I WAS ONLY GOING ONE WAY

The other day I went to the police station around the corner down the road, finally getting around to renewing my driver's license between my birthday and a month later as per the cryptic instructions on the postcard they sent me, one of those secret postcards, that said that between the aforementioned dates I had to go either to this large police station between 2 and 4 on these afternoons with these exceptions, that large police station between 9 and 11 on those mornings with these exceptions, or this other smaller police station on my side of the big toll bridge at one time a week only but since that possibility was so remote it didn't say when so I had to call the microprint number to find out the secret information, all because I drove south on a one-block street between 2 and 4 pm on a Wednesday (see Smiling Bob's Extra-Special Police Adventure). Go figure.

In a room filled with guys in uniform sitting at desks where they arm wrestle with sheets of paper, now and then going outside to hassle law-abiding citizens taking their usual Wednesday afternoon shortcuts, the polite lady clerk took my personal seal and a bunch of money, stamped the back of my old and now disgraced license about 42 times with various sizes of red-, blue- and black-inked rubber stamps so as to eradicate all semblance of validity while yet verifying to future generations of clerks and policepersons that I had indeed been here to a confirmable degree on this day and date long ago with fees in hand, bearing my personal seal, at this official desk in this official building, town, county, country, in person, with the correct face and what not - imagination is in short supply amid the nitgrit of bureaucracy - then she blinded me with an eye test and stopped me from putting my shades back on so she could take my picture without warning in a corner with a flash that made me look like Julius Caesar falling off his horse on my driver's license.

After that I had to watch beige walls for 45 minutes made up of those widely spaced ticks and monotonous tocks that drip like cold molasses out of bureaucratic clocks that hang above steel-legged benches upholstered in cold gray prison vinyl decorated with little triangular rips and old cigarette burns until as a hard-driving criminal locked into the police data base I could sit for a week-long lecture compressed into less than two hours by an about-to-retire police officer who also would rather have been just about anywhere else in the country than here now repeating this lecture to an audience of tired eyes for what looked and sounded like the thousandth time about the meaning of red lights and stop signs and the paragraph on page 66 and so many other priceless memories, e.g., about how going 60 is like your car falling off a building I forget how many stories high, like that will ever happen, all because last year I drove in one direction.

Wonder if I could erase my record if I drove backward...

SMILING BOB’S EXTRA-SPECIAL POLICE ADVENTURE

There I was - as I've been doing a couple of times a week for over 10 years now – tootling down the little street behind the train station on my way south, when I passed a watchful policeman standing by the roadside, which was ok because my seatbelt was on, I'd come to a complete stop, used all my signals properly, paid my taxes, possessed a proper visa and hadn't done anything felonious within the statute of limitations, so all was cool...

The first thing I thought when the several nice policemen at the other end of the street flagged me down was that the street must be blocked at that end for construction or something, maybe a local festival, but no, it wasn't that at all, it was something much more stimulating and informative. The police helpfully explained that, as of an uncertain time ago, the street was no longer a street on some days between 2 or 3 to 4 or 5pm and 6 or 7 to 9 or 10 pm or was that am, while pointing out, by way of proof, a sign that was not a traffic sign.

On one end of the cyclone fence that parallels the street, someone with a delightful sense of humor had hung a sort of banner featuring a smiling cartoony grandmother and some cartoony smiling schoolkids, kind of a peripheral vision safety poster that careful drivers would observe only out of the edge of their eyes since, in the interest of public safety, careful drivers turning into the street wouldn't dare take their eyes off the road - or the de facto grandmothers and schoolkids thereon - to read the detailed print at the bottom of a delightful cartoon sign that didn't, after all, say Drivers, Watch Out for the Elderly and the Schoolkids around the Station, and Have a Nice Day! Believe me, I could only grin from ear to ear!

I took particular delight in the fact that nobody at all had informed anybody at all about the change in the standard way, for example via the internationally recognized round red street sign with the white bar through it that is posted in prominent visibility at each end of subject streets everywhere else in Japan, indeed the entire world, with below that sign a smaller rectangular white sign where, forewarned, you look to find out the particulars; charmingly, they did nothing like that on either end of the half-block thoroughfare. So I couldn't help but smile at the nice policemen and their cute sign, while radiating goodwill.

Stopped in the middle of the street where I could actually read the entertaining cartoon, it informed me that the street was not a street not every day between 2 or 3 to 4 or 5pm and 6 or 7 to 9 or 10 pm or was that am? I had to chuckle at the acute wisdom and broad generosity all this involved, taking comfort as well in the judicial economy and select forethought that had gone into it, what with the waning tax base and the need to sustain essential boondoggles while somehow coming up with a way to maybe cover the salaries of the nice policemen as they stand around on little back streets and flag down the citizenry to share in the public joy.

I thought the whole thing was a knockout of an idea, and immediately made my 70-dollar contribution so that the law's eager minions can keep on with such approaches to safety, the better to preserve us all from the many problems that come with having finally got a little money in the bank. But I frowned at having to break the law once more by driving the rest of the way down the little street so as to become legal again, when I could smile heartily once more.