Flaky in the city

Yesterday afternoon, I began arguing over e-mail with one of my FWABs re: hatred of the City of Boston's parking rules and the resulting crimp it has put on my checkbook and sanity.

My friend is known to have strong, no-nonsense opinions, I know this, and know how he feels about my war with the meter maids, but was surprised at the vehemence of his practicality: why don't you just pay the tickets and get a sticker and quit blaming others.

When I suggested that I got tired of having to deal with the bureaucratic issues like parking stickers and inconsistency of enforcement, he said: so move, then.

I was furious at both his failure to agree with me and equal lack of empathy. But it was at that moment that I realized, of course, that he is right. Even while I still couldn't disagree more.

It's a larger issue of weariness with the necessity (and yes, it is a necessity) of conforming to relatively arcane, and in many cases arbitrary, processes and rules that keep order in a large population center where, if everyone just did what they wanted ..... chaos. Sometimes you don't want to have to attend to the 50 things you have to always attend to when you have car in a city: registration, excise tax, parking signs with different messages every 10 feet, neighborhood stickers for some hoods and not others, visitor permits, moving vans that might appear the next day, street cleaning schedules with varying frequencies, snow emergency routes that may or may not go into effect when it snows, unposted legacy rules about parking in medians....

Sometimes, when you've got other things to think about -- like friends, and money, and coffee, and pets, and trying to find dates, and remembering to sleep, and doing other things you love -- you just want to have a car. And to drive it when you want to. To park it where you need to. Without being penalized.

In short: you want to be able to be the flaky, occasionally irresponsible, personality you are and live in the city you love without going to the poorhouse because of it.

Maybe this desire and the resulting reality are at dire odds.