. The guy comes to the car and I’m like “Hi—what’s going on? I was definitely not speeding.” Not in a sassy way, but come ON. I was literally scared for him to even get out of the car, that is how much people were speeding right in front of us. So, now I’m pulled over, and it’s a big deal, and when he comes up to the car I can tell that he’s hoping this is going to be one of those situations where someone has a burned out tail light, and he pulls them over, and they have 1,000 illegal immigrants in their trunk, or like three pounds of cocaine, or a dead body, and because the tail light pull over is much easier than chasing someone down for speeding, maybe this will be his big moment where he “happens to just pull someone over on a routine traffic stop and they end up being a mass-murderer with sixteen warrants out for their arrest,” but instead it’s me, and he’s kind of disappointed, and he even throws in “Um…are there any issues with your license” before he takes all my paperwork back to his car, and I’m like “No sir, I follow every law and do everything right and if something is broken on my car I will assure you that it is that way despite my best efforts to get it fixed and I have a car dealership in Connecticut that I’m going right back to tomorrow,” etc.
So, now he’s pulled me over, and he has to fill out (I am not joking) twenty five minutes worth of paperwork, and he returns with a ticket that is less of a ticket and more of a two foot long summons (no exaggeration) which, upon closer examination, requires that I rectify the problem “before sundown on the day following the issuance of the ticket,” and which is going to require that I “enter a plea of guilty” then prove that I’ve had the problem fixed, and then the “case will be dismissed.”
For a tail light. Now, you know that I give California a hard time, but in California they call this a “fix it ticket.” It takes ten minutes for you to get it, you chat with the cop, you laugh a little bit about how dumb it is to have to issue a ticket for something you know you have to get fixed anyway, you get it fixed, you mail it in, you’re done. No two feet of paperwork, twenty five minutes of letting people SPEED BY US AT 120 MILES PER HOUR while he issues it, none of that. So, in this way I will have to say “California does it better.” Also, it is more awesome that you can get medical marijuana in California, so there's that as well.
Remember this post, where I was talking about the two dudes trying to get their keys out of their car, and how when you get to a certain age you can tell when things are going to take a long time so you kind of just plan for it?
Oh yeah. I had to take the whole next day off for this one. Now I have this summons/ ticket thing, and it’s absolutely, comically gigantic (I did not take a picture, sadly), like so big I want to make a joke about the cop having a laser printer right there in his car but I do not because I want to assure him that I am taking the situation seriously. The summons/ ticket literally says that I have to solve this problem the next day or I am going to be in even more trouble, and the policeman literally says “If you try to fix this yourself, you must then go to a police station and have an officer verify and sign off on the fact that the problem is fixed.” Oh, like I’m really going to fix this problem myself when I can have the sweet pleasure of going back to the dealership and yelling “I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WRONG AND NOW I HAVE A SUMMONS THAT PROVES THIS” at the smug dealership guy? I don’t think so.
The very next day I take the summons to the dealership and put it right into the hands of that same guy who dismissed this problem weeks before, and I’m like “Hi. Remember me? The one with the tail light you said wasn’t broken? Now I’m in trouble, and now I have a problem, and now this is your problem. I will be sitting right here until this gets resolved. Hope you’re not busy, because this is what you’re doing today.”
I didn’t even have to do that much yelling to get the guy to admit he was wrong (since I now had the scary-looking paperwork to back it up), and he fixed the problem for free (the actual tail light cost $1.38, just so I can emphasize how far this situation has gone over such a small thing—see, it’s getting progressively more absurd). Then I have to have him print, on dealership letterhead, that the problem has been solved. Then I’m supposed to mail it so the case can get dismissed, only a guy at the dealership says that if I’m going to mail it I should definitely get some tracking on there, because if that document doesn’t arrive at the courthouse, then they will issue a summons for me and I will GO TO JAIL for a problem that I don’t even have anymore.
Because I am trying to keep this situation from spiraling even further out of control, I decide that in fact, I am going to drive to the station of the policeman who issued me that ticket right then and there and get all the paperwork taken care of so that I can call this “resolved,” and because frankly, I was expecting this to take all day, so I had allocated a large chunk of time for “bureaucracy and silliness” in my calendar (I am not joking).
Then I drove 25 miles, back to the station where the ticket originated.
Then I had to have a police officer come outside with me so I could show him the fixed tail light.
Then that police officer had to fill out the lower half of the summons, bearing witness to the fact that the problem had been rectified “by sundown on the day following the issuance.”
Then the police officer got into his car and had me follow him over to the courthouse (which was around the corner), where he made a joke about me being a public nuisance, and where we all laughed about just how ridiculous this situation had become, and where I had to sign off on the summons, essentially pleading guilty and getting my case dismissed all at once.
Then the police officer left, but not before declaring that he thought I was right to bring it in, because HE DOESN’T TRUST THE POST OFFICE, and he now Fedexes everything. Comforting, right?
I am out of trouble now, and I feel really good about the amount of real criminals that got away and all the taxpayer money that was spent alleviating the menacing problem of my burned out tail light. Don’t you?
Ah well, at least it made you laugh. That means it wasn't a complete waste of a whole day, right?
