In our little neck of the ‘burbs, there exists two kinds of drivers.
One is the little old lady/man/can’t-even-tell-anymore that you can barely see behind the wheel (or person who is doing a driving imitation of this type,) doing about 7 MPH regardless of posted speed limit.
The other is the type who would be thisclose to your back bumper if you were doing 9 or 90 – you can see the whites of their eyeballs reddening in rage as they crawl up your tailpipe, attempting to drive right through you and anyone else in their path.
Now I’d wager a guess that the latter is at least exascerbated by the existance of the former, if not caused entirely by them, but my predicment is that I seem to live somewhere in between the two.
You see – I don’t speed. Well, actually I go a calculated 2 or 3 MPH over the posted speed limit at times, but never up to 5 mph over.
I can’t.
But to explain I have to preface with this – From 16 years old until 35 last year when I was just beyond my late 20s, I never had anything worse than a parking ticket (and I actually went through a period in my life where I excelled at receiving those, but I digress, as usual.)
I don’t break the law. I Pink Puffy Heart police officers. That is how I roll.
Except then I had this kid, and suddenly my mind was gone um, elsewhere.
So a year-and-a-half or so there was an… incident. It involved a sunny day, a McMuffin on the way to work with the sunroof open after dropping Jr at his old urban day care, and a stop sign on a very quiet street that obviously grew out of the ground right after I passed the intersection and heard the sirens. (OK, OK, so MAYBE I didn’t see it and it was there all along. I blame the McMuffin.)
This caused a bump in our insurance, except it was offset by our insane timely move to the ‘burbs. (Insuring a car in the city is more expensive then out here. Clearly the insurance companies don’t see the minivan race driver moms as a threat.) I was saved from the wrath of the insurance-paying Mr. by our new out-of-the-way address. WOO HOO!!
BUT WAIT.
Then Presidents’ Day came. I used the glorious paid holiday as an excuse to treat myself to lunch at a favorite restaurant and was on my way to meet a friend – I proceeded through a left turn at a busy intersection in the affluent shopping district I so love and saw a police officer roar up beside me and start flagging me into a parking lot.
In his crazy talk opinion, I (and the two cars behind me he also flagged down,) had run the red arrow.
Yeah, No.
Not the way it went down.
I considered contesting this one. I hemmed and hawed. It was my word against him – no dash cams in most DPD cars, no camera in the intersection, no matter if there was I probably couldn’t get them to use it anyway.
I still love police officers. I DO NOT love him.
He could have said I drove backward through the intersection ghost riding the whip while doing the hokey pokey blindfolded – I couldn’t prove it wasn’t true.
I paid the damn ticket. And now I await my insurance increase fate in July when our next premium is due, along with the ranting that will come from The Mr, although he too knows it is coming.
Suddenly my perfect record self is like, 1 sneeze in the wrong direction behind the wheel from ending up with a bus pass and a marriage crisis.
So, jack ass driving so close to the back of Frederico Escapé that I could be towing you on a hair-tie, you may freak out all you want. I am sorry if your brood is late to soccer practice or whatever.
I don’t speed.
Reluctantly Suburban 