no parking

To park legally almost anywhere in my town, you have to have a resident parking permit -- a little decal featuring a photo of some scenic local vista that you stick to your car's rear window. While there are parking meters on a few of the busiest commercial streets, to park almost anywhere else in town, you need a parking permit. The town enforces the rule pretty strictly, mostly because it collects a tidy sum of revenue from the parking tickets.

The resident parking permits are only good for a year, and, though I've lived at the same address for over ten years, every year I have to apply for a new one. This year's been particularly challenging. A few months back, I sent in the required forms -- the application, a copy of my car registration, two utility bills and a check for twelve dollars. A couple of weeks later, an envelope arrived from town parking office, returning all the things I had sent in, with a note that said they had already issued a resident parking permit to my address.

I called the office and explained to the nice woman who answered the phone that, yes, we had gotten one parking permit, but, that, in fact, there were two people in the household who drove and, though we realized it wasn't exactly ecologically-minded, for the moment anyway, we each had our own car and so we needed a second resident parking permit. The nice woman apologized for the confusion, and told me to resubmit the materials. I put all the papers into a new envelope and sent them back.

A couple of weeks later, all my forms were again returned to me. This time, the note said that, by now, the utility bills I'd submitted were more than 30 days old, so I'd have to resubmit my application with more current ones. I waited until the new gas and electric bills arrived and immediately sent them to the town parking office.

This time, when the envelope from the town parking office arrived, I was sure it would contain the resident permit. No such luck. Inside was a note saying that, although the car was registered to my address, the records at the state department of motor vehicles indicated that the car was garaged in a neighboring town.

I called the state department of motor vehicles and the nice woman who answered the phone told me that, yes, the records did list another town and that, unfortunately, this happened all the time because car dealerships forgot to update the records when they filed the transfer papers. She said that she'd be happy to change the information for a $50 fee and what was my credit card number?

I said thanks, but no thanks and called the car dealer I had bought the car from. The nice woman who answered the phone said that they were very sorry and they'd be happy to take care of it and would send someone over to the registry in the next day or so.

I waited two weeks, called the car dealer to make sure they had updated the garaging address, collected copies of the latest utility bills, and once again sent off the whole package to my town parking office. Yesterday, a familiar envelope arrived. My resident parking permit at last! I thought as I tore it open.

But, sadly, no. Instead there was a note from the town parking office explaining that they couldn't issue me a resident parking permit because I had an unpaid parking ticket. And how had I gotten that parking ticket? Why, it was from the time, a couple of days before, when I had let a dinner guest park in our driveway, while I parked on the street in front of our house and a passing cop had slipped a ticket under my windshield wiper because my car didn't have a resident parking permit.

What's the last parking ticket you got?