September 24, 2007
HOW Fast????
Last week was exceedingly quiet around here. Part of the reason was that I wanted to leave The Multi-Coloured Coat and Eating Crow as near the top as possible for a few days. The secondary reason developed Saturday night ... the 15th.
It's not an easy admission for me to make. You see, my self-definition is that I am responsible. I am good. I do what is right even when other people don't. I take care of many details that other people don't fret over ... because it just bugs me if I don't. For example, it's nearly impossible to get me to take a break during working hours. In fact, it can be difficult to get me to take my lunch hour. I know I need that lunch hour to re-charge my batteries ... but sometimes it's just difficult for me to believe I've "earned" or that I "deserve" some time off, particularly since I don't punch a time-clock.
I got my first speeding ticket September 15, 2007.
It's not that I always obey the posted speed limit. I like to think I'm more rational than that ... I try to go the ever-ill-defined "speed of traffic." Failing that, 5 over in town and 10 over on the highway was the "guideline" back in Texas. School zones I always always always obey. Otherwise, I suppose I'm pretty much like everyone else. I drive a bit too fast, but nothing crazy.
I didn't bother to get my driver's license at 16 like all of my friends. I didn't have a car ... wasn't going to get a car ... and I knew that my mom wouldn't let me borrow hers. I might be commanded to run errands for her, but I wasn't going to get to do the things I wanted. So I waited until a health issue meant that I would have to drive Mom around.
At that time I was honestly terrified of my parents. I literally tried to do everything "right." And, to be honest, it was rarely enough. I could not fathom coming home with a traffic ticket. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew ... were I to be pulled over for speeding, I would run. I would try to outrun the cops, and I certainly knew that my rolling death-mobile was not going to outrun any police chase. I knew all I had to do was make it to the Davis Street bridge, over by the high school ... and I would not have to face up to a speeding ticket.
I know, it's a crazy thought, isn't it? Run your vehicle off the bridge just to avoid a stupid traffic ticket?
But that was the kind of perfection I thought I had to have. With all that I had endured and was enduring from my parents, I literally thought that a ticket was simply not an option.
Luckily for me, I was never pulled over.
I tried, on numerous occasions to have a rational discussion with that utterly irrational piece of my mind. Traffic tickets are no big deal. "Everyone" gets them. They are routine. They are commonplace. And you already know your folks are crazy. Don't get so uptight about this.
It didn't really work. Of course, I don't know what really would have happened as I was never pulled over. Perhaps I would have "chickened out" and done the right thing ... or, looking at it another way, perhaps I would have been brave enough to face the officer, the ticket ... and my parents.
For the last year or so, I have known that I was beginning to push the law of averages to the breaking point and I was "due" for a ticket. I also knew that I did not have that extreme panic reaction any more and knew that I would no longer attempt to run from the police. (Damn good thing, that!)
So, on the way home from seeing a movie with friends, we are driving down Dragoon ... a nice, windy road ... out in the woods ... beautiful area and one of my favourite stretches of road around here. The speed limit ought to be 45 or so ... it's practically a rural 2 lane highway in my opinion ... but the speed limit is 30 for large sections of it. (Not that it's well marked, mind you.)
It's nearly 11 p.m. ... no one is on the road ... it's beautiful out ... we're almost "back to town" ... another block or so until the first town stoplight. Time to start sl--
Lights in the rearview mirror. I pulled over, mostly certain that the police car would shoot past me on his way to something important. Shit.
I pull out the driver's license and insurance card. I am too scared to open the glove box for the registration. I worry about a police officer thinking I'm hiding something or going for a gun. Yes, it's a pretty messed-up paranoia I have going here.
