Parking Fines are not so Fine

Parking fines are certainly not 'fine'. They await you on your worst days and lurk on your windshield, somehow expecting you to swoon at their preposterous sight.

The fine itself, measuring around seven centimetres in length and three centimetres in width has your infringement number in big, bold numbers, and then continues to state your offence, usually something quite small and worthy of an appeal though most appeals are not granted or accepted, and have a barcode on the side, the scanning of which immediately shows the permanence of your penalty.

Seventy-two dollars, mine states. I am to pay seventy-two dollars because I purchased a daily parking permit. Yes, I purchased one. So why, you ask, did I get a fine, then? Well, I parked on the kerb, outside the university car park, and I purchased a daily parking permit from the university car park. That there is the problem. According to the blond man wearing a council worker vest, with a face hostile and apologetic at the same time at the sight of my distraught face, I was meant to have purchased a daily parking permit from the machine across the road on the footpath, because I apparently parked in a 'council area' and not in the university area.

This man proceeded to tell me all of this seven minutes after my lecture had finished. Had I jay-walked across the street like the group of people waiting with me at the traffic lights and risked paying a two-hundred and fifty dollar fine if I was caught or risked getting run over because I walk at the speed of a turtle, I would have made it to my car in time to not catch this devious white coloured slip snuggled under my windshield wiper, curled up against the window in protection from the morning chill.

So there I stood, like a good citizen at the traffic light, awaiting my rightful turn to cross, so that if I were to get run over and remain alive I would sue the person who ran me over and receive a huge amount of money in compensation for the pain or loss of limbs I would receive. It took seven minutes for the little red man in front of me to turn green, so I crossed the road, whistling away and smiling after having photographed my favorite stencil artist's new stencil being placed upon one of my university's building. Baby Guerrilla, you are amazing.

And like the fool that I am, I saw the bright yellow vest moving about my car and assumed that the man wearing it was photographing either the car in front of me or behind me, so I did not run to stop him because I thought that the person whose car he was photographing was quite unfortunate. To my dismay, I realised that it was my car. I was heavily confused -  purchased a daily parking permit, why was he fining me?

"You didn't buy a ticket from the machine on the road. Once I print the ticket, I can't take it back. Sorry." My face portrayed that of a recent widow's. A fine day, a fine lecture, a fine stroll after a fine photo taken of a fine piece of street art in the making being mounted up by a fine street artist, was all ruined by a fine. One fine. 

It took seven centimetres by three centimetres to ruin my entire day. That, and the fact that whilst parking at my other campus I scraped the side of my car onto some large car's tyre. The large car and its tyre are fine, my father's car, not so much.