Journalism / Welcome to McCourt, Please Drive Around
Welcome to McCourt…please drive around.
If things in this world were not impersonal and automated enough, just make your way to McCourt.
It’s a long story, isn’t it always when it comes to cars, tickets and court.
Ok so I may not be the poster child of safe drivers. But when you’ve been schooled in Boston where we take our sports pretty serious, there’s baseball with our Red Sox, we love our New England Patriots football team and we’re still hoping for the return of the Celtics Basketball dynasty. Of course driving is the next favorite sport and getting tickets—lots of them are par for the course.
I’m not the most organized person. I get tickets and life gets in the way. I forget to pay them and then comes the dreaded letter that says, you blew it, your license may have been suspended.
For some reason, they just don’t want to come right out and say it.
When you get said “letter” visions of horror dance in your head:
The clerk’s office, the department of motor vehicles and court.
You see precious moments of your life slipping away in unending lines with people who have really heard it all and have no problem telling you that when you’re in mid sentence.
But I digress, first is the actual getting said ticket and as I recall it wasn’t pretty.
When the officer, who I estimated to be age 15, but really I know logically it could not be, came to the window I rolled it down.
“Ma’m (is he kidding me, who is he talking to, oh I guess it must be me, Mam’me)
you have a tail light out.”
“Thank you officer, I say rolling the window back up.
Now, he’s banging on my window again.
After giving him my license, registration, proof of insurance and my first born child he finds a way to write up a ticket, probably his freaking first.
He sees a major discrepancy here, my address on my license does not match the one on my registration.
The man is freaking Colombo, I’ve been bagged.
He writes me a ticket and tells me I have ten days to “correct the problem.”
This is a problem?
Not for me.
The ticket ended up somewhere in the abyss of my jeep and was soon forgotten.
The other was a speeding ticket and for the life of me I can’t remember it at all.
I went on with my life, kinda hoping they would go on with theirs and that the two would never meet up again.
But Johnny Law always catches up with you, and this boys and girls is the lesson I learn, the one I implore you to adhear to just pay the ticket. You have no idea the treats they have in store for you.
Things that will test your sanity.
Things that will make you want to scream.
Reasons why people go all postal, now I think I know why.
If they only made it easier to do the right thing, but it seems whichever way you turn there are rules, just getting in the way of life.
Let’s face it, we are a society who doesn’t really stop and smell the flowers, and so what. In my heart I know I’m a city girl. I know this because for me the great outdoors is the distance between the house and the car.
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This is an interesting piece. Is this piece basee on your real life?? I like how you talked about the sports in Boston. I really liked this piece but unfornately im not a boston fan.
You should keep on writing this and keep readers up to date.
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”...proof of insurance and my first born child…” this is great. although it does get a bit hard to follow those first few lines, and there are some typos i see where this is going. i like how theres a moral and all, that was awesome. i especially liked how well you tied in the humor while also showing your dislike towards the officer. nicely done.
I’ve been to Boston. You cannot exaggerate the difficulty of driving the streets of this city.
this is a tired old cliche- “But I digress” and not even necessry to your meaninag.
clumsy language =” first is the actual getting said ticket and as I recall it wasn’t pretty.’A simple direct sentence will suit our purposes.
Good idea to write in the first person point of view. The main character has an impatient, above-it-all city personality. Good job.
Write On!
I think that the story is a little bit confusing, even though you try to connect your love of sports with the ticket incident, I don’t think that the “passage” from one subject to the other is very good. In the end I think you changed completely the writing “style”.
Liked the humour.
Cops totally suck, but for the record, I do not recommend rolling the window up in one of em’s face. They take disrespect rather unkindly, they have sticks and guns, and they have alot of friends that have sticks and guns.
It’s interesting; your view being that law will always catch up to you, it happens, and let’s just move on in life? This give a completely negative connotation towards law enforcement, when a day without would surmise our destruction via civil warfare.
I’ve really only two issues with the writing itself; 1) The format was utterly horrid to read, everything left-slanted, I would suggest realigning it. 2)The beginning could use a bit of work, it feels like something of a harsh tangled web, obtuse would be a fitting word. It just doesn’t flow as it should; this could easily be revised and edited out, however.
Overall; you’ve some talent, and I do hope you expound heavily upon it.
This piece started out well, but by the end, I was wondering where you went off to. ”I digress” is an understatement. I was thinking that maybe you were going to tell me about some new invention like drive through ticket paying, but all you did was recount an incident with a police officer and then go on to tell me about the unkempt condition of your Jeep and how you are a city girl. But it was still a funny story, so I scored it well.
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