He tells me I was doing 52 in a 30 ... I'm shocked. I hadn't looked at the speedometer in ages. I had no idea, and this is obvious to the cop. He asks for the registration and I tell him it's in the glovebox ... is that okay to dig around in there. He blinks at me like I'm stupid and asks if I have any weapons he "needs to know about" in the car. No, there's not. And if I did have some, would I really think he needed to know about them? I'm shaking like a leaf. Shuffling through the papers. I finally pull out one of the registration cards and tell him, I don't know if that's this year's or not, do you want me to keep digging?
I think he was trying not to roll his eyes. He took what he had and went back to the patrolcar.
As it turns out, the state updated their software last year. It took me about 2 months to get my registration last year because the database system screwed up my entry about a million times. Every time I went in, the clerks had to re-enter my car, my address ... only to have the damn thing default back and refuse to work. After two months, they had the system cleaned up and I got my registration.
The system hiccuped. It sent my "courtesy renewal letter" to a house I had not lived at for at least 6 years. So, of course, I never got the letter. At the beginning of July, I had the money set aside and was waiting for the damn letter ... nothing.
Then I got laid off and kinda forgot about everything. You can see where this is going, right?
Yep, first time I'm pulled over, I got TWO freaking tickets.
I was shocked because I didn't realize I was speeding, and certainly not going that fast. (25 miles over the speed limit is considered reckless driving ... damn good thing I wasn't going any faster!) And, I was floored because I always pay my registration and such ... and do it on time if not early. I was trying to figure out how all of this could have happened.
So, I take my tickets and begin to drive off. Get to the stoplight ... it's green. I am going a very careful 30 now.
And some idiot turns left right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes ... we barely missed. The car even fish-tailed a bit. Rearview mirror ... I want the cop to give this asshole a ticket, too! Nope, cop's long gone. Dammit. Here was a truly dangerous situation and the guy just got away with it! *sigh*
For whatever reason, most of that weekend and a few days into the week itself, my brain was locked up completely. I was lost back in time some 17 years to when I first got my license ... to when I lived at home ... when there were impossible standards and I had to find some way to make them all. I couldn't stop thinking that somehow, for some reason, the court system was going to decide to make an example out of me ... that the punishment would far outstrip the violation.
But, that's what I had learned while growing up. I had learned that throwing a teddy bear down on the ground got you shut in your room for an entire Saturday with "bread and water" for meals. (Actually, it was a peanut butter sandwich ... but the "bread and water" point was made anyway.) I had learned that being *very* allergic to dust did not get you out of dusting the house. But the asthma triggered by the dust did keep you from running track.
I went down to the city building today and paid my tickets. I had mostly finally returned to rational thought. I was now simply nervous that the fees would be ridiculously high and I wouldn't be able to pay them.
$135.50 for both tickets.
Not money I wanted to "lose" ... but this was not the $500 or more that I expected. And this last bit of knowledge finally allowed me to slam that little jigsaw puzzle piece of "traffic tickets" into the place it belonged instead of trying to force it into some odd little nook where my parents had taught me it belonged.
It's amazing to me sometimes ... the commonplace things that I didn't even know I was afraid of.
I'm glad I got the tickets now. I needed to learn all these things about myself. I needed to look at all of this and not just intellectually recognize that my parents were wrong ... I needed to feel they were wrong. And for that lesson, $135 bucks was not a bad price.
Posted by Red Monkey at September 24, 2007 2:02 PM | | 
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What is it about getting pulled over that can ake any person with enough cold or "balls" shall I say, freak out?!
Nothing scares me, nothing usually jolts me, yet if I get pulled oer, I become a blathering, shaking mess, its a wonder they dont do a sobriety test...
and why does this all sound so familar? Didnt we chat of this back when? hmmmm...
Sometimes it is these type of situations that make us stop...just sucks it costs us some dimes...
Peace
MISS YOU!
Jay Cam said:
lol tickets are the poliecs way of telling you that you are dricing too SLOW!
want to trade links with my humor blog? its link is http://jaysmoney.blogspot.com
check it out! if you want to trade post my link adn contact me back!
thanks!
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jodi said: