Tabs

Tonight, while I was sitting listening to sad bedroom rock and reading Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Mitch interrupted me by coming home toting a ticket. The second one we've gotten this month for expired tabs. Tabs, in theory, should be great. I'm used to them showing up in the mail in their important little envelope and with their helpful instructions. They're actually just brightly colored stickers - sort of like the ones you'd wear stuck to your shirt in preschool - that you affix to your license plate. Shouldn't be that bad.

Except when you don't get them in the mail because you're supposed to get something called "an emissions test", and you can't get so-called emissions test because the car won't start most of the time because it's cold and the starter's going out. And you have to wait for it to be sunny - because then it's warm enough and the car will start - to take it to the mechanic to get the starter fixed. And it's only sunny on Sundays! They're closed on Sundays. And when all this happens, you just automatically have to start paying the government money because they've found you out: you're terrible at being an adult. You're, like, a complete adult fraud!

It's obvious because you don't have the correct brightly-colored stickers.