Melissa was irritated even before she left her place. She hadn’t slept well. She discovered when she pulled on her new tights that she’d accidentally purchased control-top. And then she chipped her favorite coffee mug. She was eating peach yogurt and drinking French roast while moving around getting ready for work, and her 58-year old brain confused the consumables; she lifted her mug with her muscles expecting the light-weight yogurt container, and her grasp failed.

So when she witnessed a law-breaker in her neighborhood, she wanted a consequence to fit the crime.

The city of Berkeley maintains traffic-calming devices. Residential streets between the hills and the bay feature roundabouts or barriers at many corners, forcing drivers to slow in the intersections or to make turns athwart their intended direction. Melissa’s street had barriers at each end. There was a gap in the blockade large enough to admit a fire engine or other emergency vehicle, and planted in the center of the gap was a raised little hurdle of steel, intended to prohibit regular vehicles from using the gap.

Since the installation of the barriers, cars had gotten taller. More folks were buying van-type vehicles with higher clearance. Most vehicles bigger than roadsters could make it over the steel hurdle. That’s what Melissa witnessed: a woman driving a white Subaru, ignoring the warning sign and the threat of a fine, surmounting the hurdle and defeating the barriers.

With impunity. Melissa felt outrage. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen such a maneuver. She was pretty sure that if she hung out at her corner with a clipboard she could log dozens of such events each day.

“Or a camera instead of a clipboard,” she thought as she proceeded down the hill toward her office. If she could get pictures of these drive-throughs, with the license plate included, she wondered if the city would issue tickets.

One of the benefits of working for the city of Berkeley is the free Y membership. Melissa used hers. That’s how she met and befriended Rose, who had a position with DPT. They got together for lunch.

“Oh, I don’t think your picture plan will work,” Rose said after Melissa described her morning. The two women were eating matching salads while they waited for their mushroom pizza. “Citizens’ arrests are rare, and citizens’ citations more so.”

“Well something should be done,” Melissa countered. “I mean, I’m not a huge fan of the barriers and I doubt that my little street would be much worse without them, but if they’re there they should be enforced.” She poured half a packet of sugar into her iced tea and stirred it. “It’s like the Ashby Avenue thing – posted at 25 mph but all the traffic goes faster if it can, so everyone is forced to “speed” and that’s taught us all to ignore the signs – we need to mean our rules or dump them.”

“Whoa, girlfriend. Are you okay? This campaign seems a little extreme…” Rose paused as the waiter approached, and helped him rearrange their table to receive the pizza. “Is Kim hassling you again?”

That made Melissa smile. “Actually no. For the first time in awhile we seem okay. She’s even been asking my advice. Dieter’s been pressuring her to come to Germany and she’s not sure what to do.”

“Now? What’s Kim: 40?”

“Thirty-eight. And he is her father. I know he’s a flake, but I can understand Kim’s ambivalence. And she’s between jobs now. She has some time.”

“Do you want to go?”

“God no. I saw enough of Dieter back then. Everyone admired those year-abroad programs when I was in college, but I wonder how many dual-citizenship babies came of it. Almost like war kids.” Melissa took a messy bite of her pizza slice and kept talking around it. “I’m okay. I’ve just really had it with some drivers in my neighborhood.” She put her food down and gulped iced tea. “Wait: what if we could get the city to raise it?”

“The fine?”

“No. The steel hurdle that’s supposed to stop the cars. What if they just replaced what’s there with something a bit taller? Oh, I’m loving it: not only would that stop the maneuver, but the first time the asshole driver tries it, she or he will damage their car. What a way to learn!”

Rose considered. Drank some of her own iced tea. “You know, that could be arranged.”

Melissa smiled wider than she had all day. “You think?”

“I know. Don’t forget where I work.”