"The best laid plans of mice and men always go awry"

I recently got a speeding ticket that I am trying to pay without telling my parents, I've got this one planned out well but it got me thinking.

FOCUS: What have you planned out that you thought were masterful but have gotten totally fucked up?

 

Another from the TiB archives...

This could result in some cool stories or just peter out. We shall see.

The best thing I can think of is when I went on a trip out of town to see a rad concert. I was between relationships and nobody wanted to come with me because all my friends have terrible taste in music. So I went by myself, fuck it, nobody to impress, nobody to complain about what I'm doing.

Day 1 I hit the town and get absolutely fucking ignored by every chick I see because I'm alone. And because I look like me, which never helps, but still. Strike 1.

Day 2 I go to see The Darjeeling Express by myself since I know nobody will go see it with me anyway, since my friends' taste in movies is worse than their taste in music. It's only playing at the busiest theater in the hottest new shopping area in town. I spend literally 90 minutes driving around looking for a parking space. No less than six times did some insensitive fuck who just showed up snake the spot I was heading for two seconds before I got to it. Twice I even had my blinker on waiting for the guy to pull out of the spot. I waited two seconds for the person going the other way to drive past AS A FUCKING COURTESY and instead they snake the spot. Strike 2.

Day 3 I use some spare time to drive around looking to buy some stuff that's hard to get at home. I go to 5 places and come up empty handed. STRIKE 3.

I literally felt like half a man at the end of that trip. Luckily the concert kicked ass.

 

Are you old enough to be in here?



When I was 17 my friend Chris had a smoking hot neighbor that I had hooked up with and fallen head over heels in love with. Her family moved down to North Carolina and even though we talked on the phone every once in awhile it wasn't the same. I needed to see her.

I had had my license for a little over 6 months and my parents while pretty cool about me going in to Boston or out to Western MA but they weren't too keen on me leaving the state. For whatever reason so long as I stayed in the borders of Massachusetts I was safe.

Chris's parents had a house out on Cape Cod and I was invited to go out there with him for a week. Our plan was that I would pretend to go to the Cape, but then secretly drive to North Carolina instead. My parents had already spoken to his parents and wouldn't call them again and he'd tell his parents I got grounded and wasn't going to make it.

The fatal flaw was having a father with a spare set of keys to my car and my retarded decision to pack my car early. What teenager would do that? He assumed I was trying to smuggle a bunch of booze out to the Cape and was surprised to find a fake ID (needed hotel rooms after all), a million condoms (I seriously over estimated how much sex I was going to have), and a set of directions to a house in North Carolina.

I never made it to NC and as fate would have it Chris still informed his parents I wouldn't be joining them because I was grounded. He wasn't lying.

 

I thought it was "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley"

You crazy kids and your wacky modern English.

 

I, not recently at all, got a speeding ticket when I was 19. Did the same and tried to hide it from my parents. Week later an official looking letter came in the mail addressed to me. My mom handed it to me the second I got home and asked if I knew what it was. I spilled my guts about the speeding ticket. After the lecture, I opened the letter, which turned out to be a summons for jury duty.

 

We're really becoming pussies if we're hiding speeding tickets from our parents. You have to break them in with small offenses like speeding tickets so they don't commit Hari Kari when you tell them you've spent all of your college bonds on cocaine and you need them to bail you out of jail for DUI.

As for me, I hardly make plans so I don't have to worry about them not coming through.

 

Driving home from college one time, I was speeding and got pulled over. I had never had a ticket at that time, but I did have a radar detector. I thought I would be smooth and hide the radar detector under my seat, hoping I would just get a warning. I did get the ticket, and as the officer was letting me go, he informed me that radar detectors were not illegal and I did not need to hit it. Oops.

 

So you're saying that your plan to get out of trouble for having a radar detector by fucking the cop went awry?

 

I'm assuming you're still in HS. Do you pay your own car insurance? If not, they're gonna find out when the rates go up.

Focus In high-school I got a speeding ticket and thought I was smart by paying it on my own and hiding it. 6 months later my insurance went up and my parents found out. Turns out they really didn't care because they were kids once and also got speeding tickets.

 

Here's what you do when you are young and get a speeding ticket: Call your parents immediately after and be very upset. Your mom and dad will think it's cute that "baby got her first ticket!" and will pay that $326 ticket for you.

 

I love how we're still addressing the OP even though it was created almost a year and a half ago.

Personally I wrote a note to my parents apologizing for getting a ticket how I'll never do it again... yadda yadda. It gave them enough time to get over the initial anger and settle into rationalization by the time I got home.

Focus: Not sure how many times my friends and I thought: "My parents are gone, I have a fake ID/person to buy beer and all my friends are in town to party, I don't see how this could possibly go wrong."

