Violations

In the course of converstion recently, a friend asked me if I had ever been arrested. The answer is no... in fact, I've only ever been pulled over by a cop twice in my life for traffic violations. Which brought to mind the latest incident, which happened in August 2006, which I recorded in this little snippet...
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August 14, 2006

Had I been going too fast?

My eyes went from the blue lights flashing in my rear view mirror to the speedometer. Even though I was currently in the act of slowing down in order to pull over, I concluded I couldn’t have been going that fast. “So what’s the problem?” I said to myself. Maybe one of my tail lights was out.

Too tired to switch into apprehensive mode, I calmly lowered the window and dug my car registration out of the glove box while I waited for the officer to approach.

“I pulled you over because you drove through an intersection back there without stopping.” said the officer.

I looked at him. Awkward angle. Dark outside. Blue lights flashing, harsh white spotlight. He was very young in appearance, and skinny to the point of being scrawny. “Um, oh, I...” I stammered, taken by surprise at the reason he had stated. I didn’t remember the intersection.

I reached into the fuzzy, fatigued folds of my brain, trying to grasp a clue. Lots of stuff in there- long days of hard work, restless nights (thanks to stress- from work-, and the fact that my husband- who caught a cold somewhere on his New York odyssey- was coughing in my ear all night, not to mention being afflicted by hot flashes- premature menopause is a blessing, but not in every respect)...... but no intersection.

I concluded that I was far more tired than I realized, and decided to take the officer’s word that I had transgressed that little rule about stopping at stop signs.

I must have at least slowed down, ’cause the only intersections that I encountered up to that point were ones at which I turned either right or left.

Officer Scrawny ran a check on my license and registration, returned them, and then sent me on my way with a cheerful warning to remember to stop at stop signs from now on.

That was last night. I had to be at work at 7:00am this morning, but managed to get out early.

Now I have some days off and a whole lot of resting to do.

I think I’ve caught that cold from my hubby.
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