Commonwealth Boulevard now gives me a high state of anxiety.
I must not be the only one, because now the traffic flows along part of that road at 18 or 19 miles an hour.
I guess I’m not the only one who got some of those $100 tickets, huh?
Round about Christmas time I got in the mail not one but two envelopes from the City of Martinsville.
Uh-oh, that can’t be good. Official mail from governments usually means bad news: taxes, or you’re in trouble some kind of way.
A heat went up over my shoulders and the back of my neck and then prickled my face, which flushed as I looked at the paper which said things such as “SUMMONS” and “$100” and had a picture of the back of my car.
I opened the other envelop. For a few minutes I wondered why they’d send me a duplicate of the bill.
Then, to my horror, I realized it was not a duplicate of the other ticket. It was a whole new ticket that looked exactly the same except for the date. So that makes a total of $200.
The City is taking pictures of cars, measuring their speeds and sending out tickets. I had no idea that such a ticket would fall on me, but I got not one but two. What a shock to get two at once. If a policeman had pulled me over and given me one ticket, I’d learn my lesson the first time and it certainly would not cost me double.
But here’s the worst part. Those tickets were dated a few weeks back. This means they must send them in batches, and who knows how many other tickets had been assigned to my car that didn’t make the last mailing period and would arrive in the next week or two. I drive that way to and from town every day.
From then on, when I drive into town, I steel myself: “Go really slow. Go really slow.”
The catch is, by golly, that chant will be running through my head all the way down Chatham Heights Road on the way to Commonwealth Boulevard, but by the time I get to Commonwealth Boulevard something entirely new is in my mind and I entirely forget about the crawling slowness!
Ain’t no telling now how much money the City has collected by slapping people with $100, $100, $100, one right after the other, those ticket bills piling up before people realize it and arriving all at once in the mail, with a whole other batch to arrive in the next week or two, when a person could have just figured it out from a first one $100 warning issued at the time.
At first it just panicked me to drive along Commonwealth Boulevard, and I’d totally change my route to avoid it – if my mind could stay on that plan to remember to do it before it was too late, and I’d find myself on Commonwealth just out of habit, panicked.
Now, though, I handle it differently. I just set my cruise control at 23 real early in my commute. It’s really weird to go along at 23, but, whatever.
By the time I reach the danger zone, I slow down to 18 or 19 miles an hour to keep pace with all those other people who have enriched The City of Martinsville’s coffers with their piles of $100 payments as well.
