Marti Noxon – "Parking Ticket" (2001)

It isn’t right, it isn’t fair

There was no parking anywhere

I think that hydrant wasn’t there

I received a rather remarkable letter from the city of Philadelphia today.

“We are pleased to inform you that the City of Philadelphia will be offering residents a chance to forgive debt relating to older parking tickets and/or fines and fees,” the letter begins.  “Through a preliminary search, our records indicate that you may be eligible to participate in this never-before offered program!”  [Emphasis in the original.]

The letter goes on to say that if I pay for all the parking tickets that were issued to me between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2017, “any tickets, fines and penalties from parking violations that were issued prior to 2013 will be forgiven!”  [Once again, emphasis in the original.]

I worked for a company that was headquartered in Philadelphia between 1992 and 1994.  I was never officially a resident of the city, but I spent several nights a week in an apartment there – returning to my family’s home in suburban Washington, DC, on weekends.

According to Philadelphia’s Parking Amnesty Office, I received parking ticket #106971535 on September 12, 1992 – over 25 years ago.  The amount currently due as a result of that parking violation is $38.00.

That may be true.  I honestly don’t know, although it seems unlikely.  That’s because September 12, 1992 was a Saturday, and I spent very few Saturdays in Philadelphia.  But it’s certainly possible that I got a parking ticket that day – I wouldn’t swear to it one way or the other.

What I can swear to is that I haven’t parked a car in Philadelphia since at least May or June 2008, when I drove one of my daughters to the University of Pennsylvania dormitory where she would live during her summer internship at a downtown hotel.  (As I recall I did get a parking ticket that day, but I think I paid it.  In any event, Philadelphia isn’t claiming that I didn’t.)

A Philadelphia parking ticket

So it’s impossible that I was guilty of a parking violation between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2017.

There’s a old proverb that says “The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.”  The wheels of justice in the “City of Brotherly Love” turn especially slowly, it would seem.

Am I going to pay for that 1992 ticket?  Hell, no – or rather, HELL, NO!!!  

After all, I didn’t get this far in life by playing it safe.  You can put your parking ticket where the sun don’t shine, city of Philadelphia.  

*     *     *     *     *

“Once More, with Feeling,” which was the seventh episode of the sixth season of the WB/UPN TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was performed as a Broadway-type musical.  (Several years later, the NBC hospital comedy, Scrubs, also did a episode where the dialogue was sung rather than spoken.)

“Parking Ticket” was a short song performed by an anonymous character portrayed by Marti Noxon, who was a writer and executive producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I never watched Buffy.  Did you?

Here’s “Parking Ticket”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: