My court experience

I may or may not have mentioned that I recently got a $287 ticket for rolling through a stop sign.

I was leaving a friend's house, driving through an area I know like the back of my hand. I approached an intersection, came to a *pause* at the stop sign, saw that there were no cars coming (or pedestrians, or bicyclists, or horse-drawn carriages), and turned right, continuing on my way. I was very surprised to see the flashing lights of a motorcycle cop behind me, even more surprised when he told me that I hadn't come to a complete stop (there was nobody around! Except for him, parked incognito across the street, waiting for someone to make the mistake I had made), and completely shocked when he wrote me a ticket. Then immediately I was angry. He said himself that I hadn't been driving recklessly (THERE WAS NOBODY ELSE AROUND!), so I couldn't understand the point of giving me a ticket. Other than the revenue. And that's why I was mad.

So I opted to go to court. I have a clean driving record after all, and I wanted this infraction off of my record so that it wouldn't affect my insurance rates. Plus I felt that I was acting in the *spirit* (if not to the letter) of the law - I had proceeded safely through the intersection. My brain works quickly enough to see that a street is abandoned without coming to a full 3-second stop. Surely the laws were written to keep people safe, right? Right??

I've never been to court before, so I didn't know what to expect. I checked in at reception and quickly realized that I was one of many people that would be pleading their cases at 4:00. I picked up a "Rights and Responsibilities" handout to read, as directed, and had a seat in the courtroom.

The handout explained that I could plead "Not Guilty" if I thought I wasn't, and this would lead to a hearing at a later date. I could plead "Guilty" if I was admitting guilt, or I could plead "No Contest" if I didn't want to contest the charge or go to hearing on the matter, but the outcome would be the same as a guilty plea. The judge explained to everyone as he entered the courtroom that he only had the power to reduce the fines by up to 25% in most cases, or if we had a clean record he could offer us a traffic class which would have fees of its own, but then the ticket would be dismissed.

On a side note, Nick brought up the excellent point that people with otherwise clean driving records probably aren't the ones that could benefit from a defensive driving class. If I haven't had a ticket in over 10 years, I'm probably doing a pretty decent job. Isn't it the people that get tickets all the time who need to take that class? I mean, if our aim is for safer roads and all?

The judge began calling us up in the order that we had checked in. What's your plea? Do you have anything you want to say? Each matter was over very quickly (except for the poor Vietnamese guy who wasn't sure what he had done wrong, but was happy to just accept the cop's version of events and settle the matter today so he wouldn't have to come back with an official interpreter). Almost everyone that was called before me had a clean record, and so most people happily took the traffic school.

My turn. He read me my charge, Failure to Obey a Traffic Control Device. What's your plea? Me: No Contest. He asked me what happened, and I explained that I had rolled through a stop sign, there was nobody else around, and how I was very surprised to have gotten a ticket when the officer himself said that I hadn't been driving recklessly. He said in a somewhat empathetic way, "Yeah, they'll do that. Your record is clean. Do you want traffic school?" The inner me wanted to go off about the fairness of the ticket: Weren't these laws designed to make the roads safer? Does it make sense to punish someone for not following the letter of the law if nobody was put in danger? This is really just a money spinner, isn't it? Who do I talk to about all of *this* stuff?

But instead of saying any of that, I replied, "Well, not particularly, but if that's my best option I'll take it." Snickers from the people behind me. He assured me that it was my best option. And so I thought oh well, I didn't make a point today, I was just part of the machine. I'll pay the maybe $40 for traffic school (that's what Nick had to pay for his "seatbelt class"), my record will be clean, and I'll just shut up and leave. I went to wait in the line for the clerk to give me my traffic school information. She did just that ($40, as expected), and she also gave me an invoice for court fees - $150, to be paid at reception on my way out.

$150. Ah. I see.

And what have I learned from this experience? I have learned to watch my back. I have learned that the officers who are supposedly there to serve and protect are actually making an opportunistic mint off of safe drivers who make mistakes. My focus is no longer solely on the road, the cars around me, and being a safe driver. I am watching the rear view mirror for flashing lights.

Here are some fun facts about traffic tickets that I got from this website:

Every year, 34 million speeding tickets are issued in the US. That's 65 per minute.

These tickets (and this is just *speeding* tickets, not rolling through stop signs or "making an illegal turn" like that Vietnamese dude) generate $5.1 billion in revenue per year.

According to research, a 10% drop in a city's economic growth results in a 6.4% *increase* in tickets issued.

Due to rate increases, insurance companies profit as well, to the tune of $10.2 *billion*.

And why is this ok?

Albert Einstein

You know what I learned today? Albert Einstein failed the entrance exam to a Polytechnical Institute in Zürich because, despite exceptional marks in physics and math, he didn't score high enough in the language and arts sections. He clearly wasn't well rounded enough. For what? For school. In life, he seemed to do just fine for himself.

Valedictorian speaks out

A friend posted a link to this valedictorian speech and it is worth watching. And her blog is worth checking out too.



If that doesn't work, here's the link

And here's her blog

Balance

I'm kind of struggling right now with finding a balance between meeting my children's intellectual needs and meeting my own. I am completely aware that my growth is vital for theirs, and that seeing me interested in learning is an important social cue to instill their own interests in learning.

I'm an all-in kind of person. I get slightly obsessive about subjects and people that I find interesting and inspiring. You read my current book list, right? THAT'S what I'm into right now, and I could spend 12 hours today reading and it wouldn't be enough for me. But it would be far too much for my children, and this whole deschooling/unschooling issue is something that I can only share with them to a certain degree. When my passion (which is a much more acceptable word than obsession) was for food (the health issues, the politics, the creative and social implications), that's something I talked about all the time. I shared what I learned, and it benefited them, completely.

