Better A Ticket Than A Toe-Tag

My mum is a very nice lady, but you don’t want to cross her or hurt her kids. That doesn’t mean we get away with everything; on the contrary. Her “mum sense” is very sensitive; she often knows of our wrongdoings almost before they happen. We are usually very honest in confessing, as lying often leads to a more severe punishment than the transgression itself.

One day my brother, about fifteen and fairly shy and quickly intimidated, returns home from school and tells my parents that he got a ticket going to school this morning for crossing while the light was red. He swears that the light changed when he was already on the crossing with his bike. The officer, however, bullied him into acknowledging he crossed the road during the red light and gave him a ticket.

My mum studies the ticket and ushers my brother into the car, and my parents and brother drive to the police department.

Mum: “Where do I need to pay?”

Police Officer: “Excuse me?”

Mum: “Where do I need to pay? Apparently, my son crossed [Busiest Crossroads in town] during rush hour and all he has to show for is a ticket. I’m happy to pay the ticket and not the undertaker, so where do I need to pay?”

My mum makes enough noise to attract the attention of the commissioner and he overhears the last part.

Commissioner: “Can I see the ticket, please?”

He mumbles under his breath, “[Officer] again,” before speaking to my mum.

Commissioner: “I agree, it would be sheerly impossible to cross the road there at that hour without getting hurt. You don’t need to worry about the ticket; we will take care of it.”

It later turned out that the officer issuing the ticket had a track record of very readily ticketing teenagers for real or imagined facts. I don’t know what happened to the officer, but we never heard anything about the ticket again.