Act One, Scene the First
I’ll start this story on Sunday, October 24, 2004.
Technically I was living in Manhattan but that weekend I was in Boston. I had gone to BC and still had friends up there and tried to make it up at least once per fall to see them. With the Red Sox fresh off a humiliating upset of the Yankees, the team from Boston was in the World Series – and I would also have a chance to watch them in a bar in their home city.
Since I was living in Manhattan, I didn’t see the need to keep my car stashed anywhere but at my dad’s house out on Long Island. For road trips, however, I would take a train out and pick up my car and then drive wherever I was going.
I drove to Boston. And then I drove back.
I was still in graduate school at this point. I had class Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. So, despite the fact that it would be a hassle to find legal inexpensive street parking for my car every night, I thought it would be more of a hassle to drive to Long Island at 11 pm on a Sunday and then take a train back from Long Island to Penn Station on New York’s West Side (even though I lived on the East Side…). I kept the car in the city for a few days. I thought it’d be nice – I could drive up to school, get some fresh air along the FDR. Perfectly neat and good and peachy. That Sunday night I parked my car on 14th Street, deciphered the cryptic parking signs and slept decently well knowing the Red Sox had a 2-0 Series lead and my car would be legally parked in its spot until 1 pm Monday morning.
Ready for class on Monday, I arrive at my car at just before 1 pm and find a parking ticket of smuggest orange. I blame it on the intentionally confusing parking signs: How could a spot be two-hour parking from 7 am to 9 pm on Sundays, one-hour parking all other times, and no parking ever? That’s right — IT CAN’T, until the theory of Parallel Worlds is more clearly understood. Going for a degree in English, I probably wouldn’t be the optimal candidate for that.
I tried to put the ticket out of my mind, badly convincing myself that having my car in New York City wasn’t an awful idea – or if it were, that it would only be terrible for another few dozen hours before I drove it home later in the week. If I relax, nothing else would happen. If I just pay closer attention, I won’t have to be a paranoid wreck.
Yeah. Tell yourself that.
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