Parking Tickets
There’s a guy on my street who has a boot on his car. For the last week, I’ve watched him walk back and forth from his apartment to the street carrying golf clubs, clothes, and old dog toys. He’s using it as an extra storage closet because he can’t afford to pay off his parking tickets.
He has five. I have four. Which means that one more ticket and I’m going to have my own street side closet.
I hate parking tickets. Not that anybody actually enjoys parking tickets. But I hate parking tickets because I know that the person who writes the tickets, enjoys his job. And that bothers me because I want to believe the best in people. I want to believe that he isn’t some crazed, sadistic asshole who enjoys inflicting financial pain on others, but he is and does.
He loves writing tickets because he lives in a studio apartment in Compton and his entire job is to go to neighborhoods that are nicer than his own and give tickets to car owners who have nicer cars than his own and he takes comfort in his life knowing that if he can’t afford a new BMW then at least he’s going to make the person who owns one suffer for it.
Which is why I don’t like parking tickets. Sure I’ll pay them. I broke the law. But it kills me that with each ticket I pay, I’m supporting a person whose entire existence feeds off other people’s suffering.
