She: I thought my days of big parking ticket bills were over when I graduated from college.

Z: Not exactly a proud moment when you graduated from college with $1,237 worth of parking tickets?

She: I negotiated them down from $3,293. I’m pretty proud of that.

Z: Go Bruins.

She: But those were deserved parking tickets. I had nowhere to park and then nowhere else to park if I moved my car. So those parking tickets were an educational expense.

Z: Like beer.

She: Plus, I totally reformed. I didn’t get a parking ticket for 20 years after college. Then this year, out of the blue, my parking karma totally changed. I’ve had three bogus parking tickets since June.

Z: Three?

She: It started out the first week of summer on Koss’ first day of camp at UCSB. I got a parking ticket in the two-minute period of time it took me to walk from my car to the automated payment machine and back.

Z: That blows.

She: But at least with that one I was able to write a letter and have the ticket rescinded. Who would have thought that university parking would be a more reasonable ally than the SBPD?

Z: Given your UC parking history it is kind of surprising. El Parking Bandito didn’t pop up when they typed your name into the system?

She: Looking back, it was clearly a warning shot from the parking gods. I should have stopped parking right then and there.

Z: I’m not sure how that would work. I don’t think Koss is quite ready to roll out of a slow-moving vehicle. And it might freak out the traffic monitor at school.

She: Because following that, I got two completely bogus parking tickets downtown in a one-week time period.

Z: Angry, angry parking gods. Do you think they’re retaliating against you because of the way I used to slightly raise my voice at parking-lot attendants?

She: No. I’ll take the heat for street-parking offenses. At least the real ones.

Z: Are you sure you didn’t park more than 90 minutes?

She: My system is golden. It’s a double-pronged parking system. I set my iPhone alarm to move my car and then I write the time I moved it on a Post-it. There’s no way I could have messed that up — and certainly not twice in a week. The proof was in the Post-it.

Z: And yet, your appeal was denied.

She: If it’s possible to drive around the block and repark on the street and still have that idiotic chalk mark on your tire, then clearly it’s their system that’s messed up. Not mine.

Z: As I’m sure you very articulately pointed out in your letters.

She: Not only that, but the same exact thing happened to me less than a week later! I had to write two letters and two appeals. Like writing to a wall.

Z: Think the meter maids are stalking you?

She: I look like an easy mark because I have to move my car every 90 minutes when I’m working downtown.

Z: That and your 100-foot-long Mercury Marquis is hard to miss.

She: Double appeals, doubly denied, doubly annoying in their injustice.

Z: You could always think of them as charitable donations.

She: If the city is so desperate for parking revenue they should take over the horrible automated lot at Paseo Nuevo, where people would be so thrilled to give their money to a real person instead of a machine that they probably wouldn’t even notice a fee increase.

Z: Meanwhile, what are we going to do about this parking situation of yours?

She: Obviously, I need a personal chauffer. It’s the only economical solution now that I’m a target.

Z: I’ll never understand your math.

She: Of course, I could get one of those cute little Smart cars. Then I’d be able to fit my car underneath my desk and wouldn’t have to move it during the day.

Z: Again. Spatial relationships, not your strong suit.

She: Fine. I’ll do the rational thing. I’ll make a sacrifice to the parking gods.

Z: What would you consider a rational sacrifice? A Yugo?

She: I was thinking more along the lines of a 1981 VW Rabbit.

Z: Hey, I traded a whole pizza for that car. And I’ve never gotten a parking ticket on it.

She: Yes, dear.

— Share your parking ticket injustices with She and Z by e-mailing leslie@lesliedinaberg.com.