I ripped up a parking ticket today...

You know what? I'm sick of my university's parking policies. Really I am. Parking at universities is uniformly awful, and at my school they make for damn sure that nobody gets within 5 blocks without paying out the nose. It's always been like this. Get a parking ticket, it's 20 bucks or more on the street. If you park somewhere you shouldn't on campus, well, they are like Chuck Yeager "pushing the envelope" of parking fines.

Anyway, I stopped at my office building to pick up some cardboard boxes for my move. I was in the loading zone and I, get this, did not turn on my flashers. I came out after about 40 seconds and the parking swine were there, sticking a 25 dollar ticket onto my windshield. "Heyeyeyeyeyey! No! I'm here. Wait." And this fellow I have known for years who works for the division of traffic control to whom I have always been nice looks at me as if he has never seen me before. "You can appeal."

I'm sick of getting nickeled and dimed by this fucking university. At every corner there has been another charge, another little fee. I looked down at the ticket. On the back, it said that I have 20 days to pay it. Where my name would have been had my car been registered with U Parking, the ticket was blank.

The class I am teaching be will be over in less than 20 days and I will be moving to Atlanta. They are never going to see that car on campus again. I looked at the meter menschen, raised the ticket and tore it up right there. They looked at me as if I had just deliberately jabbed myself in the eye with a fork. It was fucking brilliant.

HJ