I told my parents that I didn’t want to take a car to college. I thought having one would be a hassle. But my mother told me that she didn’t want the car in her driveway, either. I was taking the car or she was getting rid of it.
Free car, or no car at all. So I took the car with me. And that’s how it began.
I live in a dorm called Hume. There is a “Hume parking area” next to the dorm, a “Graham parking area” across the street, and a parking garage behind Hume. The Hume parking uses a red decal. As a freshman, I have a red decal. So that’s where I left my car day after day.
I rarely used my car: maybe twice a week, usually less. So I would go days without seeing it.
The day before one of the hurricanes this fall, I went to pick up my sister so we could spend the night at a family friend’s place, away from the storm. I found two parking tickets.
The police can ticket you for a specific violation once a day. Since I hadn’t used my car for a few days, I had received more than one ticket.
When I went to appeal my tickets, I was told that although I lived in Hume and had a red decal, I had the wrong red decal. There are two red decals.
So those were my first two parking tickets. The other … few … parking tickets were more my fault.
Now, the University of Florida has a parking shortage. This might be why the university police are so strict on parking and hand out parking tickets like candy.
You would think that university police would be grateful for those students who ride their bicycles to class. Allow me to correct you.
I got pulled over on my bike. Yes, laugh. It’s true. Not only that, I had to go to bike school, on a Saturday morning. It was a choice of bike school or paying $118.50.
My infraction? I rode the wrong way on a one-way street. If I had been on the sidewalk instead of next to it, I wouldn’t have been stopped.
The officer had actually staked out that road. For bicyclists. I swear. I even saw him again, just around the bend, a few days later. So I went to bike school.
Perhaps it is just my personality, but I found the whole situation quite amusing. I had the worst infraction of any of the class members that Saturday morning.
Four people were there for running stop signs on their bikes; one of these, a yoga teacher, had stopped, but not behind the white line. She was the only nonstudent. Two students had used only one of the two required lights needed when riding a bike at night. The last student was ticketed for riding without using his hands.
Much to my surprise, I learned that the students didn’t have the same feelings I did toward the police officers.
Lisa Riemondy, a second-year student in the class with me, said: “I don’t blame the police officers. I blame the law.” She did agree with me about the class, admitting bike school is “the most ridiculous thing for us to spend our time on. We all know how to ride a bike.”
Between all my parking and bicycle tickets, and other minor events I don’t want my mother to learn about from reading this, I’ve spent almost as much time and energy dealing with infractions as I have dealing with my classes.
I can only hope that this particular aspect of college isn’t preparing me for the rest of my life, or even the rest of my academic career.
