SOURCE-RY It’s the morning after Shavuos and after a three-day break my cell phone is unsurprisingly dead as a doornail. On my way out to daven I plug it into a charger but strangely it doesn’t turn on. No time to investigate now. Shacharis beckons and my neighborhood isn’t one of those where there’s another minyan in 15 minutes.
Following davening I head to the dry cleaner to hand in two suits I’ll need back in two days for a trip out of town. At 9:15 a. m. the strip mall’s parking lot is nearly empty but for convenience I pull up right in front of the store. Technically the area in front of the row of businesses isn’t designated for parking but that’s how it’s used by everyone every day.
Not today. I emerge from the actual cleaners to find myself being figuratively taken to the cleaners courtesy of the nice people from the Nassau County Police Department. Sitting in a car alongside mine are two officers a veteran teaching a rookie how to fill out a ticket for parking in a fire zone with a hefty fine to follow. On-the-job training if you will with my car as the instrument of instruction.
Now there was a patent injustice in this. Later that very day scores and scores of cars would be parking all along this “fire zone” — as designated by one lone sign much farther down the yellow lines on the pavement nearly faded — with no consequence. Yet here I had pulled up for a two-minute stop that had turned into five when the proprietor (cleaning lady?) couldn’t immediately locate the shirts I was picking up. That would now cost me the equivalent of ten trips to the cleaners. It’s called selective enforcement of the law and it doesn’t feel very good when it happens to you.
