Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

See the previous posts:

Worst Day Ever Explained, Part I
Worst Day Ever, After
Worst Day Ever, Aftershocks

All righty then, caught up? Now for part two. At the end of my previous post I had gotten back to my vehicle, and handed Officer Dufus my ID. he takes a look at it, then opens his mouth and these words come out, “You are trespassing on federal property. You are charged with willfully disobeying a direct order from a federal police officer, blah blah blah.” The blah, blah, blah is where my brain refused to cooperate any further and was no longer able to process the sounds coming from his mouth into the English language. At some point Officer Dufus must have said something along the lines of, did you hear me? or something like that, I can’t be sure. I must have blathered somethign along the lines of, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never received such directions, I had no idea what the guy said, etc.” At some point my neurons began firing in the correct order that allowed me to once again become capable of coherent thought. I realized (somewhat belatedly) the complex set of directions that Officer Mumbles had given me were not directions to the building I was now in front of, but the directions to a vehicle checkpoint that I had not gone to, but was ordered to. The keen powers that are mine to command. So, never fearing that this was all a silly misunderstanding, I explained this all to Officer Dufus, whose only reply was, “Looks like your co-worker just got you in a lot of trouble.” What? Did he hear me? Hunh?

Then he put the icing on the cake, “You can follow me in your vehicle back to the visitor center or you can ride with me. If you ride with me though, you’ll be in handcuffs.” I had to pick myself up off the ground (figuratively), I mean who says, “Yes please!” Who? I declined his offer and followed him to the gate.

Now, listen. I am not a large woman. I think the appropriate term is “tiny”. I am small. If you have ever seen me, you know this is true. A few years ago, I posted this photo, see? That little person there? That’s me. All five feet, two inches.

I could not possibly have intimidated this man, so what was up with the handcuff thing? All right. So I get back to the visitor center and Officer Dufus goes behind the Plexiglas to talk to Officer Mumbles. Then Officer Dufus comes back out and starts saying more things to me. Sorry, my brain got all jangled up after the handcuff statement so I was once again incapable of processing human speech. Then he put the cherry on top. I did manage to catch, “Lucky for you no-one has to go to jail today,” then the reasoning dropped out AGAIN! Jail! Was he kidding, it was all a crazy misunderstanding. Listen, why would I purposely run the gate then go exactly where I said I was going? Hello, MacFly? Anyone home? Then he got all chatty and smarmy with me. “You have a good day now, Dr. Pavlina,” or some random shit like that.

I. Was. Pissed. The. Hell. Off.

You do NOT treat people like THIS. Ever. Officer Mumbles had a few more people to write out passes for and mumble to, so I waited. Getting more and more pissed by the microsecond. When Officer Mumbles had processed all the waiting people, he then says he needs my vehicle registration. So I had to go back out to my van and get it. Then I stand there while it takes him 15 minutes to write up the ticket. By this point there were like another 4 or 5 people in the center. He hands me back my vehicle registration and my driver’s license.

Then he says something like, “sign this.”
I then ask him what it is and he looks at me and says, “It’s a ticket.”
I said, “Yes I realize that, but what kind of ticket is it? What jurisdiction is it under?”
“You never got a ticket before,” he says.

Oh good grief.

“Not one like this,” I say. “Let’s pretend I don’t know anything. Explain it to me like I’m a three year old.”
He sighs then explains the ticket, though not very well. Yes, and all this happened in front of the waiting crowd. I’m sure they were powerful amused. In the end it was a battle of wills, who would give out first and it was me. I gave up, signed the ticket and stormed out. Looking at the ticket I saw the total was …..315 USD. Oh my stars.

The best part was, I never had to get my van inspected, and I was allowed to return to the building and “finish my work.”

Was that not the most incredible story you ever heard? Like I said, everything is true. The best part was, when I went back for my “court date” that wasn’t really a court date but more like a pre-trial hearing, the charges were completely dismissed. So I suppose there is still some justice in this world.

Tags:   worstdayever1 Comment