Stop global warming. … Or all the Reeses will melt. -ad on spike last night

I’m not even sure how to begin this story.

It happened on March 30, 2008, anyway. On the way back from church, and yes, that’s a fantastic amount of irony right there.

There was this parking meter, see. Located right about here, roughly at 2352 N California Ave. Just lying on the ground, sadly flashing the little red light of expired parking. We propped it up on the way there, next to a fire hydrant that had been left open – a temporary monument to public service at its best.

Thing is, it was still there when we walked by on the way back. Blinking.

Now, in our defence, street signs and parking meters have a degree of novelty about them. It would have been perfect in someone’s apartment.

So, there we are. Or rather, there I am, carrying this parking meter, wearing a black trench coat. And the thing’s heavy, right. We weren’t sure how much change was in it (“oh… we’ll have to go around putting it into other meters if we ever get it out, I guess… or we can just leave it in there”), but yeah. Heavy. One of my companions suggested covering the top of the meter with my sweater (also black, ha). The purpose of this was to keep passersby from stopping us, I think, though in retrospect there are few ways to conceal a parking meter on one’s person. The sweater didn’t go very far in that regard.

Stopped for a couple minutes at the corner of California and Milwaukee, waiting for a companion to check a store down the street. This turned out to be a bad move. The first cruiser didn’t really do anything, just drove past. Keep breathing. The next four cruisers instead surrounded the street corner, which was actually a little alarming.

An undercover cop walked up and took the meter, looked incredulously at the sweater and returned it to me after clearly indicating what he thought of my sanity. One of the others cuffed me, pushed me against the squad car after ensuring that the two companions weren’t really with me and could take all of my possessions (this was convenient, he said, as it cut down on processing time at the station). And yeah, zero Miranda rights.

One of the lackeys drove me to the station. “Dude, you can’t just walk off with something like that. It’s city property, dog. Look, here’s the call-in -”, which went to the effect of “MALE CAUCASIAN, WEARING ALL BLACK, TWO WHITE FEMALE COMPANIONS, THEFT IN PROGRESS”. This seems a little like overkill, given that it really only amounted to three white collegiates carrying a parking meter down the street. Four cruisers?

After carefully noting my street address, ssn and checking my belt, shoelaces and Zune into police inventory back at the station, they sent me off to the precinct holding cells. This was precluded by taking my prints and mugshot (which I haven’t yet been able to get a copy of).

I spent a total of three and a half hours in there. In absolute terms, this wasn’t bad. The fellow in the cell on the left was in there overnight, freaking out about his girlfriend’s domestic abuse charges. But with no way to measure time and no one within my line of sight, it was a little unsettling. Though it’s true, hearing the other detainees going on did prove interesting. The guys a couple cells down on the right were in for heroin use, though the one swore to the officer that he didn’t remember any of it, being thoroughly inebriated at the time. It was unclear what his cellmate was swearing, or to whom, but he was adamant that he had, in fact, died, and he wasn’t completely clear on how the emergency personnel had gotten around that.

They let me out around 4:30, I think. Gave me an I-Bond (a picture is a thousand words, apparently a criminal’s signature is a thousand dollars), assigned a court date, granted me my shoelaces and other paraphernalia, and sent me on my way. The problem was, of course, getting in contact with my co-conspirators and then getting on the train, neither having my phone nor my wallet. The 53 cents I had connected me to someone completely random on the payphone, but thank heaven for compassionate pedestrians who give money to haggard-looking white students.

The best part is that I still managed to make it to that evening’s Skillet concert at House of Blues with my flatmate.

I basically tried to ignore the whole thing from that point on, and managed to do so tolerably well after sleeping for fifteen hours thereafter.

The legal spam brought it back to my attention a couple weeks ago. Multiple letters from Chicago attorneys, offering their eighty seven thousand ish years of experience in exactly your sort of criminal situation.

This is running long, so in brief – I did end up calling a private attorney, initially solely for advice with zero intent to hire. Hired him anyway, dipping waay down into what assets this student has left, mostly because I didn’t have a clue how criminal hearings work or what to expect on the other side of the courtroom bench, given that I was to leave the country directly after the semester. It was reassuring to finally hear answers from a professional.

May 9th sentence: three months court supervision with a court fee to boot. My alternative was twenty hours community service, with charges dropped. As it stands, I can’t get this expunged from my record for five years after the end of supervision, but that’s not too horrible. Potential employers: I’m not a criminal, just an idiot.

To that end, my car was double-ticketed this morning. Once for being in the wrong place at the wrong time for street cleaning, and once for expired plates.

The renewal stickers were already delivered, actually. But I think they’re in Germany.