Caught!

Last Thursday, I could have been found driving my daughter across State lines to her very first college regisration. It was a very long drive and, genius that I am not, I forgot to bring any CD's with me so I would have something to keep me awake. After several hours-worth of listening to my daughter's hypnotically repetitive video game music while staring at the long ribbon of road, I was having an impossibly difficult time keeping my eyes open. So I pulled over into a gas station. There, my daughter finally pulled her head out of her video game to see why we had stopped and I alerted her to the danger of my falling asleep at the wheel. 

Several minutes later, I got back on the road refreshed from recirculating blood and the temporary change of scenery. To my surprize, though, Anne did not pick up her video game to resume her play. Instead, she put it down so that she could talk to me and keep me awake. Thus it was that I found myself fully awake and looking into my rearview mirror at flashing lights.

The rental car's cruise control set at 6 miles over the speed limit of 65 mph (104.6 kph), I knew I was pushing it (which is, truthfully, quite rare for me) but I also knew that I had a very long drive ahead of me and most police would not pull me over unless I was driving through a construction or school zone. As I was in a normal traffic zone, I figured that I just needed to pull into the other lane to let the police car pass me. I moved aside. My heart sank into my stomach as the flashing lights followed.

On the side of the road, it occurred to me that reason dictated I was not being pulled over for speeding. 6 mph is pushing the limit but it was not really enough for a good ticket. Therefore, I must have been stopped for some sort of public service. Perhaps I had a tail light out? I rolled down my window all the way to greet the officer who was about to peform his public service of alerting me to a problem with my rental car.

"Hello officer," I smiled as he approached my vehicle. "How are you today?"

A heavyset officer put several feet of distance between himself and the car as he walked toward my window. Looking back, I wonder if he might have found my rolling down my window all the way when he was still behind me to be cause for alarm. He answered matter-of-factly as he assessed, "I'm very well. How are you?"

"I'm okay," I shrugged.

The officer seemed a little more at ease with the exchange of greeting. I guess he had assessed me to look relatively harmless. (Little did he know I would write about him!) He drew closer to my window as he offered in explanation, "You were going a little fast, but the reason I pulled you over today is that you passed me on the road back there a bit."

As I handed him my license and car rental agreement, I explained that I must not have been paying attention to my speed as I was talking with my daughter. He responded that he had seen us talking and commented that she was sitting rather far forward... but at least she was wearing her seatbelt and, "that is what we like to see." (Thank you, Officer Lightle, for gently calling HER attention to how far forward she sometimes sits! She actually sat back in her seat for the entire weekend after your remark.)

He noted our vehicle was a rental and asked where we were headed, to which Anne and I both responded with the name of her new college. I smiled that we were going to register her for classes. The officer noted we still had quite a distance to drive, then took my license back to his squad car. My stomach became a large knot. This would be a ticket for sure, I figured, and I am totally broke.

A few moments passed before I looked into my rear-view mirror to watch for the officer getting back out of his squad car -- and there I saw something very unusual. While Officer Lightle sat inside the car to do whatever he was doing with my license, a second, slimmer officer stood outside the squad and talking to a blond woman. Actually, I take it back. She was doing most of the talking. Officer 2 looked like he was pretty much just responding.

How peculiar. I continued to watch through my rear-view mirror, curious and trying to imagine what the situation might be. Had the strange woman stopped to ask for some kind of help? Directions, perhaps? What kind of strange is that? Even I am not so brazen as to interrupt a police action. (And I am chronically uninhibited!) As I watched and wondered, I saw a form pass between the police car and mine. My gaze broke from the image of the woman n my mirror as the form disappeared from view, then reappeared in my peripheral vision to move up the side of my car and towards its front.

It was a man, and he was carrying a huge movie camera! He took a position in front of my car and aimed the camera at my window just before Officer Lightle reappeared.

My eyes grew wide. "Am I going to be on Cops???" I asked the officer. He ignored my question and handed me a piece of paper, which I immediately began to read. (Yes. That is what happens when you place a piece of paper with writing on it in front of an author's nose.) Relief washed over me as he very pleasantly informed me that he was giving me a warning rather than a citation. That is when I saw it. The real reason I had been pulled over is that speed limit was not 65, as I believed. It was 60. I must have missed the sign as I was talking. (I was very careful to watch my speed for the entire rest of our trip.)

The traffic warning issued, the camera-man returned to the squad car. Off camera, the officer answered my question. I am not going to be on Cops. A local newscast was filming police coverage of high-accident areas on the State highway. As I drove away from the scene, I silently mused, "Little do they realize they just caught a world-famous author on candid camera."

Anne did not even need to hear what I was thinking. She knew from the smile plastered all over my face. "This does not make you famous," she asserted.

"Nope. It does not MAKE me famous," I confirmed, still smiling my big, stupid smile.

Anne just groaned.