i owe who?

“Are you fucking serious? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” These are the words that repeatedly went through my head when the toll lady wouldn’t let me pass.

Let me give a little back story first. There have been multiple times I’ve run the toll, not on purpose mind you. It’s mainly because rarely, if ever, do I carry cash and therefore haven’t one red cent on my person! This particular night, I made sure I had 4 shiny quarters in my car; 2 to get there and 2 to get home.

Okay, here’s the story.

Late one night, not so long ago, (like this weekend) I was heading north on the toll way and missed my exit. As I approached the next exit's booth, coins in hand, I noticed this exit was significantly more than my usual exit, in fact 85 cents more. I’m thinking, “Shit, I’m short some coins…Guess, I’m gonna have to run it once again…Wonder how much I’m going to owe the North Texas Tollway Authority…What, is there a human in that toll booth? FRICK!”

So, I stopped. Upon sight of the woman in the booth, I imagined how this couldn’t be a safe job for an older lady, especially at the hour I was passing through. I figured between her unfortunate job and my unfortunate situation, we could see eye to eye on things. You know, have each other’s back. Help a sister out.

“Ma’am, I’m SO sorry. I missed my exit, I meant to take the one before this and don’t have the 35 cents you need here. I only have a dollar. Will you take the dollar?”

“Yeah, but you’re still going to owe $1.35”

“Oh…”

“Here, I’ll write you an IOU. Hold on there”

Sometime later, after reviewing my driver’s license, inputting data into her register and then writing down my license plate number, she presented me with an envelope and a receipt to sign off on.

“Put your signature here, here, here and here and drop this in the mail with your $1.35. You have 15 days to get this taken care of.”

Okay, so I get to pass without major implications such as that stupid flashing red light and loud sirens, but really, she couldn’t just let me slide? Granted, you can’t do favors for everyone, but gimme a break toll lady. I made an honest mistake.

After all was said and done and I had signed “here, here, here and here”, she then looked at my signatures and then had the nerve to tell me, “These signatures you put on here don’t look like the signature on your driver’s license”.

Look-y here toll lady, I signed my driver’s license in April 2006 upon it’s expiration date. That has been over 3 years ago, not only have I changed, but it was under completely different circumstances.

At this point I could only smile and kindly say, “Would you like for me to sign again?”