A Bingo Day

"Robin Barker." The judge read my name from the top of his thankless pile of felons. I approached the bench. He read my citation: Failure to obey police officer.

Guilty.

[Monk tone]: Here's what happened:


Five days before Clara was born, I got a ticket for bypassing a police barricade. Unfortunately, this was no Dukes of Hazard moment. It was a lapse of synapse. Or, as the citation says, "no culpable mental state" - which must be a law enforcement euphemism for "stupid."

Fast forward to March 9, two weeks to the day after Clara was born. Here I was, in the courthouse, pleading my case. The judge reduced my fine by 25% (the maximum allowed by law) - down to $215. Driving away, I heard an ominous sound from the back of the van. Our new van. The one with less than 500 miles on it. Sure enough. Flat.

I had luckily (or unluckily) pulled into a Schuck's parking lot. Cellphone-less, I asked to use their phone. But then, no one was home. The two nearby friend's who's numbers I have memorized were both out of state (as was Briton). The Schuck guy, Shawn, said he'd help me change the tire. Shawn jacked up the car (in more ways than one) and then asked for the wheel lock key. I didn't know where it was. Briton would know - but that meant I needed to get home so I could email him. I tried not to lose it by remembering I just needed to be patient. It's not like I had anything else to do. Meanwhile, Clara was fussy because she had a poopy diaper and was hungry.

Since we couldn't change the tire, Shawn had the (at the time) brilliant idea to sell me some fix-a-flat. NEVER USE FIX-A-FLAT! It will cost you more than the sticker price. A little voice inside my head, which I will call The Holy Ghost, told me not to use the fix-a-flat. But Shawn said it was safe to use and he's the Shmuck guy. So I paid $7 for the can. He even inflated the tire for me, assuring me this brand was safe to use on wheels with ... monitoring systems. Except as fast as he put the stuff in, the air fizzed out. There was a long gash in the side-treads. I was stuck at Schmuck's. And out $7 more.

Eventually, mom rescued us. By that time, though, I had been gone from home 3 hours instead of 45 minutes as planned. With no extra diapers, Clara had pooped through the one she had on, and peed through the cloth diaper I had replaced it with. Onto my lap. So not only did I smell like leaky milk, and spit up, I also smelled like pee. But I was holding it together, folks, I really was. I hadn't even cried. Yet.

We got home, Briton responded to my email (the key was at home), my dad changed the tire, and then we drove to the Honda Dealership where they could tell us if the flat was caused by a road hazard or a manufacturing defect.

They quickly told us two things:

a) the fix-a-flat hosed our TPMS device. Cost to replace? $100; and
b), road hazard. Warranty not applicable.

Cost to replace tire? $160. If my math is correct, by 5 p.m., this day had cost us $482. Because of my mistakes. For every mile on the car, I had made $1 worth of mistakes. Good thing it wasn't the Bogus! (it has > 145,000 miles).

Then, to top it all off, I was being whupped at Scrabble. While waiting for the verdict on the tire, my dad and I started a game on his palm pilot. Before you can say, "bingo", he had 106 points on the board to my zero. That's about when the tears started to fall...