Thursday, May 19, 2011

The box of $61.63 lasagna noodles

I'm making dinner for a family from church who just had a baby.  I'm supposed to deliver it tomorrow, but I have no lasagna noodles, so I have to make a Kroger trip.  $1.63 later, I'm on the way home.  I see a police car has pulled someone over.  I think to myself, "Poor fool.  Glad it's not me."  I go another block, and I see another police car has pulled someone else over.  The police in this town are extremely vigilant; I've noticed that before.  Then I come to a stoplight and glance in my rearview mirror.  Police car right behind me.  I decide to fire up my turn signal, even though I'm in the turn lane and obviously going to turn.  I make sure I don't cross the line when I turn, and I keep my eye on the spedometer to make sure I'm nowhere near speeding.  I'm doing everything right.  I'm pretty proud of myself. 

Suddenly those horrible lights are flashing behind me.  I pull over to let the police car go by me, because of course it
must be on the way to some emergency that has nothing to do with me.  But no; the cop car is now stopped right behind me, shining its ridiculously bright spotlight right on me.  I'm thinking there must be some mistake, but I'm getting a little nervous.  I casually slip my seatbelt on as I'm rolling down the window. 

The cop shines her blinding flashlight right in my face and says, "I pulled you over because you weren't wearing your seatbelt."  Are you kidding me?  How could she have seen that in the dark??  Now she wants my license and insurance.  Thankfully, I have them.  I think she'll probably just going to give me a warning, because I'm such an upstanding citizen.  She tells me to wait, and she goes back to her car, which is still lit up like the 4th of July.  Ten minutes later, I'm still there, as hundreds of passersby are gawking at me, because naturally I'm at the busiest intersection in the whole town.  What on earth do cops do in their cars that whole time?  How do they decide whether to give a ticket or a warning?  Even if she's writing a ticket, my seven-year-old could have completed a whole handwriting lesson by now.  Finally, she comes back with a ticket in her hand that's going to cost me $60. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup. My dh got nailed too. At 5:30am. The thing is he was actually wearing his belt. But it rubs our necks when we wear it so we both got in the habit of slinging it across our middle and under our arm - you get the picture. So when they stopped him he quickly said, "but I have it on". The response was, "maybe you just slipped it on". So the ticket was for wearing it improperly. The ticket was $55. We should have filed some sort of a complaint for harassment. But to be honest, we never get by with anything, so long ago decided we might as well just be honest.
See...this is what honesty gets you.
A ticket. blah :-p
We feel your pain.
~ j

dave said...

I NEVER wear my belt in the work truck, it bothers me that they have the power to enforce that. Police were out everywhere yesterday though, all over the interstate, bloomington, peoria.......
The last time Morton police bothered me I was doing 50 past your old street going to hyde park and I got out of the van and wIred for them to turn around... they didn't give me a ticket, though.