Scofflaw Smackdown 2007!

First of all, I never should have worn brand-new underpants to court. I bought new underpants this weekend and I hadn’t tried them on, see. They’re that foo-foo Go Softwear brand, and since I paid nearly $20 for a basic pair of briefs (in a masculine shade of Beaujolais), I naively assumed it was cut to conform to the topography of the male anatomy. Silly me. “Go Softwear” is clearly Dutch (or something) for “adult doll panties,” and the damn things have spent the day creeping so far up my butt that all that Beaujolais is making me kind of tipsy. Which totally took the fun out of traffic court today.

And while we’re on the topic of dressing for court, let me say that I spent a considerable amount of time this morning (and last night as well) deciding what to wear. I didn’t want to be all schlubby and disrespectful (especially because my lack of respect for Coppy McGoatfucker and his fundraising committee was probably going to show pretty clearly on my face) but I didn’t want to appear so rich and fashionable that the judge would decide I could totally afford to pay some massive traffic fine for something I totally didn’t do. So I wore black dress pants I got from a clearance rack at the Gap about seven years ago and a dark thistle-colored dress shirt I got from a clearance rack at Target at least 10 years ago. And you know what? I was still the most expensively dressed scofflaw in the courtroom. The vast majority of my fellow scofflaws showed up in what could only be described as “make this fast because I’m only halfway through cleaning the garage.” The rest were in the “I lost my iron in the earthquake” camp. And one hoochie mama looked like she definitely needed to appear in court, but a traffic citation was probably the least of her legal problems.

Coppy McGoatfucker was there, just as I figured he’d be. But traffic court to him is obviously more than just a change of venue from sitting in his car all day; it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make dramatic costume changes. When the announcement was made that the front row of the courtroom needed to be cleared for police officers, he slouched his way up in a grungy shirt and floppy hat … which he dramatically removed to reveal his underlying uniform the moment the judge entered. He even stood up taller when he did it, as though to clearly define the two characters he was playing so the audience wouldn’t get confused. For real! I don’t know if he was wearing his undercover ensemble today so he could infiltrate the mob or just to throw the aliens off his trail, but the fact remains that while the other cops showed up in plain old cop uniforms, he made an entrance in court today that involved a dramatic rags-to-riches costume change. Oh my goodness! That poor downtrodden pauper is really an officer of the law! Unfortunately, he was a week too late to qualify for his Tony nomination.

The rest of my court appearance was relatively mundane. The judge called me to the bench, mispronouncing my name sloppily. I got the driving-without-proof-of-insurance charge thrown out when I showed my insurance card. I pleaded guilty with supervision on the bullshit rolling-through-a-stop-sign charge on the recommendation of an attorney and two fellow scofflaws who said that since my record was spotless I could just pay a fine and have everything disappear—guaranteed—if I don’t get pulled over for four months. If there was good news, my $80 fine somehow got reduced to $55 by the time I walked down the hall to the cashier, who was forced to interrupt her chatty phone conversation with her friend to go double-check that there hadn’t been some kind of error.

All told, this little fundraising scam would have been a lot more efficient if Coppy McGoatfucker had simply held a gun to my head and forced me to empty my wallet when he pulled me over last April. But he had visions of costume changes and sparkle fingers and kick-ball-changes, so who am I to deny him his dreams? And for $55—the cost of three hookers and a fifth of Mad Dog to swig while I’m driving down the highway without my seatbelt—I got some great blog fodder.

And now I have my license back, so I can stop carrying my passport around and worrying that it might fall out of my back pocket. And Coppy McGoatfucker can get a gold star on his fundraising chart and maybe qualify for the monthly Applebee's drawing. But before I let this story die (and I offer no guarantees because I’m still not done being pissed about it), I have two messages I need to deliver on behalf of all citizens everywhere:

Dear court bailiff or cruise director or whatever your title is: You mumble. It’s your job to give people instructions they can understand. When person after person after person in your courtroom asks you to repeat yourself, the problem lies with you. Don’t get all snippy with us.

Dear court cashier: Your job is to process payments. Processing payments more often than not involves a pen. Therefore, your job requires that you have a pen. The cashiers at TJ Maxx always have a pen. They also have to remove little electronic tags, fold stuff and put things in bags. Which means your job asks a whole lot less of you. And yet you still didn’t have a pen. Why?

Dirty little secret

We closed on our condo in January, after a months-long battle with what remained of a murdered man’s development company, a five-week bout of unemployment, a new job for me, a whole new career for the boyfriend … along with the billions of other things people have to think about when they’re buying new property and moving into it. Together. For the first time. With no turning back. Even if one of us gets up to pee an awful lot every night.

And I thought we’d done a good job updating addresses, opening a joint checking account, transferring the utilities to our names, supervising contractors, scheduling movers, stocking the refrigerator, buying cute new shoes to celebrate moving in together and everything else on our epic to-get-done list.

But the title company never asked us for proof of insurance at our closing. And the condo board never asked us for proof of insurance when we moved in. And without those built-in reminders, the whole insurance thing never really crossed our minds. Which means we’ve been cooking meth and incinerating hookers and welding Ferris wheels in our condo for three whole months with no insurance whatsoever. None!