And of course I talk about unschooling and why I think it's important and what I think the problems with the institution of school are (not education, but *school* - it's a very important distinction).

The thing is, they aren't schooled. They haven't had their spirits broken. They can't feel the same kind of passion for the subject that I can, because they are coming from a completely different place. So while all of this is so very important for me, it's a non-issue for them. Of course, the fact that I grow from it is invaluable to them, so I need to continue to absorb everything I can.

So while I'm reading and blogging and learning and growing, they are off doing their own thing. Sometimes, a lot of times, that's perfect. I am just trying to find that discipline within myself to be able to stop what I'm doing and completely shift the focus to them when they need me, and not feel like my needs are being blighted.

If only I didn't need sleep.

Teenaged Me

I so could have just fallen asleep in the sauna at the gym if it weren't for the dripping sweat feeling like bugs crawling all over me.

On the drive home, I considered whether or not Teenaged Me would like the me that I am now.

Teenaged Me was quick to snap-judge, so I'm not so sure she could get past the minivan. She was, however, intrigued by the idea that an extraordinary brain could be hiding inside an otherwise average-seeming person, and I like to think I might have that going for me. She too had a very healthy opinion of herself.

Strangely, I can't remember what Teenaged Me thought she might be doing as an adult, like, for a living. I think she still thought that you just kind of enter the workforce and be a worker bee if that's the class you were born into, unless you experienced some crazy, freak luck. I didn't realize until very recently that there are other ways to survive besides the full-time job that you don't particularly like. I thought that a job was a job. It didn't occur to me that there was an option to actually do what fulfills you. I'm sure Teenaged Me would have been suitably impressed by my baking company in Sydney. It was small, but it was *mine* and I didn't compromise anything.

Teenaged Me didn't really get adults though. She couldn't relate to them. So I'm sure she would have been distant and respectful and not really cared one way or the other.

Book list

I've kind of overdone it with the whole book reservation thing. No biggie though, library books are free. And renewable. And re-check-out-able.

Here's what I've got now:

The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn. I started this quite awhile ago, but then I got distracted by The Red Tent and Committed. I read this awesome excerpt this morning:

The way our society is set up now, something's got to prevent visionary experience. Otherwise, ninety percent of the American monoculture would shatter. People who are fully and permanently awakened to the wildness and beauty in and around them make lousy wage-slaves. On the other hand, people who are not distracted by a wellspring of spiritual and sexual yearnings can assemble clock radios or automobiles very quickly, or focus their intellects on monthly sales charts.

Sorry, children of mine, I am not giving you the upbringing you are going to need in order to while your lives away in soul-sucking, mind-numbing jobs.

Here are the other books in my pile:

Instead of Education by John Holt
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Teach Your Own by Holt and Pat Farenga
How Children Learn by Holt
A Different Kind of Teacher by Gatto

Nate is working through (with help) two of the Calvin and Hobbes books he got from the library. There are eight more waiting to be picked up. Plus Cosmos by Carl Sagan. So much information!

Committed (book review, sort of)

I just finished Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert's follow up to Eat, Pray, Love. I was excited to read it because I recently saw the movie, fell in love with the Brazilian character, and had to find out what happened. So I did. And eh, it was ok. The story was very familiar to me - relationship with foreign-born dude, necessity to marry in order to secure resident visa for said dude. The book is mostly an anthropological study of marriage and the author's attempts to make peace with the institution since she was going to have to go through with it in order to stay with the man she loved. She was reaching for something that would let her give herself permission to marry, but she admitted that she was reaching which made the whole thing bearable.

My favorite part was her "prenuptial informed consent release" - the list of her top 5 character flaws, "just so I would be certain he had been fairly warned." I loved them because I could have written the first two and a half myself if I was, you know, eloquent. Here they are:

1. I think very highly of my own opinion. I generally believe that I know best how everyone in the world should be living their lives- and you, most of all, will be the victim of this.
2. I require an amount of devotional attention that would have made Marie Antoinette blush.
3. I have far more enthusiasm in life than I have actual energy. In my excitement, I routinely take on more than I can physically or emotionally handle, which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic exhaustion. You will be the one burdened with the job of mopping me up every time I've overextended myself and then fallen apart. This will be unbelievably tedious. I apologize in advance.
4. I am openly prideful, secretly judgmental, and cowardly in conflict. All these things collude at times and turn me into a big fat liar.
5. And my most dishonorable fault of all: Though it takes me a long while to get to this point, the moment I have decided that somebody is unforgivable, that person will very likely remain unforgiven for life- all too often cut off forever, without fair warning, explanation, or another chance.

While she was highly ashamed of these traits, I find the first two and a half (you know, the ones that apply to me) to be quite charming. Go figure. I do tend to be very forgiving, even of my own "flaws". I am very impressed by the notion of acknowledging and addressing one's flaws. It's admirable stuff.

All in all, it was a decent read. Some of the marriage history stuff was interesting. Near the end, she goes into depth about the fundamentally subversive nature of marriage - the state can never control a relationship based on private intimacy which is why extreme leaderships (cults, communists, slave owners) have historically attacked personal relationships. She found solace in this, the idea that even though she and her partner were more or less being forced by the government to marry, it was by nature a subversive act. In my opinion, all of the justifications are unnecessary. You do what you gotta do, and if what you gotta do involves having your relationship recognized by the state, more power to you.