My son, Caleb

This is the color of me writing to other people; this is the color of other people writing to me.


8/29/10

Valerie H******* to Kwok

Ms. Sanpietro,

Can you please let me know Caleb's bus letter and/or number that he will be riding home tomorrow? I don't have that information and I want to be sure to put him on the right bus.
Thank you,


Miss Valerie H*******
F******* Primary School
Main Campus Kindergarten
Rm. 123



Kwok to Valerie H*******

Who. Are. You. ?



Valerie H******* to Kwok

Miss Valerie H*******
F******* Primary School
Main Campus Kindergarten
Rm. 123



Kwok to Valerie H*******

I am not Ms. Sanpietro.



9/1/10

Kwok to Valerie H*******

how did the whole bus situation work out anyhow?



9/7/10

Kwok to Valerie H*******

Hello? Valerie? Please talk to me.



9/15/10

Kwok to Valerie H*******

Hi Valerie, how are you doing?



9/30/10

Kwok to Valerie H*******

Hello? Valerie? Are you still there?



1/11/11

Barbara W**** to Kwok

We have been trying to reach you but your phone is disconnected. Caleb is in our clinic not feeling well. He told us that you have moved and we do not have a current address. Please contact the school as soon as possible. We also need to know your current address.
Barb W****



Kwok to Barbara W****

What is Caleb's present condition? Is his father available for contact?



Barbara W**** to Kwok

We do not have any other contact numbers except yours!. He has a fever of 102 and needs to be picked up. Our counselor has gone to your address to see if you are home.



Kwok to Barbara W****

My dear Mrs. Woods, I believe you have the wrong e-mail address. Are you sure you typed it in correctly?



Barbara W**** to Kwok

Do you have a son Caleb K***?



Kwok to Barbara W****

No I do not. But please let me know if Caleb is feeling better.



Barbara W**** to Kwok

I am trying to reach K******* Sanpietro the mother of Caleb K***. She gave us this email address. I am so sorry if this is not you. Barb



Kwok to Barbara W****

Yes, your school has contacted me before about my existence as Ms. Sanpietro but that is simply not the case. I would have thought that this would have been documented in your records. However, through your school's e-mails with me I have grown a little attached to Caleb; a boy I have never met. Please let me know if he is feeling better.



1/12/11

Kwok to Barbara W****

Hi Barbara,

Is Caleb doing better?



Linda B***** to Kwok and Barbara W****

I apologize that the school sent emails to you regarding this child. His mother's email was incorrect in our data base. We have corrected the error and you should not be hearing from us again. It is certainly not appropriate to share info on children other than to their parents and we regret this has happened. Linda C. B*****, Interim Principal



Kwok to Linda B*****

I understand Linda; and I hope you can understand that I am simply very concerned about Caleb's well-being and sincerely hope that he is doing okay. Please, just at least honestly tell me that.

I fought the law and the...

“A Notice of Violation was purportedly served on Kwok charging that on 2/7/2011 at 8:48 PM Kwok violated Transit Authority Rule 1050.9(d) and 1050.6(d)2.”

So what does this all mean? It means that Officer McGuire is a JACKASS. Let's explain this a little more:

It begins...
On the apparent date noted above, I decide to get on the N train heading downtown. Upon entering the highly advanced transportation mechanism, I take notice of the fact that in my particular car, seats for the weary are extremely limited; some would describe the seat situation as "too few and far in between." So being the clever dastardly demon that I am, I look over to the next car and notice a high abundance of sitting area! I then proceed to travel through the doors between the cars and plop down on the nice empty two-seater immediately to my left once I enter the new car. There I am, relaxing, listening to my Taylor Swift when suddenly I am rudely asked "You got ID?" I look up and to my left and see none other than one of New York's Finest Jackasses staring at me. I immediately know that the jig is up and I fish in my pocket for my holographic card with that unmistakable smile. So as he looks it over, I'm just sitting there, chilling. He asks me a few questions (in a very GRUFF manner, I might add!), such as "You're heading home?" and "Is this your first offense?" to which I respond, "Yes, heading home!" and "Yes it is!"

Hope?
So after some time (this guy sure likes to take his time) he says "You're getting off at 14th Street." to which I say "Why's that?" and he says "Because you went through the doors and you can't do that." Well DUH! I guess I was hoping this guy would take it easy on me and just let me go with a warning. In fact, even as I was about to get off the train I still had a slight slimmer glimmer of hope, hoping that he would return my ID and that his "punishment" for my law violation would simply be to inconvenience me slightly by making me get off my train home and make me wait for the next one. Oh how wrong I was! That guy needs to get PAID, and out of my pocket was the exact way he was looking to do it!

