The Luck

I don't want to go on about it, but who else am I going to tell?  The malady worsens.  Yesterday brought severe pain and a sudden rash.  Terrifying medical terms keep running through my brain.

Still, there is luck.  Twice in two weeks I have been stopped by the police.  The first time, the weekend before going to the hospital, I was speeding.  I am an aggressive driver even when I am not in a hurry.  I think it is my reaction to the frustration of the lack of social consciousness and infrastructure.  Roads in my state are only built to provide economic opportunities for the wealthy.  You cannot travel on an adequate road here.  They are built solely to provide real estate developers another venue, not to serve public transportation.  Either my intellectual consciousness of this is much higher or my level of frustration much lower than everyone else's.  It results in bad road behavior on my part.

So I was pulled over by a brand new twelve year old policeman with a fresh burr haircut and in need of Acutane.  I turned my car into a parking lot with resignation.  He approached the car from close behind the way they all do now, standing just behind my left ear, and said in a voice that could muster as much authority as an adolescent can,

"Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?"

Not wishing to be disagreeable but not wanting to give away the farm, either, I said in my best Bill Murray voice,

"Oh. . . I'll bet you have your reasons."

He took my license and insurance card and registration back to his car telling me to "stay inside the vehicle" as another police car pulled up.  Not being very good at taking care of my business, I hoped that I had done everything I needed to get my car properly registered.  I sat in the heat a good long while as the child cop talked to the fellow in the other car thinking that I was glad I wasn't in high school and had to go home to tell my parents.

When he finally came back, he said, "Sir, you were doing sixty miles per hour in a forty-five mile an hour zone."

He was wrong, but I was grateful.

Then he handed me back my license, registration and insurance card.

"I'm going to ask you to slow it down," he said.

Jesus.  He was a savant, a child-saviour.  I felt ashamed.  I was wrong and he was right.

"Oh, yes sir," I said, feeling the ridiculousness of that statement sharply.  "You can bet I will."

Yesterday driving to the factory, I was talking on the phone with my mother when out of nowhere a cop pulled up behind me and turned on his lights.

"Hey mom, I'll call you back.  I'm being pulled over by the police."

The fellow who came to my car was pretty serious.  He had a heavy Spanish accent and a mustache.  After asking for my license, etc, he asked in an aggressive voice,

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"Because you are a cop," I wanted to say, but rather, I said, "Nope.  I truly haven't a clue."

"You ran that stop sign back there."

I looked back as if I might see myself doing it.

"Really?" I said in true surprise.  "Really?"

"You want to tell me why you did it?"

Now I thought that one of the most absurd questions I had heard in some time, but I didn't need any time to think about it.

"Well. . . I'll tell you.  If you asked me if I ran that stop sign, I'd have to say no.  But I don't want to argue with you if you saw me do it.  But I would have to say I didn't."

And with that he went off to his car.  I thought of all the things I might say to him.  I wanted to tell him how chickenshit this was and many other things, but I thought all of it would be unproductive.  I was only half a mile from home.  I hadn't even started speeding yet.

I watched him come back.  He had his ticket book in hand, so I was resigned.

"O.K." he said.  "I'm going to write you a warning."

He went on explaining everything to me, but I wasn't listening.  I signed where he told me to and started the car hoping I wouldn't do anything illegal as I pulled away.

I called my mother back and said,

"You're going to have to come down and bail me out."

"What!" she exclaimed.

"Just kidding.  He said I ran a stop sign, but he gave me a warning."

And then my mother started in.

"Well, you don't stop at stop signs. . . . " It went on and on, a list of all my bad behaviors.  She sounded pissed that I had gotten off.

"O.K. mom.  I'm going to hang up now.  I'll need both hands on the steering wheel if I'm going to weave in and out of traffic at high speed.  I'll call you later."

I wanted her to know that my main concern was safety.

I have a doctor's appointment in a bit.  I will tell him all my woes and hope that he, like the nice policemen I have met, will give me a warning and let me go.  I hope I've not used up all the luck.