"FAILED" NOW YOU GET AN UGLY STICKER!

Each year in Virginia, your vehicle must be inspected for it’s safety…you know the drill, do the headlights, trail lights, blinkers, windshield wipers work, and how much bad emission does your vehicle put into the environment? If your vehicle passes, you get a safety sticker to put in your front windshield; right next to the sticker that proves you paid you personal property tax, (car tax). Each year my safety inspection is due by the end March, and this year, I let my safety sticker expire. When I finally got around to taking my vehicle to the neighborhood mechanic for the safety inspection, my vehicle “FAILED” for a few reasons, which will cost about $1,300 to fix. So now, I have a big “FAILED” sticker in my front windshield. Try as I might to remove the “FAILED” sticker, I can’t; it has been super-glued on and it seems that the sticker can only be removed once the vehicle passes inspection. The big ugly sticker announces to all loud and clear that my vehicle is not legally safe to be driven in the state of Virginia, and the fact that I have done so for two days now, (I had to wait until payday before I could have the issues addressed), means that I have broken the law, and that makes me a law breaker. Being a bit paranoid and thinking that each time I saw a police car for the past two days that I would be pulled over, my car impounded, and that I would be taken straight away to jail, I got my butt back to the neighborhood mechanic this morning, the day right after payday; once I knew money was in the bank.

I don’t know why, perhaps due to the stress of breaking the law, and the amount of money it will take to fix my car, my fear of being taken advantage of by my mechanic was in full throttle. Face it, ladies when we walk into the repair shop, we are at the mercy of the mechanic who can smell our vulnerability in the air. We’re doomed. Right? Perhaps not; after some self-talking about being more responsible, and the power of the Internet, I armed my self wth the power of some knowledge of dirty tricks mechanics use, andI talked myself out a near state of complete hysteria.

By the end of the day my vehicle will be street legal and I will be $1,300.00 poorer, but I am confidant that my mechanic is on the up and up and that I have not been taken advantage of. I will be able to freely drive the streets without being paranoid that I am going to be pulled over and arrested for having a "FAILED" sticker in my front windshield. Oh..and now I can park in front of my house without violating Fairlington Villages Associations parking policy, but that's another story.