Steps:

  1. I buy a $100 parking permit so I can store my parents’ car on Biola campus.
  2. The permit either falls off or is stolen off the car.
    1. Campus Safety tickets me.
    2. Campus Safety tickets me again.
    3. Ten minutes pass. Campus Safety tickets me again.
    4. Campus Safety tickets me again.
    5. Campus Safety tickets me again, for a total of five times in two days.
  4. I appeal the tickets and get my permit reissued.
  5. A month later, I get two “Ticket reduced to a warning” notices, and one “Three Appeals denied” notice. Apparently according to Campus Safety it is the duty of any owner of a car to check every day on their car to make sure that the permit hasn’t been stolen. Final score: Campus “Safety”: $241, Phil: -$241.

I’m really not sure what to do now. In retrospect I should have registered the car in my brother’s name since he’s leaving Biola at the end of the semester, and the unpaid tickets could have lingered forever, mocking the ineptitude that issued them.

The real irony here is that last week I got what promises to be the first of many letters asking for me to donate to Biola. (Decency would dictate that these would not arrive until my diploma was at least in the mail, but no such wisdom prevails.) Nothing engenders a generous spirit like charging seven times for five tickets, zero of which were deserved, during a semester in which I should be graduated and am only still in class because of a mistake regarding which classes of mine were counted for credit.

Actually, the title of this post is somewhat misleading. It is not about genius and folly, it is pretty much just about folly.