Two Saturdays ago, at approximately 9 p.m., I talked my way out of a parking ticket. I was delivering food for Cattleman's at the time and was parked illegally in the Wannamaker fire lane. There had been a rope across the entrance to the fire lane when I'd pulled up to it. After hesitating for a moment, I decided to slide my car under the rope so I could make my delivery. I would be out quickly enough, I reasoned, and delivery drivers needed to use the fire lanes to deliver food. An unexplained rope across this one did not make it an exception.
I returned to my car to find a parking officer in a cowboy hat. He was sizing the car up and punching information into his ticketing machine. 1997 Blue Saab, Convertible, New Jersey plate UB620R. I began to tell him that I was delivering food, and that I was about to move the car, but he cut me off. He seemed angry.
"You want to tell me what it means to you when you see a rope across a fire lane?" I didn't answer.
"Are you a student?" he asked.
"Of course I am," I replied. I wondered why he'd asked; it would have been fairly safe to assume that I was one. Then I saw him make another entry on the ticketing machine and understood--he needed to be sure for the ticket.
"I don't know why you kids think you can disrespect the rules and get away with it." I was about to say that I hadn't disrespected any rules--that food drivers were supposed to be allowed in the fire lanes. But the truth was that I violated University parking rules all the time. After having paid hundreds of dollars for passes and tickets over the past few years, and after having been unable to register for classes for a time this summer because the parking office had placed a hold on my ACES account for ticket that I'd never gotten, I had had enough of the parking office and its bureaucratic ropes. So I didn't buy a parking pass this year, and I have been successfully parking in illegal spots all semester.
I didn't believe that what I was doing was right. I knew that the rules and ropes of the parking office were ultimately in place for the good of the University. But at the same time, I felt that buying a pass--and participating in a system that I didn't trust--somehow wouldn't have been right either.
So knowing that I couldn't honestly claim aggrieved status as a law-abiding parker, and knowing that I probably wouldn't have wanted to even if I could, I tried a different argument: "I'm just out here trying to do my job."
"Yeah, I'm just doing my job, too," he replied. "I have been since six this morning." The message was clear. An appeal to him as a fellow workingman was not one that I had the right to. So I got my nerve back up again--on that night, in that fire lane, I really hadn't done anything wrong.
"I've been making deliveries in fire lanes for the past three years. The other guys have never had a problem with it."
"Yeah, well I'm not 'the other guys.' So don't stereotype me like that."
I paused when I heard the word stereotype. I had noticed the color of his skin before, but didn't think that I'd paid much attention to it. "And I don't work on a commission, the way all you kids think," he added. "90 percent of the money from every ticket I write goes to the Allen Building." There was a tone of contempt in his voice when he said the words "Allen Building." "So I want you to convince me why I should let this go."
I began to sense that there was more riding on the question than just my $200. Absurdly, I blurted out "Because I don't like what the Allen Building does with that money any more than you do."
"I just enforce the rules, kid," he replied. "I don't get to question them. And you still haven't said the one thing I need to hear to erase this ticket."
"Sorry?" I knew that was what I had to say, but I still didn't know what I'd done wrong. He put away the ticketing machine, told me he'd tow my car the next time he saw it in a fire lane, and walked back toward his truck. I followed him. It was then that I got his name. I omit it here for his own protection. I told him, again absurdly, that I'd say hi to him if I ever saw him outside of campus.
"Don't spend the rest of your life conning people, kid," he replied.
He drove off before I got the chance to tell him that he hadn't been conned, that he had done the right thing by not giving me that parking ticket. But I wondered if maybe that wasn't the con he was talking about. I realized that what I was trying to say when he asked me why he shouldn't ticket me was because I'm not 'the other guys' either. But I wasn't sure if it was true anymore. And as far as he was concerned, I'm not sure that it would have mattered.
Matt Stevenson is a Trinity senior. His column usually appears every third Friday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.