Red Ink and Moulded Plastic

I sat in the moulded-plastic chairs at the Victoriaville Civic Centre for three hours on Tuesday. If you want to know what purgatory feels like, it’s waiting for a ticket number to be called while bathed in the hum of aging fluorescent lights.

I was there to get a permit for a four-season sunroom. But when ticket number 42 was finally called, I slid a second set of blueprints across the counter to Brenda, the senior plan examiner.

Brenda has a glare that could crack cured concrete. We’ve had a complicated history ever since I told her the city’s bylaws on retaining walls were drafted by cowards.

This time, I drafted something much more personal. I handed her an onion-skin elevation drawing of my heart. I thought it was a romantic gesture. I even included a stamped letter from an engineer certifying that my emotional egress windows were finally up to code.

Brenda didn’t even blink. She just pulled out her red pen.

She red-lined the whole submission. She didn't look up, just flatly stated that my snow-load calculations didn’t account for the heavy weight of my previous two marriages on the main load-bearing frame.

Then she grabbed her rubber stamp, breathed on it, and slammed INSUFFICIENT LATERAL BRACING in wet red ink right across the title block of my feelings.

I asked her if there was any way we could negotiate the holdback, maybe grab a coffee over at the hoagie shop. She told me my variance was denied, and to pull a new ticket if I wanted to discuss the sunroom.

Until she clears the municipal code violations in my chest, I guess I’m just a squatter in my own ribcage.