First Night

Dear City of Boston:

I would be happy to pay my parking ticket dated 2:39 pm 12/31/2010, if you would pay for my dry cleaning. Please allow me to explain why I think this is only fair, and why I didn’t feed the meter to begin with.

At first, I was so f**king happy to find a parking spot in the city—with so much of it blocked off for First Night—that I thought for a minute you might actually be cutting us a break and not charging for the rare available and unoccupied parking spot. Then I realized I was out of my mind. So I readied some quarters and stepped out of my car. Unfortunately, when I tried to get to the meter with my quarters, willing to tackle the small mountain of snow between my door and the meter, I stepped on the snow bank and sunk into a puddle of slush--while wearing my cute new patent leather boots, lost my balance, and nearly fell on my ass while soaking the cuffs of my newly dry-cleaned and creased pants.

So you see, if you did a better job with snow removal, my parking ticket would be a non-issue. I would have fed the meter before feeding my face a wonderful late lunch. But honestly, I didn’t find it prudent to put my life in peril to feed the meter. Frankly, my life, and my boots and pants, are worth far more than the four quarters you would have gotten.

Now that I’ve discussed my ordeal in detail, I think I’d like to change the terms of our deal. Why don’t we call it square? I won’t sue you for putting my life, boots and pants at risk, and you can forget that there is someone you employ who stuck a ticket under my windshield wiper that I didn’t even see at first because it was on the passenger side, which was street side, meaning he or she didn’t brave the snow bank at all which was on the left, driver’s and sidewalk side of the street. How can that even be fair?

Exactly. It’s not.

So Happy New Year. Please continue to run your fine city without $25 from me.

Thanks,
Joanne