I was trying to avoid writing anything about the parking situation in Towson because, well, I wasn’t bothered by it until today. See, I had been flying under the radar and secretly taking a proverbial piss on the Baltimore County Revenue Authority since mid-August. Well, not anymore. My parade has been officially drenched by Hurricane Douchenozzle. Allow me to explain.
 
When I came back home to Baltimore/Towson, I didn’t have a car. Of course, I wanted one, but there is nowhere to park it. Since my house is on a street that is zoned for commercial use, there is no residential parking. The parking lot directly behind my house, that would appear to be useable, requires a permit from my landlord for $80 a month. I’m sorry, but fuck that. He might as well charge me a pound of flesh.
 
The meters in front and to the side of my house are off limits because Towson is greedy and won’t give me a permit to use them… despite the fact that I LIVE here. When I asked the Transportation Office (or whoever it was), they basically told me “Well, you should have thought of this before you started renting that house.”
 
However, having not had a car since highschool, I refused to be beaten by this hobknobbery. I got a car anyway. When people asked where I would park it, I replied that I would “wing it.”
 
But, alas, there was a loophole. Not long ago, my friends and I discovered a parking meter (about half a block away from my house) that was broken. To the casual observer it looked normal enough, but in reality the time never expired. It was perpetually stuck on 10 minutes. Not only that, but it was sort of tucked away in the back corner of this parking lot. It was all mine. Mine, mine, mine. Sure, every once in a while some dick would steal it. But then I would sneak out of my house at 3 in the morning and take it back while the rest of the world was sleeping. Life was good.
 
This arrangement worked perfectly for about a month. And then you know what?
 
THEY FIXED IT!!!!!!!
 
Are you kidding me? There are drug dealers and murderers and child mollesters and drunk people on the loose, yet they still have time to fix one measily malfunctioning parking meter. When I found this out (yesterday), I sat in my car and cried for over four hours to “Incomplete” by the Backstreet Boys.
 
To make this long and very depressing story short, I parked my car at a meter last night (they’re free after 6pm) and forgot about it. Predictably, I did not wake up at 7:59am to move it, and as expected I had a ticket sitting on my windshield this morning when I finally did roll out of bed.
 
$18. That’s a joke. If I was a “grown up” with a real job I would laugh at that. I’d send them a 20 and say keep the change. Instead I’ll probably pay them in all dimes.