What I'm about to tell you is true.
On a particular Sunday a few months ago, I had an important meeting to get to on campus. I was, as usual, rushing to get there on time.
Pulling my Isuzu truck north onto College Avenue from University Drive, I noticed a metered parking spot open on 7th Street by the store called "Here." I swung into it and jerked to a stop with a little extra jerk just for the benefit of the horrified elderly couple watching from the sidewalk.
Rolling my window up with my left hand, I reached "no-look" with my right for the quarters I save in a cup-holder to put into the meter. Confident in my quarter-saving system, I was stunned to bring my hand out holding only one plastic wrapper, two pens, and zero quarters. I soon came to realize that my system broke down because a few nights before, I had spotted a temporary tattoo machine at the bowling alley and fed all my quarters into it.
At the time, I just had to have a specific tattoo from the picture on the front of the machine, and as I'm sure many of you know, when you've got to have a certain tattoo from these crazy machines, you usually end up with about five that say something super-original like "Thug Love" or "Big Baller" before you get the one you really want.
It was frustrating to scrounge around under the seat of my truck for loose change while realizing that I had ironically given away the very money that I now needed in exchange for a fake tattoo on my arm with the words "Cash Money" in flaking Old English script.
Giving up the search, I walked over to the timed-out meter, put my hand on top of it, looked down and sighed; "I can't get towed again." At that moment, the black Suburban next to me began backing out of its spot, but stopped short.
As I looked up, the driver's tinted window came down to reveal the laughing face of a beautiful girl who had apparently witnessed the whole ridiculous scene, from my scaring her grandparents, to violently scouring my red truck, to my current posture helplessly dangling from an expired parking meter.
"Hey," she whispered with an easy smile, "What's the problem?"
"My time is up and I don't have any quarters," I replied, vanquished.
She just laughed and a cool breeze feathered her bright, dark hair away from her beaming face. "Don't you know it's Sunday?" she asked.
I tilted my head to the side and shrugged as if to say "so what?"
"It's Sunday," she explained, "You don't have to pay." There was a simple, noticeable degree of finality to her words, and she slowly backed the rest of the way out of her spot.
As she drove off, I stood there unburdened and laughing at myself for thinking I had to, or could have, paid.
This is just a silly little story from my life, but it reminds me of a better one that my parents used to tell me when I was a kid.
Today is Good Friday. Christians celebrate Jesus' death on a cross today because it didn't stay Friday and he didn't stay dead. Sunday morning came with a rolled-back stone and a message for broke, hopeless people dangling from the ruins of expiring lives everywhere:
"Don't you know its Easter Sunday? You don't have to pay."
Daniel can be reached at: daniel.d.wallace@asu.edu.
