Rebel Without A Cause

As I've written about before in this blog, I definitely racked up my share of speeding tickets and parking tickets throughout my college years. I've been pulled over in almost every county between Cook and Champaign, I've gotten clocked for going as much as 34 over the limit or as little as 9 over, and I've done everything from court supervision to traffic school as ordered by the judge. And in terms of parking, I probably paid hundreds of dollars in total fines while I was on campus, which is a lot considering tickets were only about $5-10 a pop at the time. Not to mention I also got towed a few times, which cost me a good chunk of change too.

But after graduation, I've actually managed to maintain a very clean record. Despite the fact that I traded my Maxima for a much faster car, I probably drove slower overall in the Infiniti than I did in college. Maybe it's a sign that I've gotten wiser and more sensible in my old age, maybe it's because traffic in Chicago sucks too much to drive fast anyways, or maybe it's just good luck.

Whatever it was, all of that has gone out the window in the past few weeks. I've already shared the detailed story with some people, but to sum up, I've gotten a zone parking ticket ($50), speeding 21-30mph over limit ($100+), and now a citation for "disobeying traffic signal" ($75).

The last one is definitely the most annoying - it was the middle of a typical weekday, in a fairly empty parking lot, and apparently I didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Cop came out of nowhere and wrote me a ticket, as well as admonishing me for having illegally tinted front windows. He didn't write me up for that part, because I was a good enough citizen for having my front license plate mounted, but whatever. I'm guessing the fact that when he asked me for my license, I had to tell him it was being held as bond for my speeding ticket from only a few days ago, didn't exactly help my cause.

So now, not only do I owe the stupid government a couple hundred bucks in fines, but I also have to do the court supervision and traffic school thing just to keep these tickets off my insurance record. Wack. The worst part is that I'm starting to second-guess myself at every stop sign if I stopped fully enough. Or every time a light turns yellow, trying to judge whether I should stop or not. I feel like Superman but robbed of my powers.

Oh, and I was just kidding about the "stupid government" part. Our government's awesome, what am I saying.