#658 – News From the Michael Craig Desk, Part IV – Memoirs of an Average Every Day Sane Psycho Supergoddess

Hard as it is to believe, my Jo Anne had a serious brush with the law. Yep, Jo Anne, who teaches civics and has never touched a cigarette of any kind, was in a heap of trouble with the gov’ment.

The nightmare began during a routine traffic stop in late 2008. As Jo Anne explained it, “I was driving through a yellow light when a policeman stopped me. Even though I thought the light was yellow, he was really mean and insisted on giving me a ticket. Then he said the car’s registration had expired and he was going to give me a ticket for that as well.”

We had received the renewal form some months before but it sat unattended in a pile of similar documents: property tax notices, quarterly withholding tax coupons, neighborhood-association assessments, etc.

To avoid getting this second and apparently more serious ticket – driving through a yellow/red light, based on the size of the fine, isn’t as important to public safety as not paying your five hundred bucks for a license-plate sticker on time – Jo Anne considered playing the cancer card.

“I don’t know how it happened, officer. I just completed [six months ago, but no need to tell the police THAT detail] nine months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for breast cancer and it’s left my mind somewhat scattered. I must have forgotten to send in the renewal.”

Or -

“I don’t know how it happened, officer. I just completed nine months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for breast cancer and I’m still trying to catch up on the all family paperwork that fell behind.”

Jo Anne didn’t use cancer as an excuse. She’s too good for that. (I also suspect she was worried about bad karma, not to mention that it might not have worked with this cop.)

When she got home, we immediately updated the registration online and duly paid the money Arizona extorts for the privilege sharing the road with the worst drivers in the United States. Because she could use this immediate action to most likely get the expired-registration ticket waived on her court date, she put all the paperwork together … and dropped it on the Pile of Neglected Documents.

The court date came and went. The next we heard of it was from an envelope bearing in big black letters “NOTICE OF DRIVERS LICENSE SUSPENSION.” If the goal of putting such an incendiary label on an envelope is to get the recipient’s attention, mission accomplished.

The letter inside notified Jo Anne that her driver’s license was suspended for her traffic violations and her failure to appear in court. A warrant for her arrest would be issued in 15 days if she did not take immediate corrective action. (It didn’t help that we had gone several days without collecting or opening our mail, so more than half the 15 days had run. But it was certainly characteristic of how we were handling the matter.)

Within minutes of receiving the Notice, Jo Anne was on the phone with the court. Things were looking bad. She couldn’t contest the charges and couldn’t take traffic school as an alternative – those options were lost when she failed to appear in court. So now she was responsible for over $800 in fines, would have to in addition attend an eight-hour traffic class, and would have to ask the Motor Vehicle Division to remove the suspension placed on her license.

She had barely hung up the phone when she started for the courthouse. She was able to convince a judge that, because she had instantly corrected the expired registration, he should use his discretion to waive $600 of the $800 in fines. But she still needed to go to the MVD to have the suspension removed. And she’d still have to go to that class.

That all went down the previous week. Jo Anne hadn’t taken care of the remaining items and I wondered, as we approached the police officer on the other side of our front door at 5:45 AM, whether the jig was up.

“Mrs. Craig,” the officer said, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

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