A Guide To Making Parking Enforcement Your Ally

Whenever you start dating someone seriously, you should always make a copy of their car key without them knowing it. I’ll get to the reason for that in a moment.

When I was back in Connecticut last month someone stole our car. Fortunately the police found it on a quiet side street that was suspiciously close to where most of my friends live. If I’d been home, I’d have checked inside the vehicle for micro-beer caps and little bits of barbecue.

I thought I’d lucked out with just a $100 co-pay to have the car fixed. But then a parking ticket arrived in the mail. It was for an overnight parking infraction of $44 with a $25 late-penalty attached. I considered contesting the ticket until I realized that interacting with the city bureaucracy would probably mean a mental-health counseling session afterwards, rendering the challenge cost-ineffective. But what really convinced me to pay was the terror-inducing phrase on the ticket: “Your account will be forwarded to a collection agency…”

My dad once represented a guy dealing with a collection agency. This was back in the Eighties. His client got a call from a guy who said “You’d be amazed at what could happen if you don’t pay up.” If the internet is to be believed, the industry has been cleaned up with better state laws. But I had no intention of finding out if that’s true. So I swallowed the $69 charge and called it a Gratefulness Tax for the thieves not taking the stereo.

But the real point of sharing this story is to help others. Let’s say that new boyfriend is cheating on you. You could get angry and violent and end up in the news, or worse become a celebrity like Lorena Bobbitt (somebody really should make an epic saga called The Bobbitt where a heroine slaps on a gold ring and achieves personal growth by hunting down some creep’s pecker). Yes, aggression might sound appealing, but when it comes to revenge, parking is your best ally. So do this:

Wait for Mr Philanderer to leave town for a few weeks. Drive his car to the most visible, highly policed area you can find (in Seattle it’s the Ballard neighborhood, where there’s no parking garage but lots of those little parking carts swarming the road like wasps). Thrash the ignition column with a screwdriver but leave no other marks, just as I know my drunken buddies did with my car.

In two weeks the car will amass a heaping mound of tickets. It’ll get towed somewhere and keep racking up charges. There will be no Stolen Vehicle Report on record, hence no way for your cheater to contest the charges. And his phone will start ringing off the hook when ex-cons in a Nevada cube farm start calling about late payments.

All this for free, with no unwanted publicity or smears on your record. Remember, your city and its parking authorities are there to help you.