-"Thelma"
Ready Louise!
Ahh the good old days!
I just got word today that a friend from University will be visiting me. In my little world, this is big news because I don't get to talk to anybody from University in person. Except for Curt and we don't really see each other all that much because of work.
The friend (whom, for the purposes of this entry, I will be calling "Thelma") is coming down from Edmonton. She and my roommate (whom I will be calling "Louise") and I (all in J-school) would take coffee breaks and eat popsicles or chocolate and complain about our teachers and our insane schedules at Cafe De Lys in the language institute. They were nice breaks. I miss them both. I miss raspberry popsicles too. Man, did we eat a lot of chocolate! I'm jealous of those two! Thelma and Louise ate a lot of chocolate! So did I, but they were two of the skinniest so and so's you'd ever meet! Well, not really. but they're both really tall and leggy. And I am leggy, but in a different way. I have a lot of leg, but it all meets at my thighs. I'm also fairly short. You do the math. Digressioncakes.
In the time that I've seen her last, Thelma got married. Man, that's so strange! The last time I saw her, we had just graduated and were laughing about her very narrow run-in with the long arm of the law.
See, when you're in J-school, you're at the school about 90 per cent of the time. I'm not kidding. Some people slept there, thought not much sleeping goes on when you're starring at an Avid screen at 5:30 in the morning trying to piece together a two second clip and synch the sound from four mics with the video from two different cameras all the while writing your script as you go.
It all boils down to long hours in one place and when you have a car and no place to park in the middle of a saskatchewan winter, your parking solutions can get, um, creative. We had a variety of reasons for parking where we did. The main reason being that parking passes ran out very quickly at our small university where space was at a premium. You'd be lucky to get a spot about a mile away. And a plug in? Forget it. Unless you apply in January for next September's pass and also happen to have $200 to throw around, you're shit out of luck. So we parked right by the doors where there were parking meters. And we would park there without plugging the meters, thus incurring the wrath of the parking nazis who would lay $15 ticket after $15 ticket on our innocent little windshields. Now, if you pay it right away, it's $15. But if you don't it's uh, more. And because she was from out of province, Thelma (and subsequently, Louise, who was doing the same thing) was not paying them. If they couldn't catch her, they couldn't make her pay if she was in a different province. She must have owed something in the neighborhood of $300. Canadian! That can buy a house in America! She could have built an American house next to the school and parked there!
On the morning of graduation, Thelma showed up at our house. She was moving out of her apartment that day and was waiting for her landlord so she could hand in her keys and collect her damage deposit. While waiting, she noticed police cars. She grabbed her keys and her purse and ran out the back door.
She high tailed it to our house to wait them out. She still had her dress sitting in her apartment.
So despite our protests that she should just stay with us until later that afternoon (we were both busy packing our lives into our cars as Louise was leaving for BC in a day, and I was leaving for Manitoba in two.) Thelma went back to her apartment.
I was busily cramming two lamp shades and a crate of pots and pans into the back window of my K-car and helping Louise load books and clothes into her jeep when the phone rang. It was Thelma of course.
"Can you come get me? I'm at the Y. I don't have any shoes on and there are police in my apartment!"
Because Louise was scared to take her jeep out of our underground parking garage (she also had a bounty on her head if caught), I was picked to go get Thelma. On my way to the YMCA, I passed about five black and whites. Out en masse for one girl and parking tickets? The hell? How much did she owe, anyway?
I pulled up to the Y, got out and went looking for Thelma. She finally emerged from inside and darted into the car.
"Quick! Put the seat down! They're everywhere!"
"What the hell! You're one woman with a few parking tickets! What the hell is all the fuss about?"
"I don't know! DRIVE! Hurry!"
So I motored across Regina with a fugitive laying low as we discussed how stupid this was in a calm, rational manner. HA! Kidding! We freaked out, of course. Thelma still needed into her apartment and this time, she had no shoes!
When we got back to Casa Criminalia, Louise was waiting for us. Thelma's plight scared her even more. "How the hell am I going to get out of here? I think I have even more tickets than you!" She exclaimed. Thelma, meanwhile, was debating whether or not to suck it up and call her parents and beg for some cash.
After much thought, it was decided that she would call the landlord. When she finally got hold of him, he broke more bad news.
"They impounded my car! Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap!" and after a moment: "Shit!"
And so the parents were called, the arguments were had, the money was wired. I lent her some shoes so she could get back home and we commenced teasing Louise who would soon be making a break for parts West of Regina in a Jeep filled to the gills.
I still can't believe Thelma didn't get away with it! One day and she would have been scott free! To this day, I can't believe that a city as plagued by car theft as Regina would have the manpower to sick 5 patrol cars on one 28 year old who hadn't paid delinquent parking tickets! We also found out from Thelma that night that they hadn't impounded her car after all, they just told the landlord they had.
Jerks.
Soon, there will be beer.
I am reading: Fametracker forums and Macleans.
I am eating: Nothing. I'm missing lunch at the hospital. Darn! No hospital food!
I am listening to: Nothing, but I'm humming the theme to COPS under my breath.
I am feeling: Like my fate is in the hands of others. So I might as well live my life as well as I can for the time being.
I am watching: Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Dude! They're not gonna show us what happened to Giles! Can you believe that? Okay, me too. I like this mindfuck that's going on. Thank you, Joss. May I have another?
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