It is just after nightfall, and I am leaving a Community College with some people, perhaps Steve and Rimli. I'm not excited about leaving right when the movies were about to start, because I wanted to watch them, but everyone else wants to go.

When we are almost to the car, I ask them to wait, and I go back into the school, thinking it is a good time to take care of some business.

In a large central hall is a desk, and a thin woman with curly red hair attends it. I go to the desk and ask her what I have to do for this month, and she says I don't need to do anything. I look through my wallet - I have ID, and something else, and that's everything, isn't it? There must be something else I need.

Then I remember that I need a parking pass for the month, and I need it soon, as the end of the month is near. She tells me the pass is around $109, and I'm aghast. It's too expensive. I stand to the side of the line, and she starts helping the next person. Then I calculate that it's only about $3 per day, so I guess that's reasonable for parking.

The woman has suddenly become very busy attending to other people, including a gaggle of teenagers that has arrived from somewhere in sports uniforms, whom she must take somewhere real quick.

When she returns, I pay her the money, and she gives me a box that contains chocolates and some small squares of paper, very complexly wrapped. I try to ask her how I'm supposed to use this for parking, and she doesn't understand the question. I expected a pass to put on my windshield or rear-view mirror, and I don't know how to use these papers. She still doesn't understand, and I think she's toying with me. Maybe she likes me.

Then I get annoyed. I tell her she's been very nice and helpful, and I appreciate it, but I'm running out of patience, she keeps delaying me, my friends have now been waiting in the car for forty minutes, and I just want a stupid parking pass!