Welcome to the neighborhood

It was a uniformed cop pounding on my door at 9:15 this morning. A Saturday morning.

"You've got a ticket," he said, motioning toward my Jeep. "He said he's had the signs up for a few days."

"What? I don't drive. My car's been there since Sunday."

"Well, he said the sign's been there for days."

Apparently, my new neighbor had posted "Emergency: No Parking" signs earlier in the week, reserving our side of the street for his moving truck.

"I. Don't. Drive. My car's been there since Sunday."

I hadn't seen the signs, which were posted sometime midweek.

"You still have a ticket."

"Fine."

He stood there and stared at me in my pink pajama bottoms and oversized sweatshirt, glasses and hair, loose around my face. I stood there and stared at him with his gun.

"I don't know what to do about the other car," he said, gesturing to a red sedan.

"I have no idea whose car that is."

"You still have a ticket."

He stared a while longer. As he turned to go, I slammed the door and stomped to the back of my apartment to slip into flip flops, the first shoes I found. If I'd looked in the living room, I might have donned a pair of brown heels, red stilettos or pink, flowered rain boots. All would have looked equally appropriate given my current attire.

I slammed out of the house and into the car, pulling the ticket from the windshield. I pulled a U-turn in the middle of the street; the cop had returned to his station at the end of my block, stopping vehicular traffic for the National Marathon.

The neighbor and his movers stood on his doorstep and watched as I parallel parked across the street.

"Thanks!" he called.

"Have a nice day," I yelled, thinking of alternate meanings for the word "nice." I slammed the door and tore my closet apart, finally motivated to wrestle boxes, clothes and a treadmill from my closet. Angry spring cleaning better than none.

He'd had me ticketed and confronted by a uniformed police officer at 9 o'clock on a Saturday. On his moving day.

Welcome to the neighborhood.


Tag: Neighbors Tickets Bad weeks