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by Russ Nickel | December 11, 2011 · 5:00 am

Cop Week: Day 6 — The Final Chapter

I had to pay my ticket by April 1^st, a full 7 months after I got it, but trying to convince myself to do anything that requires me to do things is a nigh impossible task. In fact, I usually can’t even convince myself to try to convince myself of stuff. It’s that exhausting.

But it was St. Patrick’s Day, the kind of day when you see the world through emerald glasses. The people on the streets have a strange green tint to them, though whether it’s due to their attire or their alcohol-induced nausea is hard to say. On every street corner, Irish drinking songs blare from garbled voices, random strangers have their hands transformed into merciless pincers, and all in all, cops have a little less power.

It was a day of serendipity.

I didn’t actually realize it was St. Patrick’s day until witnessing the aforementioned indicators, but when I pulled into the spot right in front of the courthouse, I could tell the patron saint of boozing was on my side. Plus, there was already money in the meter, and when I stepped out of the car, the smell of fresh grass hit me like a wave of odor particles. As I walked up to the oversized glass doors, lawyers smiled at me, cops gave me a head nod, and, well, those were the only two types of people that passed me actually.

I’m going through security right behind a guard who’s jivin’ with his buddy, and they’re talking about how they both just learned to do the dip snap. I just learned it too, so I chime in and suddenly we’re all cracking up and packing together.

Extreme bonding moment complete, I get in line for the payment window and strike up a conversation with the lady in front of me, who’s super friendly for someone about to fork money over to “the system.” She sees someone she knows, and because of the magic of the day, lets me go ahead of her, which means that instead of being serviced by grumpy government employee number one, I end up facing this beautiful brunette who can’t be over 25. She’s wearing a tight-fitting, low-cut green top that’s still somehow classy, and the first thing she does is make fun of me for not embracing the holiday. Suddenly I’m drooling all over myself, which, I must say, is a definite step up from weeping like a little girl.

The gods of game must’ve been on my side, cause I’m making jokes left and right, getting into the whole story of how I got the ticket, court, bike school. She’s laughing and joking back and at the end she gives me this look and says, “Perfect! I’ve gone ahead and closed your case, so you’re good to go!”

“I am?” I asked, bewildered. Could someone have truly taken pity on me, the poor, wretched biker whose lack of attentiveness led him astray but for a moment?

“Yep!” She winked.

And just like that, I didn’t have to pay the ticket. I smiled, said thanks, and walked off into the distance.

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Tagged as Court, Holiday, Humor, Law, Lucky, Lucky Charms

by Russ Nickel | December 6, 2011 · 4:43 am

Cop Week: Day 1 — The Meter Maid

Every day this week, I’ll attempt to entertain you with a tale of one of my run-ins with law enforcement! Here we go!

As an exemplary example of upstanding citizenship, I’ve had very few interactions of the cop variety. In fact, I can almost count them on one hand, but every time I get to 2, I get distracted!

As a child, I was rarely let out of the house, and even then, my leash only allowed me to stray so far from my parents without being choked, so beyond the occasional leash gnawing, I had little opportunity for mischief.

But all that changed when, at the ripe young age of 16, my parents took off the harness and forced me to get my learner’s permit. The only flaw in their plan was that they had to sit in the passenger seat for 6 months while I drove frighteningly close to parked cars, swerved into oncoming traffic, ran down cones, small mammals, and small, cone-shaped mammals, and was generally unable to control my new power.

With moderate power comes a similar level of responsibility, and now that I was behind the wheel of a car, I was subject to the rules of the road and the authority of the roadkeepers. Soon enough, there would be a head-on collision… metaphorically.

Encounter One: The Meter Maid!

The year was 2004. It was a crisp afternoon, the kind where the air smells like rotting seaweed and opportunity. The sun shone overhead, casting an aura of growth and joy upon me, and I thought then of fields of wheat, my favorite grain. My thoughts quickly turned to milling, literally, then bread, and finally settled into a lust for sandwiches. It wasn’t long before my maternal unit similarly succumbed to the sun-induced line of reasoning, and, taken by her desire, she phoned in an order for a Pastrami on Rye. She never could’ve known what that sandwich would cost us, never could’ve foretold the effect that simple order would have on our family.

That was one of the days I was practicing my none-too-reassuring driving, so it was I who turned the wheel and pulled up to the sandwich factory. But the fates conspired against us that day—there were no parking spots. My mother, bless her misguided heart, told me to park in the red—it was just for a second. I argued, but the sandwich frenzy was upon her like I’d never seen, so I grudgingly obeyed.

Critical Hit! From out of nowhere, a meter maid knocked on the window! Flustered beyond reckoning, I started weeping like a little girl trapped in too tight a leash.

But the meter maid was a ruthless Fräulein, and before I knew it, I’d gotten my first and only parking ticket, and also had my first encounter with the law, albeit the lowest and most loathsome form.

It doesn’t really count though, since I passed the blame off on my mom and didn’t have to pay for anything because she felt guilty.