I went to college at Auburn University. It's not something I'm proud of; they gave me money to show up the first year. During my time there, I received three parking tickets and had my car towed once.

Campus parking was divided into three "zones." Zone A was the best, most convenient parking and was reserved for faculty. Zone B was all the parking reasonably close to anywhere a person might want to drive to on campus. That was for grad students, dorm officials, and other mid-level types. Zone C (for "crap") parking was all the parking places so far from everything that it was a shorter trip to walk wherever you wanted to go rather than walk to your car, drive to the C lot closest to where you wanted to be, and walk from your car to your destination. All the rules were off after 4 PM and on weekends. That's the background you'll need to understand what follows.

The very day I arrived at college in my cargo-converted VW bug, the car caught on fire. The wire from the battery to the starter motor went up like primacord, smoke billowed, the car died, the stench of burnt insulation filled the interior, the whole works. This was unusual in that this car usually had problems with the oil, not the electrics, so I was thrown off. Luckily, I had brought a 9/16" wrench and a pocket knife cum screwdriver, so I had all the tools I needed to fix it.

I pushed my car back onto campus (Benefit # 32 of the VW bug, low inertia) and into a C Zone parking spot, where it sat for a couple of weeks while I found a hardware store and figured out what I needed to do. One Saturday afternoon, I hiked out to the car with my tools and a piece of 12-gauge wire, threaded the wire through a rusted spot between the engine and passenger compartments, and got it running again. Yay! I drove off somewhere and when I came back, I parked in a row marked B Zone instead of the C Zone row other the other side of the same aisle of the lot. A couple days later, I discovered I had a ticket.

My fault, stupid mistake, cost me 25 bucks, even though the signage was misleading. The appeals committe refused my argument.

The second ticket occurred soon afterward. It was football season, which if you know anything about Auburn you know means life comes to a complete halt outside the stadium for about 2 days every home game weekend. Having learned my lesson of the dangers of parking so near a B/C dividing line, I took to parking over by the baseball field. It was even farther to walk, but the lot was unequivocally C Zone.

Except on football Saturdays, it turns out. On page 38 of the parking regs, and on a small sign posted at the entrance to the lot behind a huge, thick-leafed shrubbery, was the rule that all parking areas near the stadium had to be cleared out on Saturdays so the poor, crippled, pathetic football fans wouldn't have to walk so far to get to the game. The first I knew of this was when I walked into the lot one sunny Saturday and discovered my car was missing.

I marched to the campus cop shop to report it stolen, which is where I learned that they had towed it away to clear out the lot. They charged me a $25 parking fine and a $25 towing fee to get my car back.

The final ticket came at the end of my junior year, last day of finals. It was a Thursday, my tests were over, and I wanted nothing more than to get quit of the school for another summer. About 15 minutes before the parking restrictions were relaxed, I was ready to start loading my stuff in my car. I could have pulled up onto the grass in front of the dorm, but I thought that was rude, so I pulled into a little B Zone lot right next to the dorm. If I was lucky, the ticketer wasn't going to patrol that lot again before time was up.

No such luck. I actually saw him making his rounds on the far side of the lot. So, I went over and explained that I was just going to be parked there long enough to load up the car, pointed out that time was almost up, and asked if it was okay. He said it was fine, the son of a bitch. I came back with some junk and found a ticket on my car.

I graduated eight years ago, and got a job that pays quite a bit of money. Not six figures, but more than halfway there. Not a month goes by that I don't receive a flyer, letter, or phone call from the Auburn University Alumni Association, begging me to donate money to the school for this reason or that, help fund the stadium beautification committee or pay off the overruns on their latest construction fiasco, or something.

Whenever I get one of those pieces of mail, I laugh and laugh as I tear it into tiny bits and throw it away. When I was a student, their draconian application of the parking rules cost me hundred bucks and no small amount of frustration and exasperation. Now that they can't compel me, I take great joy from knowing how much I potentially could have donated to the school over the years that I haven't as retribution for the treatment I received. Maybe it isn't justice, but it is revenge, and that's just as good.