Today, I paid an essentially useless visit to the police.

It was only not useless in the sense that I’m not going to talk about it here, but I did go to the police station in New Jersey today.

Let me tell you why.

Last night, I attended a friend’s birthday dinner.

I was going to say birthday party, it wasn’t really a party, it was a dinner.

There were about 10 of us there.

She was turning 50.

I first want to say this about birthdays, which is, I think there’s this assumption or belief, a commonly held one that you know as you get a little bit older, that you shouldn’t have big birthday things.

You should make your birthday a big deal.

I’m here to disagree vehemently with that mentality, because I think your birthday’s worth celebrating.

Typically, people have just one a year at most, and I think they’re worthy of celebration.

Anyway, at any rate, I was at this friend’s 50th birthday party, well, except I wasn’t there yet.

I was driving there.

I was driving there on Route 9 in Freehold, New Jersey, and I took the exit off Route 9 South onto Main Street.

That exit has two lanes for turning right, and they turn into two lanes on Main Street in Freehold.

I’m giving all these details so that you can stalk me later if you’d like.

You can just keep driving there over and over again in case you see me.

I was in the rightmost of those two lanes, and another driver was in the second from the right lane.

We were both turning into our respective lanes.

Well, in theory, we were both supposed to be turning into our respective lanes on Main Street.

Instead, the driver in the lane to my left turned into my lane, and thus into me.

Then that driver …

It was very light.

It was like a sideswipe kind of thing.

But then that driver realized the error of their ways.

My honking and gesticulating likely helped.

Then that driver was like, ooh, let me get away from here.

I was not going to give chase, but I was going to, I guess illegally in the state of New Jersey, use my cellular telephone, which is exactly what I did, to take a photo of that car in its license plate.

Then I went to dinner.

When I parked at the parking lot, which is about three minutes from where this incident had occurred and where the guy had driven off in great haste, I evaluated the car and determined that it had superficial damage at best, some of which really could rub right off the side mirror, and some of which was less inclined to rub directly off, but wasn’t horrible.

I ate dinner.

Then I called the police department, the non-emergency line.

First they had a debate for a while about whether it was Freehold Borough or Freehold Township that I should be calling, because the exit marks, actually, the demarcation between the two.

It would be one of two different police departments.

Eventually they said, you know what?

We’re going to go with Borough, which is who I had called, and we’d like you to come in tomorrow to make a statement, since you have a photo.

So I came in tomorrow.

That was now today.

When you get in, there’s a giant sign that says, don’t wait at the window.

Use this phone to reach an officer if you are looking to report something.

I pick up that strange, disease-ridden phone.

It was in a case, had a very, very short, all-metal cord.

I pick up the phone and start dialing the number it says, and the woman behind the nearby counter says, no, no, you can just talk to me.

Direct defiance of what the sign says, but I don’t know, I listen to what people tell me at the police station, whether it’s a sign or a human.

The human outranked the sign.

She talked to me for a few minutes, and then she’s like, well, was it Freehold Borough or Freehold Township?

I’m like, boy, I just had this conversation last night.

At any rate, eventually an officer comes out to talk to me, and then the officer is like, let’s go get the car, and then the officer is like, you shouldn’t report this.

I was like, okay, I had a feeling that they might say that, but I was like, why, why should I not report this?

The officer is like, well, if you report it, then it’s going to be on your Carfax report that this car was in an accident, you’re going to have to pay your deductible, insurance is going to be in a he said, he said kind of situation, they’re not going to know who’s really at fault, so it’s just going to be bad for you, and I think, listen, if you want to report it, you can.

I said, listen, I had exactly that same thought process last night.

My only reason for caring is that it was hit and run, and this person whose license plate and car and make and model I can show you right here, this person did it, and he’s like, can you tell me anything distinctive about the driver?

I said that he’s bad at driving.

That made the officer laugh, but he’s like, but do you have their height or weight or ethnicity?

Were they wearing some kind of uniform?

I said, I can’t tell you any of those things because I didn’t see the driver that well.

I was busy making sure he didn’t continue to crash into me, and then photographing his license plate, but no, I didn’t get a good gander at the driver, and I said, yeah, then really there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do.

He’s like, I’d like to write down that license plate number, and I’m going to run it through our system, see if there’s anything else going on with that driver or that car, but there’s really nothing we can do to help you.

You are well within your rights to file a report and then have that on the Carfax record for the car, et cetera, et cetera, but my advice to you, human to human, is don’t bother, and I said, okay, that was kind of my instinct before I came here today.

I really just wanted you to go yell at the hit and run person.

He’s like, well, the good news is, because it’s a self-report on an accident, you can file it at any time.

You can file it a year from now, so write everything down, and you can decide at any point if you find out that there was more damage to the car to file it, which I’m clearly not going to do, so anyway, I have that person’s license plate.

I know they make and model their car, and I hate that person very passionately, but I don’t hate you, dear listener.

I don’t hate you at all.

Happy December 6th.

Lex.