We didn’t realize any of this, though, until Coppy McGoatfucker confiscated my driver's license a month ago in a little fundraising sting where I discovered that in all the excitement of moving I’d also forgotten to put my proof of car insurance (and my car was fully insured, for the record) actually in my car.

But that all changed about 20 minutes ago when—after a combined 10 hours on the Internet and phone getting quotes and researching company reliability (conclusion: every insurance agency in the world has disgruntled former customers who are not afraid to post their stories on the Internet)—we are now officially insured. One condo and two cars. All in one handy bill. Which means we can ramp up the meth production. And stage more kitten wars. And invite Rush Limbaugh over for a fun little game of Push The Drug-Addled Divorce Junkie Through The Window. Because we’re insured!

Things I have learned

Cops can pull you over for any reason they dream up. I was driving home Sunday night from our weekly post-rehearsal IHOP gorging when a cop behind me started flashing his lights. So I pulled over to let him pass, except he pulled over behind me … and then he took his sweet fucking time to waddle his self-righteous cop ass up to my window and yell at me as though he’d just caught me shitting in the pope’s mouth. It seems he’d decided I’d rolled through a stop sign, which I was about to tell him is physically impossible in a stick shift since you can’t get into first gear unless you’re at a complete stop and I always start from first gear, but then he asked me for my proof of insurance. And I suddenly had a sinking feeling that I hadn’t put my new insurance papers in my car. My new insurance papers come every October and April, and it was now April and I know I hadn’t even opened any mail that looked insurancey or moneyey for a couple weeks. Imagine my surprise, though, when the insurance papers I did find in my glove compartment were the ones that had expired in October. And while I completely admit to breaking the driving-without-proof-of-insurance law for six whole months, in my defense, October was the beginning of my long period of unemployment and homelessness, so I was a bit preoccupied.

A clean record doesn’t count for shit when your cop is an asshole. As I was waiting for Cap’n Angerpants to huff and puff his way to my car window, I did the math and realized I hadn’t gotten a speeding ticket since I was a sophomore in college, which was 20 years ago. I’d gotten pulled over once since then—in a small-town-Iowa speed trap about three years ago—but I gave the cop a withering look when he gravely informed me I was going four miles an hour over the speed limit, and when he ran my license and realized I was not a public threat, he wisely sent me on my way with only a verbal warning and his professional dignity relatively intact. But not with his phone number, and he was cute and I was single.

The cops can make you the problem even when you’re not the problem. My driving record is squeaky clean. My car is maintained and (I promise!) insured. There are no visible body parts and hardly any blood in the trunk. I’m educated, articulate and gainfully employed. I pay my taxes. I don’t do drugs. I don’t listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber. I loathe everything about the Dubya administration. And despite all this evidence supporting my honorable, upstanding citizenship, the cop took away my license. What’s more, there is such a backlog of what I can only imagine are other upstanding, Dubya-hating citizens waiting to get their licenses back from angry cops that I have to wait two months and then show up in court to get it back. And when that happens, I’m probably going to write all about it completely in italics.

I’d never called to change the address on my insurance when I moved. While he was lashing out irrationally at me on Sunday night, the cop also helped me remember that I’d never called my insurance company to update my address—and possibly my coverage—on my home and car policies. And when I called last night to take care of it, I found out that I’ll have to cancel my old policy and get a new one. And in the mean time, I have no insurance on my house. Ack!

Even an angry cop can have a silver lining. If there’s a happy ending to this story, it’s the discovery that my forgetfulness and inertia paid off—I’m entitled to a full refund of my insurance premiums from the day I sold my old condo in October. I’m just not going to light any sparklers in the house to celebrate.

Thanksgiving in Iowa

So dinner today was fabulous, and we had more than the whole family here: Mom, Dad, my sister, her husband, my adorable niece and nephew, Dad's sister Nancy visiting from Denver, and our family friend Gingie. And now everyone is safe and healthy and happy ... and incredibly full.

And my cold feels like it's on its way out. I feel so blessed today I could just pee.

The drive home last night was almost uneventful. The traffic reports had been grim all day, and I kept hanging out at work waiting for the all-clear that never came. I finally took off at 7:00 (mostly because the garage closes at 7:00 and I'd probably lose my car for the whole holiday weekend if I didn't leave before then) -- and I was pleased to discover that the roads were reasonably empty and miraculously fast-paced.

So I just sailed along, driving responsibly (as always) and listening to all my favorite CDs (but not singing along as is my usual custom because my damn throat still hurt) ... when suddenly -- in lowly Clarence, Iowa -- my rearview mirrors were filled with the flashing lights of a self-righteous small-town cop.

Now, I haven't had a speeding ticket since I was in college (in the late 1980s, for those of you keeping score at home), and I haven't had an accident since probably 1993, so I figured my nearly spotless record would speak volumes for my character -- especially when I found out I was going a measly 38 in a 30-mph zone -- and I'd get off with just a friendly warning.

And I was right. So not only was the cop reasonable and polite and properly deferential to such a model citizen as I, but he was also pretty hot. After checking all my paperwork, he told me to drive carefully and wished me a safe journey home. I tried my best to convey thanks and see what happens when you're a good citizen 99.99% of the time? and I'm single and you have my name and address, you handsome copper you all in one smile as I drove off.

I don't know if he got all that, but I did make it home safely. Just like he told me to do.