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sarah hampson's curerncy

I have had a $35 latte. I have had my eyebrows threaded for $50 when the service itself cost an acceptable $20. Once, I bought a $40 gift for a friend and exited the store to find one of those impudent yellow things under one of my wipers, flapping in the breeze. Add $30 to that little purchase.

Oh, don't think I'm as calm about it as the tone of my words might suggest. It sounds as though I'm willing to take this cocky urban slap on the windshield like a citizen. Hah! Who does?

Which is why the release, last week, of the City of Toronto's 18-page manual of guidelines instructing city staff when to void parking tickets felt as if the Wizard of the Big Smoke had parted the curtain, providing valuable insider information and sanctioning the art of the masterful weasel.

Some stated reasons for voiding tickets are expected, sure. What's a bureaucracy if there isn't a windy exemption list put together, seemingly, by overserious cubicle-dwellers who pride themselves on facilitating the smooth flow of daily urban life by deciding who (drivers of tour buses, taxis and security vehicles and, uh huh, municipal workers, among others) can get off free while the rest of humanity - no matter if you drive a Porsche or a Toyota - must yield to rules?

But you mean there are human minions behind the municipal government curtain who are willing to recognize the average driver's "unusual circumstances" and "medical reasons?" Not only that, but consider this: "When sufficient explanation and/or documentation are presented, and it is reasonable to assume the circumstances outlined are likely to have occurred, staff is expected to give the recipient the benefit of the doubt."

Gosh, I finally have hope that if I ever get to the trial I requested for a parking ticket issued two years ago, I might prevail. I received the ticket whenI returned home in a hurry to tend to a sick teenager who was on his own. I parked the car on the lip of the sidewalk outside my house, and rushed in the front door. When I came out again 10 minutes later to park the car properly, it was too late. I promptly took the ticket off to the office to fill in a dispute notice. I was recalling the advice of a friend who told me the city has such a backlog that by the time they get around to dealing with it, the parking officer either won't show up or won't remember the details.

Statistically, though, the odds aren't in my favour. In 2009, 10.75 per cent of parking-ticket recipients in the City of Toronto (2.8 million tickets were issued) requested a trial, and of the number that went to court, 79.01 per cent received a conviction. (It should also be noted that last year, 15.34 per cent of parking tickets were cancelled for a host of reasons, including improper information on the ticket and "driveaways" - people who leave the scene of the parking infraction without waiting to receive the ticket.)

But I was going to win them over by shamelessly hoping they'd take pity on me. "I am a single mother! My child was very sick! I was panicking!" I would plead in court. "Besides," I would add in righteous-citizen mode, in case the single-mother ploy wasn't enough, "I was simply blocking my own puny driveway!"

I'm not sure why it feels like such a personal affront when a parking ticket magically appears. But I don't think I'm alone when I find myself balefully glancing at those parking officers, thinking dark thoughts. Faux-cops, they are. Gunless wimps. Pariahs, frankly. And in fair weather they wear those goofy shorts. They're like those nerds in high school who moped about the corridors thinking of ways to undermine the jocks and beauties with pranks deployed when the planned recipients weren't looking.

When I let myself, I like to think that the parking-ticket frustration has something to do with the random nature of fate.

Oh yes, I can believe that a yellow parking ticket - or whatever colour they are in your city - invites existential despair. After all, there are times when I can park outside my Starbucks or the eyebrow-threading place at the same (prohibited) time and get away with it. And yes, I feel as though I've received some benediction. I feel blessed; spared.

(There are people, just in case you didn't know, who believe in parking angels.)

So, naturally, when the opposite happens I don't stop to think that maybe I'm suffering from Car Megalomania, the feeling many drivers have that they're entitled to slip easily through a city with impunity. That's why people get road rage, isn't it? It's why they honk their horns in traffic. Swear at cops and other drivers. A car is for ease of mobility, and we don't like anything less.

I never think that a parking ticket is the reasonable price of car convenience. No, I develop a persecution syndrome.

Hey, maybe I could use that as an excuse for hoping a ticket will be voided by some compassionate city employee? Think about it. It even sounds a tad medical.

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