Improper display

Rob and I went to traffic court this morning.

It all started back in late October when we came out to the car and found a traffic ticket under the wiper on the driver's side. We looked it over. The only indication of what it was for were the words "IMPROPER DISPLAY" and, further down the ticket, the following bunch of letters NOREGISVIS. There were only 3 options on the payment envelope:

1. Yes, I committed the infraction and here's my payment.
2. Yes, I committed the infraction but would like to have a mitigation hearing.
3. No, I did not commit the infraction and would like to contest in court

Well, we didn't know where we fit in because we didn't know what it could possibly be for. So, after a call to the police station to ask what that meant (the woman who answered the phone didn't know and the officer who wrote the ticket didn't return my call), we drove down there to ask in person. We still couldn't speak to the officer and the woman at the front desk didn't know what it meant either. She called the officer for us and the officer said that it was that our vehicle registration wasn't displayed properly. Well, that was crap because the officer had to reach over our Texas registration sticker on the windshield to put the ticket under the wiper. The officer clarified that it was because we didn't have WA registration. We replied that we still had out-of-state registration but were within in the 30 days of WA residence we had before WA registration was required by law. The officer replied (all this via the receptionist, mind you) that they had no way of knowing that at the time the ticket was written and we could contest in court but that's all that can be done after a ticket is written. We walked across the street to the courthouse and booked our court date for December 6.

Last week, I found a bunch of receipts for our trip across the country from the east coast that clearly showed the earliest date that we could have arrived in WA. I put the addresses from those receipts into Streets & Trips as numbered pushpins and printed out a map of our trek across the country. I made a table of those receipts by date, location and credit card signer, showing that we were both on the trip, therefore neither of us residing in WA. I was ready.

We showed up for court at 9AM this morning. After watching everyone else take their turn at the stand for about an hour and a half, it was Rob's turn to go up. It went roughly like this:

JUDGE: Let's see ... this ticket is for ... "improper display". Hmm. What is that?! The infraction number is [He reads off the number to the clerk, looks at the screen as she types the number in. They both look puzzled for a moment.]. Well ... apparently this infraction doesn't even exist.

ROB: [not missing a beat, delivering in his most casual, calm voice] Well, I can hardly be held accountable for it, then, can I?

[everybody laughs]

JUDGE: Case dismissed.

Rob joked later that he should have said, "Wait! We've made a bunch of guesses as to what that might have been and we gathered evidence to contest all of them! Don't you want to see?"