Last week, lunch in the big smoke with a few buddies cost me $434 – $34 for the burger at an over-priced cafe, and $400 for the parking fine I got for taking a long leak.
Twenty lousy minutes over the metered allowance, and I’m left scratching for four big bills to repent my criminal sins.
Initially, it hurt because I don’t drive the old beast very far these days, preferring to remain within my 5km comfort zone. I’ve become a creature of habit, shopping in the same spots. Same stuff, different day, and I’m one carefree camper.
I then made a big mistake. I started watching one of those shows which rightly publicly humiliate criminals on national television, all the while amusing me and other voyeurs in our moment of unashamed conceited joy at the misfortune of society’s lowest common denominator.
Watching the show wasn’t the mistake, although I could have done without the young man’s vomit oozing from the side of his drunken mouth, down the driver’s door of his modified Commodore, to all-too-near the arresting police officer’s left boot.
The mistake was watching to the end.
One of the contestants, if that’s what we can call them, was as high as a kite on meth and some other unidentifiable drug that he was locked up straight away. Released without conviction and fined $250.
What? Would have been cheaper to get to the car in a hurry so I could load up a bong than it was to relieve myself after a beer and a soda squash. In monetary terms, my ageing waterworks is deemed more of a public menace than a vomiting drug addict.
I’m not arguing. Just saying.
Another bloke blew 0.15 on the bag, was incredibly remorseful, so lost his license for six months, fined a few hundred dollars and sent on his merry way with commentary from a sympathetic copper who says the wayward driver would probably learn from his bad decisions.
Had I made any “bad” decisions to receive my $400 ticket, maybe I’d understand. Maybe I should go down to city hall with my fine under my wing, manifesting my best face of true remorse.
Only last week, I read about a woman who’d stolen some gold jewellery from somewhere and tried to palm them off to the local pawnbroker. Didn’t get paid, but did get tracked to a house 150km away where she was arrested and taken to court. She pleaded guilty, only to be hit with – you guessed it – a $400 fine.
You don’t think that made me ropable. Much. Me and my bursting bladder are seen by the country’s system of jurisdiction to be the same. Yes, peas in a $400 pod.
She stole someone’s personal belongings, lied in an attempt to defraud a shopkeeper (allegedly), and in all likelihood wasn’t going to turn herself in any time soon.
Granted, had I not received a ticket for my own misdemeanor I probably wasn’t going to make my way down to let the Lord Mayor know I’d broken the rules. So maybe we do have a little in common.
But I wasn’t the one finding myself in front of a magistrate, probably telling stories of horrible circumstance, only to cop a $400 fine for her troubles.
So here I am, looking at the piece of paper as I write, wondering how in all good conscience the law can lump our respective transgressions on the same legal rung of correctional necessity.
Hey, Wanda. Got a spare $400?
