Dear Officer 958

Thank you for issuing me a ticket at 11:27am, today. Because of you, I have learned something very important about being a law abiding citizen and a responsible adult, though I don't quite know what it is.
Perhaps the lesson I learned upon seeing the yellow-green ticket flapping cleverly beneath my windshield wiper was that I am a flawed human being. Turning the curious paper envelope about in my hands, assaulted by the bold all-capital text: PARKING TICKET, I was struck with the stench of my own humanity and found myself face to face with 21 years of baggage. Instances of fault that I had refused to acknowledge, and anecdotes illuminating the ontologically wounded nature of my tattered-21st-century-soul, danced like pigmies before my less-than-20/20 vision. I swore. And then I wept. Oh God, I am not perfect. I am not even sort of perfect. I have joined leaugue with the millions and millions of Americans who have felt the tug of shock at the sight of an isued ticket and have cut their veins to satiate the law. I am one of the soiled, one of the careless, and most importantly—one of the ticketed. I see myself clearly, now, as you must have seen me through your cop eyes—dirty, like my oldsmobile, and absently blinking like the parking meter I left unfed. Damn my careless ways. Damn my failure to feed the slots with a couple of quarters. (They presently weigh heavy in the pit of my purse.) Oh that I had fed that metal throat and listened to its tinkering swallow!

I hope the inclosed check will assure you that your streets are now $10 safer—now that you have helped to correct a potential-parallel-parking-menace. Rest well, I am a new person. Reflecting on the matter, I suppose the lesson learned upon the ticket issuing at meter #6027 was no less than a spiritual experience. I hope you, officer 958, are inspired on some kind of level as well. I have only the warmest affection for you, so thusly I shall bid you a good day, and a prosperous career.

Yours Truly,
R.M. Pineiro (Grand Rapids Citizen)

Ancestors of Fish

It is a thin line between failure and success. Indeed, it is chalk-like, smudged, transient--much like the human condition. Human. Flawed-mortal-wounded-ugly-frightening-beautiful-feeling-living-breathing-Human. I am a member of the human race, capable of pity and empathy, thusly separating me from the animals and vegetation. If I weren't divinely created by a God, I would merely exist as a bundle of accidental nerves and fibers, which somehow mutated on its own to form...me. That. Is. Depressing. I cannot accept the idea that my friends' genetic material originated from freakish crawling fish and soullessly developed over millions of years to be the beautiful creatures they are today, demonstrative of complex emotion and contemplation. The light bulb did not invent itself on accident. Neither did human beings. You can recognize, easily, who values you as a unique, beautiful piece of creation, and who merely views you as specimen of inconvenient chance. I choose to utilize the former lens.