My First Court Appearance

to preface: i realize i am blogging with an unusual frequency. this is because i find myself constantly stressed out about something and am trying to wean myself off the habit of calling my mother and up whining at her about it. aren't you lucky!

anyway, for those of you unaware of my current status as Renegade of the Law, i'll recap a little: in march, i attempted to take the a train uptown for an arts festival meeting scheduled on a friday, when there are no shuttles, because:
a) who needs to go uptown during the day? ever?
b) what members of the arts festival don't already live uptown?

at the time, i had been warned away from the a train with increasing intensity. 'it's not safe!' they told me. 'don't go!'

well. as i believe bob hope once put it, you think salman rushdie got into trouble.

i had no fears for my safety, as many bored police officers were lounging about penn station with guns that could easily take out a helicopter. however, this proved to be my undoing. at one point i accidentally took a few steps outside of a gate. i immediately turned around and went back in, thus granting some relieved officer his ticket quotient of the day. he charged me 60 dollars for illegal entry. i promptly cried. he saw this as unnecessary. after all, he was just making his ticket quotient; there was no need to get personal.

i called my mom.

'what should i do?' i said.

she said: 'don't pay it.'

this made me uneasy, if only because i have plenty of experience with unpaid fines, mostly from libraries, and they generally employed SWAT teams. and that was in milwaukee. i am a generally law-abiding citizen. still, i fear my mother more than the law, and i didn't pay the ticket.

i called the transit authority, who told me they would print me out metro card reports, and that i should wait for them. they neglected to tell me that
a) i would never receive these reports, even on repeated requests
b) they would charge me late fees for not paying the original ticket all the merry while.

and so it finally culminated in this, judgement day: My Hearing.

first of all, it involved me going to brooklyn, a place which i had hoped to avoid for as long as possible. second, i had to be there by eight in the morning - again, unfun. i am blessed with a very sweet and extremely chabad roommate who offered to escort me and then get breakfast in crown heights. this was very nice.

after i located the building (right next to conway's!) and went up, i was surprised by how much it resembled the milwaukee dmv. you stand in line for a long time, then you sit for even longer. i found myself, horrifically, engaging in ethnic studies: those people are japanese. THOSE people look more taiwanese. THOSE people look like they're from queens. etc.

eventually i got my hearing, with a very nice, extremely fast-talking lady. clearly this woman has been repeating the same words for entire decades. she talked into a tape-recorder; maybe the transcriptionists listen to them on half-speed.

anyway, at first she just offered me a plea bargain: pay the original sixty, and you can go. otherwise you have to come BACK when you get your metro reports.

i pointed out that by that time we would all probably be living on mars. of course, mars is still slightly closer than wisconsin, which was the magic word.

'you're from WISCONSIN?' she gaped. 'and you're SEVENTEEN? and you FLEW OUT here just for THIS?'

this is the point at which i became a true renegade of the law. i just smiled blankly at her.

she looked at the ticket again, then looked at me.

'that seems rather stupid,' she said.

i told her what happened, she rolled her eyes, looked at the ticket again, and then said: 'oh look, they forgot to fill out the location box. case dismissed.'

it was almost too easy.

of course, we would never want life to be too easy, but i was exhausted all the same. i'm a free woman! i thought on the train back to stern, where i had class in ten minutes. they may have revoked my warrant for arrest!