"Oooh, feeling guilty when you see a cop? You shouldn't be worried if you're not doing anything illegal."
It matters not. I'm a Graber, and police officers can sense that. Poof-Lady is probably on their staff, hired specifically to give me mini heart attacks. She looks elderly and wealthy, like she could be driving anything. Buick, Cadillac, Mercedes...all sensible options. Nope, she drives a plain-white Impala just to introduce some anxiety into my life.
Granted, I've gotten stopped a fair share of times. Many of my Impromptu Police Officer Visitations are because I break the law regularly when it comes to speed limits. I live in Iowa but my right foot evidently lives in Nevada.
Other violations have included "Failure to Restrain Child", "Expired Registration Tags", "Headlamp Out", and "Weaving". The last one has nothing to do with baskets and everything to do with the yellow center line. I wasn't ticketed for my faulty headlight or for weaving, but I was stopped nonetheless.
There was a stretch of my rambunctious teen years that I seemed to get stopped quite regularly. I mended my ways, knowing that, whilst speeding everywhere I went, I was speedily approaching a license suspension. So I calmed down and behaved for a while. I was told that if you go three years without a ticket, your license becomes clean. Whaddya know, I went 2 years and 10 months without a ticket, and just recently got stopped THRICE and ticketed twice. Being dangerously close to "Three Strikes and Yer Out", officers have been kind to me. I'm not sure if the "Three Tickets in One Year" is for a calendar year resetting in January, or it's 12 literal months. If it's the latter, I need to gently feather the throttle until October 2013.
There is something sinister at work here. I'm usually driving vehicles that have a hard time getting to 60mph, yet I still get pulled over.
I drive the middle van. It's a stout little mule, but it BETRAYED me by going 45 in a 25.
Lately I've taken to setting the cruise control on my way to work, so I don't get distracted and blast through Wellman going 60 in a 35. I get distracted easily, and my foot uses that as an excuse to have an epileptic seizure on the accelerator pedal.
Since my car's interior is pink, this photo is entirely relevant.
The cost of speeding tickets helps me behave. Recalling how much money I've spent on traffic violations that I could have spent on ammunition and cheesy snacks is particularly heart-wrenching.
This man has just been told that he has to hand over his cheesy snacks and pay for court costs, even though he's not going to court.
Besides my poor driving manners and speeding tendencies, I have absolutely no clue why I get stopped so often. My license plate reads "SILLYAK", which is the children's pronunciation of "Celiac", the auto-immune disease I have. Perhaps police officers think it means "Silly AK", as in "The owner of this vehicle possesses a firearm and is irresponsible with it." That is entirely untrue, and my friends are liars. But it would help explain why not one but THREE officers have whipped u-turns just to pull me over.
"You could learn your lesson, you know."
Yes, I suppose I could. But if people learned from their mistakes, police officers would only have rude criminals to deal with. I provide them with a break from their hectic burglar-handcuffing job. Granted, I'm not the most pleasant in situations where I'm being told that I did something wrong, but I try to respond pleasantly. After all, the officer is serving and protecting me. It says so on the squad car. He's serving me traffic violations and protecting me from spending that $100 on ammunition.
Of all the ways to solve my problems, such as surrendering my car keys and/or amputating my right foot, I've decided to take the most drastic course: leaving earlier so I can take my time and drive slowly. I'm not sure if I'll survive the ordeal, but goodness sakes alive and help the needy, I'm gonna try. Also, I'm going to buy a hearse. See if I can introduce some anxiety into little Ms. Poof-Lady's life.
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