The long arm of the law seems to have wrapped itself firmly around my shoulders this summer.
You may recall me writing (okay, possibly complaining) a few columns ago about getting two speeding tickets in exactly the same spot two weeks apart. Well, I promptly paid the first one and then figured I would wait until a bit closer to the cut-off date before paying the second one. Thought it would be slightly less painful that way, but, alas, that didn’t work out to be the case.
The latest saga began when I left my part time job a bit early to drop by my former career office to pick up some paperwork. When I turned the corner to the building, a police car behind me turned his lights on.
So I quickly turned into the office parking lot to get out of his way, but he followed me in! He was after me! He pulled his car, lights still flashing, right behind mine as if I was about to make a getaway. Apparently my registration expired at the end of July – whoops. But, in my defense, this happened within days of that date. Just the same, I promised to drive directly to the local registration place as soon as I was finished my business at my former office.
He agreed that would be sufficient and returned to his car. When I stood up from my own car, I looked up to see some of my old bosses lined up at the window watching the incident! Even the police officer joined them in a bit of laughter when he realized I was recently retired and just visiting. I took a bit of ribbing when I get into the building, but my timing was pretty good because they were handing out ice cream sandwiches on that quiet summer workday. So I got in on that – along with some group laughter that was such a regular occurrence when I worked there.
Then I ducked around the corner to the registration office, as promised. When the administrator clicked on my file to process the renewal, she unexpectedly said, “Do you know you have an outstanding speeding ticket?” What? Word certainly travels efficiently when it comes to the law! I was a bit startled, yet again, and quickly tried to focus my thoughts so I wouldn’t work myself into any further trouble.
I took a deep breath and confidently replied, “Yum…” “That’s okay, you still have time to get that done,” she assured me. She also explained that the police have a scanner now that immediately detects outdated registration on a car in their vicinity.
This is also why the registration people no longer distribute little decals displaying the year, which you were supposed to adhere to a clean license plate (they didn’t stick and simply fell off if the plate was dusty, which may be another part of my law-breaking background – but that infraction was so long ago there’s surely no record of it anywhere). I don’t know about you, but with technology seemingly linking all of our shortcomings for just anyone to randomly access, I’m sort of missing the peel and stick method of business.
Visit Sandy’s website at LifeInRetirement.ca
