Bless Me Father: Appealing the Ticket

To appeal a parking ticket you appear by appointment in the City Council Chambers, this gorgeous marbled room where you await your five minutes max with the official assigned to hear your sorry excuse.“What IS this place?” asks the woman behind me. “It’s where the mayor sometimes sits,” says the lady beside her. “Like the throne room sort of.” (Close enough, I think.)Being here is like going to Confession in the old days, though this same woman is stunned when she realizes as much: “You mean they take us ONE BY ONE?"  she says, appalled. (She thought maybe it would be a group pardon? Or maybe group punishment like 15 years ago when all the boys in my Fourth Grader’s class got denied Recess because one boy peed on the radiator and it smelled like the Monkey House?)You do all go up one by one, like Judgment Day, and you whisper into the side of the head of the official who looks kindly if serious.I watch them all as they go: Miss Civically Ignorant; the young white dude in his sweats and his stupid Red Sox cap worn backward swaggering like some big-shot tough guy; the young black man in a coat and tie earnestly clutching papers who, when he speaks, speaks in perfect, if heavily, accented English.I watch myself and blush to hear what I say: that I park every day in front of this apartment complex to bring food to my elderly uncle only this time I parked in the handicapped spot and came back an hour later to find some vigilante justice in this note. “YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF CITY STATUTES! I HAVE PHOTOGRAPHED YOUR CAR AND I HAVE CALLED THE POLICE!” and sure enough a $300 ticket was pinned under my wipers.My excuse in this appeals process? That Uncle Ed was not answering the phone and I simply panicked and for the first time in 18 years literally did not SEE the Handicap Parking sign.The upshot? fine reduced to $100 and next time they throw the book at me. My grave confessor proves to be as kindly as he looks.  I make my way to the door delighted by the lenient sentence; catch sight of the moron with his cap still on and uncharitably think  ' now there's a radiator pee-er if ever I saw one' and exit, a free woman.