No use crying

I have a reputation both at home and at work for being affable—imperturbable—phlegmatic, even. However, like most people of serene disposition, there are some events guaranteed to perturb my phlegm—three-putting from ten feet, for example, or spillages at the dinner table, particularly those involving milk.

And receiving parking tickets. Is there anything more utterly rage-inducing? Like the morning last week when I pulled into a loading zone (while driving a station wagon, making it technically legal), and ducked into the bakery for half a dozen rolls. I returned two minutes later to a scene of unfolding tragedy: the official-looking lady with the bright yellow vest; the way she was showing too much interest in my number plate; the little electronic thingy in her hand that she was tapping away at—it could only mean one thing.

I arrived back breathless (just to increase the subtle sense of this-all-must-be-a-terrible-mistake) to find that it was, of course, too late: the screen had been tapped once too often, the details of my guilt had already been flashed to central office, and I was nicked, sunshine. Surely that bit of traffic lore I had been trading on for years (it’s okay to park in a loading zone if you’re a station wagon) was not about to be dispelled forever?

Not a bit. The problem was that I had misread the sign. It was a loading zone after 9:00 am, but now, at 8:47, it was just an ordinary $189 bus zone.

What a sickening waste of money! An impotent rage burned in my breast. The lady with the fluorescent vest might just as well have been a mafia boss whose thugs had pinned me down, had taken all the bills from my wallet, and were using them to light his cigar.

After I had calmed down (roughly three minutes later; I’m affable, remember), a strange serenity came over me, and I saw with absolute clarity the justice of the situation. On this particular occasion, I had been unlucky, you might say. It was a simple mistake. I really hadn’t intended to break the law. And $189 was a harsh punishment for an honest slip-up.

But seen from a wider perspective—a more impartial one, perhaps—it was all the direct consequence of a longstanding attitude and behaviour pattern. It’s called ‘getting away with as much as possible while remaining defensibly within the law’ (or, more briefly, pharisaism). It’s doing 63 in the 60 zone because that would never be picked up as speeding. If you have to do a u-turn over a double-yellow line, do it near a driveway so that it looks like a three-point turn instead. It’s not ‘No Stopping’ if you move back and forwards slowly every now and then. If you drive out of the parking spot and straight back in again, the time starts again. Zooming up on the left of a long line of traffic and pushing in at the front is the sort of thing BMW drivers do, and they should be shot, except when I’m really in a hurry and I couldn’t be bothered waiting in the queue. 50 is a ridiculous speed to go in a residential street, and 58 is sort of 50-ish anyway. If the arrows in the car park point you all the way around the other side to get to the exit, for heaven’s sake, just duck down the wrong way, because traffic indications in car parks are probably not enforceable. Or you can park in loading zones whether or not you’re unloading anything, so long as it looks as though you might have been.

Of course, these examples are (*ahem*) purely hypothetical just to illustrate the point—which is that pharisaism, like all sin, has its consequences. We reap what we sow. Sin has a way of sidling up to you, getting acquainted, becoming your close friend, and then betraying you.

Seen from the wider perspective, protesting about my parking ticket was about as convincing as the way my children declare their complete innocence over the spilt milk: “It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t! We were just having a duel with rolled-up newspapers, and I leapt onto the table to deliver the killer blow when my foot accidentally knocked over two glasses of Milo. It wasn’t my fault!”