Getting Lucky
Posted on August 9, 2006 by Ching under Life.
This is a repost of an old journal entry dated January 7, 1999 originally posted on Chingay.com.. I’m reposting it in honor of my mom who recently received a speeding ticket while driving through Eastborough.
Mom is the last person I’d expect to get a speeding ticket. After all, she drives like a grandma! Oh, wait! She IS a grandma!
Those Eastborough cops are relentless. Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we don’t. Anyway, mom, this is for you.
Guess what. I got pulled over by a cop on my way home a couple of nights ago. It was horrible. I wasn’t even wearing my seatbelt. I never do. I know I should, but it’s soo restrictive specially when you’re wearing a heavy coat. And you know how I like to sing at the top of my lungs and dance around (as though I’m a lunatic just released from an asylum suffering a seizure) when I’m alone in the car? The safety belt, while it’s for my own benefit, doesn’t really allow for a lot of mobility and just gets in the way.
I didn’t even see the police car. He was driving North-bound on Rock Road, while I was driving South to my house. I was on the right-most lane and a bit distracted by the beauty of the full moon and the clear evening sky. Grooving to the music of Camp Lo, I wouldn’t even have noticed him had he not made the swiftest u-turn I’ve ever seen done in my entire life. All I could manage was an Oh, shit! under my breath and immediately, as sort of a reflex action, I turned down the volume of the stereo. But no, I didn’t remember to nonchallantly put my seatbelt on. As I rarely put it on, I didn’t think I was capable of inconspicuously putting it on. I just thought, Fuck it.
I slowed down, of course. Having him chase me all over Derby wouldn’t help me in the least– that I knew for sure. So within seconds, he was right behind me with the colorful lights atop his vehicle whirling away amidst the darkness that engulfed us. I pulled over off to the side, on the gravel road-shoulder, a few yards from the 71st and Rock intersection.
It took him a while to get out of his car and knock on my window. I think they do that on purpose, just to rattle your nerves. Finally, he came. I rolled down my window (I know, I don’t got power windows, doesn’t that just suck?) and squinted at his flashlight. He told me that he clocked me at seventy on a fifty-five (which I doubt is true– I didn’t think I was going seventy– I mean, I was going fast but not seventy– it might have seemed seventy from his perspective because he was, after all, driving toward me– but I didn’t argue– it would do very little good) and routinely asked for my driver’s license, which I cooperative handed him– after I fumbled through my purse for a minute or so (after I did the 32 flavors wallet project, I just hastily tossed everything into my bag– who would’ve thought I’d get pulled over?).
He looks at it, then looks at me. He begins the standard interrogation with, Do you still live on Valley Stream Drive? I nod, hoping and praying he wouldn’t check the trunk and find Barry’s body. Just kidding. Forget that last part. I just nodded. And no, I didn’t kill Barry. Although I wish he would quit stalking me already. He’s like, I know your mom. Right then I realized, he had been one of the cops that helped my parents out during that ordeal with Jen. I think he might have received a Christmas basket (you know, one of those food baskets with salamis and cheese and stuff? those things are not cheap) as a token of their gratitude.
Do you know that this is a 115-dollar ticket? he asked, glancing at my driver’s license in his hand another time and then added, What am I gonna do? He looked pensive for a moment, considering everything, and proposed a deal. He told me that he would just give me a warning ticket– I wouldn’t have to pay anything, it’s just a little piece of paper to remind me to drive safer next time, observe the posted speed limit and always wear my seatbelt. Man, was I relieved. Whew! Thank gawd, for that Christmas basket. I don’t think I could afford to pay another goddamn fine.
Am I lucky or what? I could not believe it. I was sure he would write the ticket, too. I mean, just in the last three months Jen got three written against her. They were all over a hundred bucks, too.
Related Stories
« Bebot’s Thousand-Mile Check-Up « this post » Winning, Anger and the Crack Addicted Chimps! »
