Foma's Game
Game Clock (min:sec)....Event
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00:01.5
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00:16.2
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00:17
I don't recall ever winning this game, btw.
For those of you who are not veterans of Jesuit education, we all had demerit cards. On the back was a pattern of characters: 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 4 J 1 2 3 J 1 2 3 J...
Teachers gave you demerits for breaking any of the various and sundry rules. When you got to a "J", that meant you got a "JUG", which stands for "Justice Under God", which is an hour of hard labor after school. Mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, whatever.
If you really fucked up, you got a Saturday jug, which was 8 hours hard labor on a saturday. I only got one of those, senior year. I spent 6 hours mowing grass in the heat, and 2 hours weeding Brother Thornton's rose garden. Without gloves. I'd grab a handful of weeds, and pull, only to discover a dead branch of rose bush had fallen in there. So basically, I spent 2 hours cursing and pulling thorns out of my hand. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever felt more Catholic.
But the Foma game illustrates how merciless fate is about keeping me on the straight and narrow. Here's another illustration...
Fast forward to October 1994. I graduated from Pomona in May, my dad gave me our second car, a little Plymouth Sundance that I called Mr. Perkins, because it was an average, nondescript car that needed an average, nondescript name. I piled all my things into it in June and moved back to LA, to move in with my girlfriend Tasha. Now that it's October, Mr. Perkins' Missouri registration has just expired. I've researched what it would cost to register the car in CA, and I can't afford it. I'm in my third month at Katz Communications, where my salary is $15,600. That's not a lot to live on in LA, with student loans, rent, gas, insurance, etc.
The basic registration is only about $100, and that part I can cobble together using my strategy of gratefully accepting any time one of the account executives offers to take me to lunch, then getting half of whatever I order in a to-go box, so I can have it for dinner. But, since my car is from out-of-state, CA also wants me to pay a $300 "smog impact fee", and I just don't have it.
My strategy: the sticker won't show as expired until 11/1. At that point, all I have to do is stay off the radar until 12/20, when I fly home to StL. I'll take all the money I get from Christmas, and save until then, and I should be able to cobble together the payment. Note here that my intent is to comply with the law as best I can given my economic circumstances.
Fast forward to December 15th or so...
I've been in the habit of running my gas tank as low as it can go, to delay having to spend money on gas as long as possible. As a risk mitigation measure, I keep a small gas can in the trunk, in case I run out.
At about 1am, coming back from dance rehearsal in Claremont, I run out of gas on the 10 freeway. No problem- I'll just dump the emergency gas in there and be on my way.
At about 105am, the California Highway Patrol pulls up behind me, and shines the light on me, dumping gas into the car. The officers get out and slowly approach.
Officer 1: "Is this your vehicle?"
Me: "Uh, yes."
Officer 2: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Uh, well, I ran out of gas but I keep some emergency gas in the trunk, so I'm just putting that in."
Officer 1: "Can we see some ID?"
Me: "Sure." I hand over my driver's license. Officer 1 takes it and goes back to the car. Officer 2 watches me while we wait.
After a while, Officer 1 comes back.
Officer 1: "This car is not registered to you. I thought you said it was your car."
Me: "Well, it's registered to my dad, but he gave it to me, and I'm going to get it registered here in CA. You can see our last names are the same."
This seems to satisfy CHP. They say they'll watch to make sure I get going OK.
I finish putting gas in the car, get back in, start up Mr. Perkins, and pull onto the freeway. CHP pulls onto the freeway behind me. 10 yards down the road, they flip on their lights and pull me back over. I pull onto the shoulder and wait while the officer approaches.
Officer 1: "We noticed your registration is expired. You've been driving on expired registration. License please."
I hand over my license, giving him the whole sob story about how I'm leaving at the end of the week to go home, where I'll finally be able to get the money to afford the registration. Officer 1 doesn't give a shit. He just let me drive 10 yards down the highway so he could officially give me a ticket for driving on expired registration.
He writes me the ticket. I curse my star-crossed fate, and remember Foma, and note once again that I'll never succeed as a criminal.
As a special ironic postscript, some years later the "smog impact fee" was ruled unconstitutional, and I got a check in the mail for $300 plus some nominal interest.
In case you're wondering why I'm writing about all this today, let's start with last night. Joel borrowed the car to go drive to Berkeley so he could go to a Halloween party with his Female Of Interest (FOI). I was content to hang at the beach house with Kona and catch up on episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert, and maybe take a short evening beach walk. It's a little rainy, which is extremely unusual for HMB outside of Jan-Mar, but the beach is nice even in the rain.
I told Joel the curfew was 10am Sat morning, since I needed the car at that point to drive to work to tutor. At 830 this morning, Joel called...
Joel: "So, I'm up, and I went outside to drive back from Berkeley, and the front right tire is totally flat."
Me: "Shit."
Joel: "Yeah, I'm going to get working on that."
So I push back my tutoring meeting, and get out of bed. I realize that Kona hasn't been walked since early evening yesterday, so I leash her up and we go outside. Kona wants to run a bit, so I run with her, and she leads me straight to the sandy beach path.
Now, technically, HMB state beach is no-dogs-allowed. You have to walk up a bit to where the state beach ends. But it's 9am on a rainy Saturday morning, and there's absolutely no one around, and Kona _really_ wants to go down that path, so we walk down the sandy beach path about 20 feet, and Kona does her #2 thing. I stop to pick up after her, and unclip her leash figuring I'll give her like 2 minutes of freedom before taking her back. In spite of the gentle rain, it's quite warm, and the beach is beautiful. The waves are really coming in, and crashing noisily onto the sand.
So noisily that I didn't hear the HMB state park ranger pull into the parking lot behind us.
Kona is 20 feet onto the sandy path, and has been unleashed for a grand total of 45 seconds. I turn around and see the ranger approaching.
Yes, it's going to be one of those days. It's like 9am and already I just want it to be over. I clip Kona up again and wait for the ranger.
In the end, I get a break because I'm a local. I get a long lecture, the ranger takes down all my information and puts me into the computer and gives me a warning, saying that if they catch me again I'll get _two_ tickets.
The thing is, locals take their dogs on the beach all the time. They just don't do it on weekends. Weekends are when all the outsiders come, and that's when they patrol the beaches. And me, not normally dealing with dog issues, I forgot that the unwritten rule is that you only take the dogs down there during the week, when there are no outsiders.
Sigh.
So, this is why I decided long ago that I'm just not cut out for a life of crime. The universe punishes me swiftly and mercilessly.
2 comments:
haha except you are a criminal--who stole his mom's car in the middle of the night for YEARS? you're just not good at banal things apparently.
Well, to be fair, I didn't really STEAL it- I just borrowed it without asking. I mean, c'mon, I put it back. That's hardly stealing.
Also, my mom reads this blog. That's significant b/c I haven't told her yet that I used to ste- excuse me - borrow the car without asking.
If I get grounded it's your fault.
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