bench warrant

One night several years ago I was involved in an accident. A driver turned in front of me and I couldn’t stop in time (minor damage to my car, hers was a little worse off). It was not my fault, but I received a ticket for not having proof of insurance (our glove box sometimes serves as a “black hole”). The officer wrote out a ticket, which I signed (by the light of a flashlight), and gave me a form to fill out with my insurance information and send in to the capitol (which I did the following morning). End of story.

A couple of years later I went in to the DMV to renew my driver’s license and was sent downtown to the courthouse, they didn’t tell me why. At the courthouse they told me that they couldn’t renew my license because there was a bench warrant out for my arrest! “But I can’t be arrested, I’ve got only 45 minutes left on my parking meter!” I phoned the kids to have them put supper in the oven and bid them my farewells; (they started planning my jailbreak). Apparently that ticket from the accident way back when told me I had to appear in court on a certain day, but the officer had neglected to give me the ticket, they still had my copy of it in my file. However, the law is the law, and the judge told me I should have paid attention to the ticket when I signed it and remembered the details even without the ticket in hand, which is true… I paid the fines and avoided arrest and finally got my license renewed. End of story?

A few years later my license needed to be renewed again. The DMV refused because I had outstanding obligations with the law. Not again?!? But I was on to their schemes this time; even though they had no record of my paying the fines from my previous brush with the law, I had kept the receipts and knew just where they were. Case closed, and another would be “criminal” was free to wreck havoc on society…

Let’s hope the story ends there, my license needs to be renewed again in 2012, I’m not looking forward to it…