New signs went up a few weeks ago in front of Emma’s school. No parking during school hours in front of the school….I thought it was strange, but I chose to obey the new signs so I wouldn’t get a ticket. No one else seems to care and I haven’t seen any enforcement of the signs yet. However, an incident having to do with the newly appointed no parking still has me thinking. I need to let it go and move on…and so I will write it down for the rest of you to think about…and laugh about. After a medical transport, the cops stopped at the station to chat with us about it. The conversation soon turned when a long-time friend (also a cop) walked in and called me “jaywalker”. ☺ I didn’t think anything of it….we all went our separate ways…then my friend called me and asked if I knew why he had called me “jaywalker”.
Flashback to the previous Monday….I parked well away from the no parking signs, and was just about to walk across the street to my car, Emma in tow, when a teacher stopped me. “You can’t walk your daughter across the street, “ she says. I looked back at her like she MUST have been joking. ☺ I restated, “I can’t walk my daughter 10 feet across the street to my car?” She informed me that I was not allowed to cross the street and that I would have to walk three blocks up or three blocks down the road to cross at the crosswalk, then come back to my car. I told her that was ridiculous and I wouldn’t be doing that. I swear I said it in the nicest way. ☺ She told me the police would be there soon to enforce it. I told her to go ahead and call them, then walked across the street to my waiting vehicle. Well, she went ahead and did. ☺ She took down my license plate number and signed a complaint against me with our local PD. I guess they have better things to do than hand out jaywalking tickets to hundreds of parents who do this before and after school every single day since all I’ve heard of it was a good-natured jibe from one of my police officer friends.
Now, I’ve been known to bend the rules sometimes…I’ll admit I occasionally pause for 1 second instead of three at a stop sign or set my cruise control for 4 miles over the speed limit…but I’m not the kind of girl who goes out of my way to cause trouble. ☺ What caught me by surprise was the fact that I had heard nothing from the school regarding a new parking or street crossing policy until that moment. When I got home, I called the school, but they were already closed for the day. I sent an email to the office asking if I had missed some correspondence that outlined a new policy. The reply came back that I hadn’t missed anything…the school and police department had been talking about making a new policy for parking and kids that walk to school along that road, but there was nothing official yet.
The devil on my shoulder wants to keep parking where I’ve been parking for the past year and walking across the street, just to prove that I’m not wrong. The angel on my shoulder says to let it go and find a new parking spot that will not tempt me into contention with this teacher again. If I happen to see her again, I will do exactly the opposite of what she expects me to do….I will smile and wave. ☺
1 comment:
I guess if I were in the same situation I would most likely have done what you did and just kept walking to my car and then had to deal with one of the cops later.
Smile and wave boys, smile and wave. ;)
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