 

"Even though I have work/class/to get on a plane/a funeral/etc. early tomorrow morning, I guess I could drink as long as I make sure to limit myself....."

 

My old man was righteously pissed about my one and only speeding ticket at age 18, probably because he didn't want me to get my dumbass killed doing something that simply isn't necessary, like going 130kph on the perimeter highway of Flin Flon (limit: 70kph) around the bend.

After he calmed down a bit he gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever recieved:

"If you're ever in a hurry to get somewhere it's because you didn't leave early enough in the first place. Slow the fuck down, deal with being late, and plan it better next time.

Yeah, doesn't fit into every situation, but it certainly fits the bill most of the time.

FOCUS: Got drunk for the first time at age 14. Didn't originally plan to, but ended up rip-snortin' drunk by 11pm. Trouble was, I had to meet curfew at 1am. So, I spent the first hour puking out in the bushes behind my buddy's place, and then the second trying to find a sober ride home. Preferably someone with a quiet car as my parents were likely asleep.

Got the ride, got home, got out of the car, stumbled to the front door and walked in. Now I just had to devise a plan. I broke it down into a few easy steps. One, close the door quietly. Two, take my shoes off. Three, walk forward for five steps, take a hard left, walk six more, then u-ball it onto the staircase and crawl up. After that, home free!

Took my shoes off, fell into one of the dining room chairs and slumped over the kitchen table, promptly passing out. Didn't even close the fuckin' door properly. My dad even walked by me a couple times as I was laying there in near total darkness. When he found me he dragged my ass to the living room couch and when I woke up my mother was sitting across from me, waiting to give me hell. Her first words?

"Way to go, dipshit."

 

To be honest, I think the speeding tickets I got in high school helped desensitize my parents to all the other shit I did. I probably got pulled over a solid 20-30 times in the two years that I had a car, resulting in maybe 10 speeding tickets. I contested all of them and only I ended up paying for one of them. (Memorable mentions: Getting pulled over twice in the span of four blocks by separate police; and one time getting 4 moving violations issued at once.) In retrospect, I was grossly irresponsible with my car and basically thought it, myself, and everything around me was indestructible.

For example, there was the time I was doing donuts in a field with some friends. I was using another friend's car as a marker to orient myself since it was the middle of the night, and at some point, unbeknownst to me, she moved the car about thirty feet over. Cue to my doing a donut right into a fence, crashing through it and landing in a ditch. We left to get my friend's truck, pulled my car out of the ditch using chains, and assessed the damage. The only damage to the car was an obliterated windshield, the whole thing was a spider-web of cracks. The next day I drove the car home and told me parents that I had accidentally driven into the hatch-back of my friend's truck as I was pulling into her driveway. They somehow bought this story, I paid $500 to have the windshield replaced, and no one was the wiser.

I also tried to keep this story from my mom, since she was out of town at the time and it was her car. I called the mechanic the next day and asked him how much it would cost—he told me the car was absolutely totaled. I ended up telling my mom, and she had the car towed to another mechanic who was able to fix it for $700. The sad thing is, at the time I was so irresponsible (and also was making so much money from a personal business I started) that paying $700 didn't really feel like a punishment, it just seemed normal to do whatever the hell I wanted and buy my way out of trouble.

 

Ahhh. I have a long, distinguished history of firmly believing I'm just a little bit smarter, and everyone else is just a little bit more oblivious, than is actually the case.

1. I was in Uni, broke, and hooking up with a girl who had a fiancee, so we met mostly in hotels. One night I splashed out - got the Ocean View suite in a 5 star hotel (note: 5 star Australian is 3 star American with the exchange rate), floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Indian Ocean, nautical theme, etc. When she arrives, I proudly pull back the curtains to admire the view - and she freaks out and tells me she is aquaphobic, ie frightened of large bodies of water. Smooth.

2. I was supposed to be at Uni, but had a heavy herb habit, and was visiting my customary source. My car was registered in my mother's name. My Dad has friends on the police force. Cue me getting back to my friends house, lighting up, and then getting a call from my Dad about thirty seconds later telling me I was a fucking idiot and he'd just had a call informing him that my mother's car had been parked out the front of a known dealer's house, and an <insert accurate depiction of me> had been seen arriving, staying for 5 minutes, and leaving. Smooth.

3. Failing to learn from 2. above, I was arrested the night before my mother's birthday. No problems, I was over 18, cops aren't allowed to inform parents once you hit 18. HAHHAHAHAAHAH. Took my Dad a little about 3 hours from the time I got back from the holding cell to hear about it. Most awkward birthday ever.

 

Just wanted to add that this thread was a year and a half ago and I have yet to have been found out. *knock on wood*

Have had numerous other car related issues though so can't celebrate too much.