Thing is, I can't remember the last time I renewed my car tags actually on time. I always forget, and you can't e-renew after they're overdue so then I end up taking time off work sometime in September to pay my August-expired car tags.
The only time I've ever been ticketed for expired tags it was for being an out of town right wing maniac. I mean the tags were not expired. I'd had lunch and beers with Kira and Thomas at Free State in Lawrence and came out to find two tickets on my truck: one for expired meter (a fair cop and a $2 fine) and a ticket for expired tags. It was October, and my tags had been renewed for weeks at this point. To where I went and checked to see if some asshead and pilfered the decal. Nope, it was still there.
The fine was $35 if I recall. Which, I'm sure, they figured an out-of-town plate like mine (Johnson County instead of Douglas) belonged to someone who would send his contribution to the Mayor's Christmas Tree Fund rather than pitch a fit over the injustice of it all.
Of course, it was me, so I took the morning off work and went to court with my documentation in hand. And when I explained to the judge that my tags were current when I got the ticket, he said, 'What? You didn't have the sticker on?'
No, Your Honor, the tags were current in every way: paid and stickered. The judge didn't like this answer because it implied that a cop could lie. Which is impossible in the mind of a municipal court judge, and understandably so. Most of the day is spent listening to conflicting descriptions of reality from cops and the various ne'er-do-wells, miscreants, vagrants and bad seeds who have run afoul of a cop. If I was a judge, cops would have a lot more credibility than could be justified, too.
Personal opinion, but my right-wing maniac bumper sticker library is what I was really ticketed for. Yeah, I was out of town, easy money from the look of it, but the anti-abortion bumper stickers were what really stuck in the craw of the Royal Lawrence Parking Mountie that day. The judge finally decided to dismiss the ticket rather explore the possibility that a cop could sometimes be just another asshole. Then I found they wanted $10 for my $2 expired meter because it had an earlier due date than the big ticket. Which meant a meeting with the 'prosecutor' about whether I should have read everything carefully to notice I'd been given two tickets at once that had two separate court dates.
But this time, they have me dead to rights. My tags are 13 days expired. And I knew I was busted when the deputy pulled in behind me. I said to myself, Self, you're going to be late for work.
I briefly entertained a fantasy of running, but only in the way I fantasize about robbing banks or going on the lam with a Swiss bank account full of stolen Mafia money.
'Do you have any idea why I pulled you over?' the deputy asked me.
Man, the open-ended questions I let go by. I didn't say, Because you've never felt this way about a man before? I didn't cringe and shriek No more with the anal probes! PLEASE! I didn't even ask him if he wanted to buy some bootleg Viagra, speed and child pornography.
Because my tags are expired?
This was apparently the correct answer, but my next answers weren't what he wanted. He asked for my driver's license and proof of insurance. I have insurance, really I do, but I couldn't find that stupid little slip of paper they send out. I meant to have it laminated at the work I was being made late for by all this, and I think I ended up with it on top of the fridge instead of in my wallet. It's an ADHD thing, you wouldn't understand. Worse, my driver's license expired yesterday because it was my birthday.
So, here I am, late for work, apparently uninsured, with expired tags and an expired driver's license. They'll apparently drop the uninsured thing if I prove it's not true, and I guess if I go ahead and renew my tags I can just pay the fine on that part and not have to go to court. I only got a warning for my one-day-expired DL, which I take to be the cop's way of letting me know he could have been harder on me. Okay, but he could have been easier, too. Like following the rule of thumb my friend who's a cop told me once, that he never bothered until they were over a month expired.
To top it all off, when I got to work some asshole had thrown a rock through the door of the joint. I figured the g5 was gone, the most hawkable thing in the place, but it turns out it was merely vandalism. Why isn't vandalism a capital offense again? I don't mean spray painting Bob Dobbs on a wall because I once did that, but the shit that makes no sense even from a Subgenius world view.
Stone them to death, they'll never do it again. Or maybe I'm just bitter about my own little run in with the law.
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