For readers unfamiliar with the wonder that is the Garden State Parkway, let me explain. It's a toll road, with a toll plaza in every county it passes through. Actually, Bergen County has two, including one up near the New York border. Unlike the New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana turnpikes, where you get a card as soon as you enter the road and then pay for the distance traversed when you exit, on the Parkway you pay 35 cents at every toll. There are three ways to pay: in cash, with an attendant who makes change, by EZ Pass, the automated system, and with exact change you throw into a basket. I refuse to use EZ Pass, partly because I don't trust there not to be billing errors, and partly because the government can tune into the transponders at places other than the tolls. I'm not keen to enable Big Brother, so I pay my tolls in cash. (Except in France where they are so expensive I pay them by credit card). Of those options, the exact change is the quickest.
When I was learning to drive, as a teen in New Jersey, I had to learn how to pay the tolls. You have to pull up just the right distance from the basket – not too far so you can't reach it and not too close so you hit it... It took a few attempts before I mastered it. At least I thought I had it down, until tonight.
I drove down to my dad's in NJ and had to pass through a toll plaza. I had all my change queued up in my hand, the handy dime and quarter I'd gotten as change from the earlier toll on the MassPike. I pulled up to the basket, at just the right distance, unrolled the window, stuck my arm out...
And somehow managed to hit the door frame. The change went flying. And not into the basket. This was a problem. I didn't have any other spare change to deposit instead, and anyway, I'm a poor student who can't afford to strew money hither and yon on highways. So I put on the emergency brake, turned on the hazard lights, opened the door, and started looking for my change on the ground. I had to act quickly: there were now cars behind me and I feared the wrathful honking that might ensue if I unduly blocked their progress. Lo and behold, there was the quarter, and there was the dime... the dime... the Canadian dime... another dime... another quarter... It was better than Vegas. With one dopey move, I'd managed to double my money. And there was more still lying there. But I decided to quit while I was ahead, before a traffic jam ensued. Quick as a flash I dropped one of the dimes and quarters into the basket, got back into the car (that I had managed not to lock myself out of, as I feared I was accidentally going to, what with me being on the outside of it and the keys still in the ignition), and drove away without further incident, flush with just enough loose change to pay for the trip back.
Edit 12/28: So my cousin thinks it's illegal to pick up change on the ground at the tollbooth, the theory being that the money was intended for the Parkway Authority (this the same authority that requires the National Anthem to be played before any concert at the place formerly known as the Garden State Arts Center - even if the act isn't American or doesn't want to have it played - just so we're clear on the level of fascism that may be affected here). There is something to that theory: [another relative] says that when she misses the basket she drives off anyway, thinking that it should be enough that she got the money TO the toll. But my impression always was that if you didn't get it into the basket it didn't count. Worse, leaving change all over the ground is essentially littering, and I'm sure that's illegal. (And given the age of some of the coins left on the ground it doesn't seem like the Parkway Authority is particularly interested in collecting this money.) Of course, if it does count as paying just by leaving the money on the road at the toll, perhaps that solves how to pay the toll for the George Washington Bridge...
Anyway, it's not that I'm advocating jumping out of the car at every toll to scrape up the lost change as a separate career or anything. Blocking traffic is illegal and dangerous. I was just trying to do my citizenly duty by properly paying my tolls, something that the Parkway Authority often makes difficult. And any guilt I might have had for picking up a teeny bit extra was pretty much wiped out by the booths at which it was impossible to pay *unless* you had exact change or EZ Pass. They do give out envelopes so you could mail in your 35 cents, but by the time you pay for postage you've paid twice. That's hardly fair. If the tolls require you to pay, they should make it possible to do so.
And we're not talking grand theft here either. I picked up an extra 35 cents plus a Canadian dime. In fact, I only had the mens rea for taking an extra 10 cents (plus the Canadian dime because I think foreign coins are neat); I really genuinely and sincerely thought that quarter on the ground there was the one I had dropped.
I just hope my little change-collecting spree doesn't make me fail the moral character application for the bar...