The Ticket

After meeting with friends for a brew and dinner, I decided to head down the stretch for home, as it was a long day and one beer was more than enough.

As I'm going along my merry little way belting out the tune to Poison's "Fallen Angel," I see lights of red, white and blue and I'm not talking the American Flag here.

That's right, police lights...so I proceed to pull over abruptly, thinking the cop is on a mission, turns out that mission was me. I decide to open the glove box dig for my owners card and registration having them ready as he got to my window hoping to make this as pain free as possible.

He gets to the window, shines the bright flash light right in my eyes making me look away and squint. I mean really is that necessary?

He continues to say - do you know the speed limit is 25 and you were going about 40?

I really had no idea I was going 40 - I thought I was going 35 and I thought the speed limit was 35. Clearly, that is not the case.

He decides to give me a moving violation instead of a speeding ticket fine. This way I don't earn points or have a larger fine to pay.

The truth of the matter is, he never clocked me and was driving behind me so there is really no way of telling how fast I was going. Man, I could have fought that case and won as I know a great attorney.

I take my ticket and there is no breakout cost - he proceeds to tell me I need to go to the magistrates office for that information.

WTH? - I have to leave work to figure out what my fine is...is that something new?

So today, I'm heading out to pay the city of jingle town some money they don't deserve as I have 10 days to get and pay my fine. I'm thinking payments of $10.00 a month should be sufficient.