The Ordeal
So we get off and he tells me to sit at the bench. There is one seat that does not have a person sitting on it, but there is a bag there and the police officer says to one lady "Is that your bag???" and she removes it with the quickness. I sit down, just cheeling as I notice that everyone on the bench is trying their best not to stare at me (well, most of them anyway). So as I am sitting down, this guy is standing right in front of me and taking his sweet time writing me up. I ask him "Did you really have to make me get off the train? We could have been doing this while I was going home." He then gets smart with me and says "Is this an inconvenience for you?" and I say "Kinda, yeah!" and he responds with "Well maybe next time you won't do that again." After a while, he mentions how we had to get off the train due to safety reasons and then asks me if I "understand." I really did not understand what the underlying safety issues were, so I say "No, actually I don't understand, can you explain to me what the safety reasons are?" and that jackass completely ignores me!

As I am sitting there, it gets pretty boring so I try to make conversation with the law enforcer. I mention "That's a lot of paperwork you gotta do, eh?" and again he says something to me that sounds very similar to a sarcastic query about myself being in an inconvenient situation. I respond similarly in an honest fashion, and he says that I am intruding on HIS meal and that I am inconveniencing HIM. To this, I ask "Oh, you work the night shift?" To THAT, he responds with... NOTHING. That guy completely ignored me again! This guy is a STONE face!
After a few minutes he says "And by the way, I can make this as long as I want to, is that a problem?" At this point, I have realized that he is a jackass and there is no point in being honest, so I say "Take as long as you need, it's up to you." and he says "That's right!"
I am absolutely positive that that was the highlight of his day.

As I am writing this I realize that I talked way too much with a guy who was/is a stonefaced jackass. I am not sure how this came up; he probably made some comment about my act and I said "Yeah, well, some police officers don't care if you go through the doors and other police officers will write you up for it" and he said "That's right... Wait, so you've done this a lot?"
For a split second, I didn't know what to say, should I be honest again? Being the jackass that I AM, I said "... Yeah!" and he says "I thought you said this was your first time" and I said "No... I said this was my first time getting CAUGHT! My first time getting a TICKET!"

The whole time I am sitting there, I am wondering, "Damn, doesn't this guy have anything better to do than to spend all this time writing me up for the act of walking?" And almost as if on cue, I hear the dispatcher on his radio say "Woman claims she is a victim of a purse snatching. She describes the suspect as black, 5'8..."
I couldn't help but chuckle to myself; doesn't this guy have a purse snatcher to catch? Shouldn’t he be out there catching REAL crooks, subduing murderers, giving senseless beatings to robbers?
A couple of guys walk past and they look at me, and look at the cop, and look back at me and give me a look as if to say "Damn man! Look at this big bad cop!" and I give them the look of "Yeah, oh well, what're you gonna do?"

So, as is customary of police officers writing tickets and violations, this guy gave me the ticket and tried to get the GOSH outta there as SOON as possible! He quickly said "youmailthepaymenthereandcallthisnumberifyouhaveanyquestions" and I was all "Wait wait wait wait wait... what's this? And this?" and he repeated what he said and before I knew it, he was gone.

You Made A Big Mistake
Now, since I am quitting my internship soon, I would have a lot of time on my hands. The only thing that kept me from breaking down and crying like a little girl while I was being written up was the consolation that after I quit my work, I would have WAY too much time on my hands. This Officer Douchebag picked the wrong guy to fuck with (or write a Notice of Violation for)! I was going to fight this proposed violation with everything I had, and the fact that I had unlimited time simply compounded my violation fighting ability.

Double Trouble!
I noticed he gave me two pieces of yellow paper and I assumed that one was a copy of the same "Notice of Violation." However, to my SURPRISE, when I got home, I looked over the two pieces of paper and noticed that they each had a different fine I had to pay, and had different writing too! Imagine my disbelief... I had to pay TWO fines? Just for walking through the train door? Nahhhh mannnn cheeeelwidddatttt!

As anybody who has cleverly walked through train doors to get from one car to another knows (well, at least the jackasses like me know), the standard fine for such an offense is $75. I indeed received a $75 fine, which from the yellow paper I was able to make out from the officer's atrocious handwriting that I did something "without permission or authority to do so." The other fine (which was $60) was for something I was not able to make out at all (that guy's handwriting was really bad!). Was I given that ticket for being a wiseass? I didn’t even know what I was being fined for so I was motivated more than ever to fight those tickets no matter what the cost! Seeing as how the next week my entire department was going to France for a tax conference, I planned to obtain a hearing that week and skip out of work for a little bit (you can go to the Transit Bureau and get a hearing anytime on or before your hearing date).

Let Your Imagination Run Wild
I already had a story in mind; a vagrant with EXTREMELY questionable odor, took a shit in my car (this actually happened once) and a WHOLE bunch of people rushed to the next car (me being one of them) and the police officer singled ME out to give a NoV (Notice of Violation) to. Race card for the win! After consulting with some co-workers though, that story seemed too extreme (even though it actually happened once in a train car I was in), so we decided to go with the good ole fashioned aggressive panhandling story. I had it all envisioned in my head; a vagabond with EXTREMELY questionable odor (c'mon, can't leave that part out) was aggressively panhandling, specifically towards ME, and I felt THREATENED! A whole bunch of people left the car to go to another one (me being one of these people) and the officer singled ME out! Race card again for the win! I was PREPARED for my hearing.

