ada

So I broke my toe Wednesday night. I slammed it in the door by accident. It's all bruised and mangled and nasty looking, and I can't walk on it at all. I went to the doctor's and all they x-rayed it, said "yup it's broken" then taped it to my other toe and tell me to "take ibuprofin and try not to walk." And charged me $208 (I have no insurance.) They didn't even give me crutches or one of those special shoe things so people will know that I'm injured and not just walking funny.

Then on Friday morning I wake up and go out to my car to go to work and see that it's been booted. I knew I had a couple of unpaid parking tickets but this was a little unexpected. I was parked on a main street where I knew they would tow me immediately, and while I had the money to pay the tickets (another $200) there was no way I could afford to get it out of the impound lot if they towed it. So first thing in nthe fucking morning I'm on the phone with the Dept. of Parking people, crying hysterically on hold for 45 minutes ("there are... 25... calls ahead of you") jumping up and looking out the window every two minutes to make sure there isn't a tow truck outside, having no idea how I'm going to get to the Parking office to pay or how I'm going to get to work... I'm imagining myself dragging my injured foot, limping slowly down St. Paul street during morning rush hour, hair unbrushed, crying and looking like a crazy homeless person... I finally get on the phone with an actual person who tells me "you better get down here soon, they're towing cars today!" Fuck... Panicking, I call Adam at work and luckily he took the train istead of driving to work, so his car is just up the street. So I get to the Parking Fines Collection office and there's this insane line-- like 50 people, all clutching their red and white "WARNING- do not attempt to move this vehicle" signs. I guess the city goes around and does a mass-booting for all the unpaid tickets in the city-- which is pretty fucked up because now we're all here waiting trying to pay at the same time. I made some friends in line though-- there was this one girl, in her pajamas and bedroom slippers, who was talking to everyone and making jokes about it, asking "how much do you owe?" to everyone who joined the line, and telling her story about how she walked outside to see them putting the boot on "these motherfuckers had me crying in the middle of the street, man!" Everyone there looked like they were in the exact same situation as me-, and that made the whole experience much more bearable. Everyone shared parking and ticket related stories that may or may not have actually happened ("this one time I had $750 in unpaid tickets and they were going to suspend my liscence, but my girl had just had her baby so I was driving to see her at the hospital and they pulled me over...") There was this bizarre sense of comraderie between all of us forged by our shared disreguard for the city's parking laws and inattention to paying tickets... so even though I was the only white person there, I didn't feel like anyone was looking at me like I was an outsider (the way I sometimes feel in my neighborhood)-- we're all equal in the eyes of the Department of Parking, Collection Division.

So I paid my tickets, my car wasn't towed, and I was only an hour late to work and no one seemed to care anyway. No one seemed to care about my broken toe either, though, which didn't exactly warm my heart. but whatever.

Now I'm sitting at home (well, on Adam's couch) by myself on this lovely Saturday night watching America's Next Top Model and eating chocolate cake. It's really been a fabulous week.