Smooth criminal?

Twice in the past few days, I have come home to find a business card wedged in my front door.

Odd, to say the least, considering its source – the Municipal Bylaw Office.

On the first occasion, I barely gave the card a second thought and dispensed with it quickly.

The second time though, the words Please Call were scribbled on one side.

Please call the Bylaw Office.

Odd, I thought, before wracking my brain for whatever offense a Bylaw Officer could be tracking me down to discuss.

After talking it over with Hot Wife, we determined that perhaps I was finally being nabbed for building my deck without a permit.

But it has been two years.

Is the Bylaw Office really that hungry for dough that a clandestine agent would sneak into my backyard, two years later, to verify if the original deck structure has been modified in any way?

I guess so, because I didn’t recall committing any other punishable offenses that would require a visit from a Bylaw Officer.

So I dialed the number on the card, fully expecting to be told that I am guilty of building a deck without a permit.

But that is not what I was told, though I was indeed informed that I am guilty of breaking the law.

So guilty, in fact, that incriminating photos of me caught in the act are on file with the Bylaw Office, thus the visit from the Bylaw Officer who left a business card with the words call me scrawled across it.

My crime?

Watering my lawn during peak heat wave season when we are asked to conserve? No.

Burning an open air fire in the middle of my front lawn? No.

Pumping my stereo loud enough to wake the neighbours at all hours of the night? Not that either.

No folks, the crime I am guilty of… the crime that has me forever labeled a delinquent in the eyes of the municipal justice system, is to have dumped grass clippings from my lawnmower into a ditch on a side street that borders a corn field just around the corner from our house.

Biodegradable grass clippings!!! Into a ditch, for crying out loud.

My first question was to ask who the hell has time to take photographs of someone dumping clippings into a ditch of overgrown grass, much less to complain about it to the highest authority of municipal law.

My second question was to wonder aloud about the punishment for such a shameful strike against humanity.

It’s a fine, I was told.

A $125 fine.

Woah.

Enter the smooth-talking, apologetic, upstanding citizen named Chubbs.

After much back-and-forthing, yours truly managed to convince the Bylaw Officer that mine was an innocent offense, attributable to genuine ignorance of the irreversible, irrefutable, incontestable, harmful damage that grass clippings can cause a ditch of overgrown grass.

Or something along those lines.

In any case, rather than receiving that $125 fine, I was instead the recipient of a stern talking-to from, by the sound of her voice, a 20-something young lady bound by the duties of her office to come after miserly older misfits like me.

She even had me apologetically calling her ma'am throughout the duration of our conversation.

But if that's the price I have to pay to avoid paying the price, I will gladly bow all day long to the Bylaw Officer that wields all the power over a smooth criminal like me.