Visiting the Enemy and Making A Friend
The transit bureau is an interesting place. It is a lot like the DMV, except for the fact that the people waiting here are in much dire situations. As I am about to sit down next to a kind gentleman I ask him how he is doing and he responds in kind. I feel that places like these make it easier for people to bond and come together; nothing brings people together more than shared suffering. I ask him what he's in for and apparently, he swiped a metrocard that had no money, so he left it on the swiping thingie, and then swiped another metrocard that worked, and he walked through. The police officer got him for littering; a $50 fine. We had a nice in-and-out conversation where he would try to impart his wisdom on me. One of the things he mentioned was how there was a slim chance that anybody would get rid of their fine; everybody working at the transit bureau has to get paid, and he suspected the police officers got a cut of that as well. "They're motherfuckers." I learned that he was from Bangladesh and has lived in America for twenty years and this was the first time something like this has happened to him. He told me how he tried to argue with the police officer and we both agreed that it was pointless to argue. After he met with a hearing officer he came back out and he kept on saying that he thinks he would have to pay the fine, because the hearing officer kept on saying "It's a good ticket..."
I appreciated that the Bangladeshi man tried to make me feel better and give me hope and console me by saying that he thinks walking through train doors is not a very big deal. He also tried to teach me about colors; pink papers are a civil offense and are not that bad. Apparently, yellow papers (our violations) were criminal offenses, which were still not as bad as red papers. He encouraged me to look for these color designations elsewhere in the world.

Judgment Quarter-hour
It is finally my turn to see the hearing officer. He tells me to go down to the second to the last door on the right and wait for him as he will be right there. I make the long trek to the room and walk inside, standing for a minute to observe it. I sit down and rehearse my story in my head. I jotted down key words/terms; "panhandler, aggressive, questionable odor, extremely, threatened, many people walked through, single, me out, racist." The hearing officer then walks into the room and I am about to BLAST him with my collection of words. It probably would have sounded something like this "MANY RACIST PANHANDLER SINGLE PEOPLE THREATEN COP AGGRESSIVE EXTREMELY!" but it didn't turn out that way.
Before I could utter a word the hearing officer says "Good news" and I'm all like "HUH?" He proceeds to explain that my tickets are "bad" tickets. Me, being the inquisitive mind that I am, ask him "How are they bad tickets?" and he explains. The standard ticket (the $75 one that people would normally get for walking in between train cars) was not valid because the police officer did not specify which doors I went through (it could have been the regular train doors OR the in-between-car doors). He said that he assumes they were the in-between-car-doors but since it wasn’t written down on the ticket, I cannot be fined for it. The $60 ticket which I had no idea what it was for, was apparently for disobeying a sign. The police officer did not specify what sign I disobeyed, so that was not a good ticket either. The hearing officer told me that both tickets would be dismissed and after we conducted some formalities (where I asked him a few questions), he asked me to kindly wait outside. Apparently you can only walk through the in-between-car doors when it is a real REAL emergency and he did not want to give me any legal advice because it is all very subjective. I thanked him and waited outside.

Reflection
I shared my victory with Bangladeshi guy; he was happy for me. He was still waiting for the result of his hearing. We discussed the result of my decision; I personally thought that not only was the cop an asshole; he was incompetent. Why did he have to waste both MY time AND his by writing me two tickets when he had no idea how to write a damn ticket? What if I had done something REALLY VERY wrong and I got off scot-free because this dumbass did not know how to fill out a form correctly? He didn’t know how to do his job! I personally feel that going between train car doors should not be illegal, so I agreed with the decision (since it resulted in me not having to pay $135) but I did not agree with the method used to reach that decision. The Bangladeshi guy was just very happy for me. As someone told me later on, at least the law is fair. If I have to abide by these silly technical rules such as "don't walk in between train cars" then police officers should abide by silly technical rules like specifying what doors were walked through or what signs were disobeyed when writing a ticket. I love America.

The Bangladeshi guy later found out that there was a “no-decision” on his situation and he would get a decision mailed to him in two weeks. Gotta love this bureaucracy we live in.
I started talking to a woman and I asked her what she was there for. Apparently she had many groceries and was on her way walking out of the station. A police officer standing near the emergency exit door helped her open the door, and then proceeded to give her a ticket for going through the door instead of the turnstiles. She told me “Why did he open the door then? He should have told me I can’t go through the doors!”
I sympathized with her and shared my story as well. Soon after, I received my notices of decisions and orders dismissing both my tickets and waved my good bye to the kind woman and wished her good luck. I was outta there.

Edit: If I ever see you again Officer McGuire Douchebag, I am going to say to you "Hey, remember me? Yeah I knew you wouldn't. Just wanted to let you know that those tickets you gave me? Didn't pay'em, and never will. Have a nice day."

“The NOV is not legally sufficient to establish a prima facie case of Transit Authority Rule 1050.9(d) and 1050.6(d)(2)… The Notices of Violations do not contain specific factual allegations to support a conclusion of unlawful conduct. As such the Notices of Violations are dismissed.”