One day, I was driving along singing songs with my kids in the car, when we passed an Animal Control vehicle. I watched in my rear view mirror as it turned on it's lights and flipped around behind me. Now, I was under the impression that Animal Control cars had some volunteer type person in them and had no legal power, so much so that I thought they must have seen some stray animal and so I started looking around for the poor dog who was about to get caught. I was so disillusioned/stupid, whatever you prefer to call it, that I told Mason, "See that car with the lights on, they're going to catch a doggie." I pulled over for it to pass since it's lights were on and was shocked when it pulled over behind me. It was then that I realized that I was the animal who was caught. Who knew there were ticketing police officers in animal control cars? NOT ME! And I hadn't even been going that fast. The officer came to the window and was very kind as he explained I was driving 35 mph in front of the high school with a 25 mph speed limit. He kindly explained different statistics about the distance it would take to stop and how stupid high school kids/drivers are and how I need to be extra careful here. I agreed and apologized for my carelessness. He asked for my license...oops left my wallet at home. He shook his finger at me, but said he could look it up. Asked for my car registration...looked through the glove box but best I could come up with was one that expired in 2009. He laughed now and said I was striking out, but said as long at the policy was the same he could verify it was still current. Two strikes against me. It wasn't until the officer started walking back to his car that I realized the third, and very big, strike was about to come. My drivers license had expired the week before on my birthday and I had forgotten to renew it. Mason, who hadn't asked any question up until this point asked quietly, "Are they going to take you to jail?" I told him "no" and hoped I was telling the truth. It didn't take long for the kind officer to re approach my window. I rolled it down and immediately exclaimed, "It expired last week!" He nodded his head, yes. That kind kind kind man then told me that although I had failed every single thing so far I had gotten one thing right and that was my kids were buckled into proper car seats and since that was the most important thing he wasn't going to give me a ticket. I couldn't believe the bullet I had just dodged. Good things like that don't usually happen to me. I swore up and down I would renew my license immediately and told him Thank You about a million times. Whew, that was a close one. However, I never have been very good at learning from my mistakes and I still have not renewed my license...better get on top of that.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Dodging a Bullet
One day, I was driving along singing songs with my kids in the car, when we passed an Animal Control vehicle. I watched in my rear view mirror as it turned on it's lights and flipped around behind me. Now, I was under the impression that Animal Control cars had some volunteer type person in them and had no legal power, so much so that I thought they must have seen some stray animal and so I started looking around for the poor dog who was about to get caught. I was so disillusioned/stupid, whatever you prefer to call it, that I told Mason, "See that car with the lights on, they're going to catch a doggie." I pulled over for it to pass since it's lights were on and was shocked when it pulled over behind me. It was then that I realized that I was the animal who was caught. Who knew there were ticketing police officers in animal control cars? NOT ME! And I hadn't even been going that fast. The officer came to the window and was very kind as he explained I was driving 35 mph in front of the high school with a 25 mph speed limit. He kindly explained different statistics about the distance it would take to stop and how stupid high school kids/drivers are and how I need to be extra careful here. I agreed and apologized for my carelessness. He asked for my license...oops left my wallet at home. He shook his finger at me, but said he could look it up. Asked for my car registration...looked through the glove box but best I could come up with was one that expired in 2009. He laughed now and said I was striking out, but said as long at the policy was the same he could verify it was still current. Two strikes against me. It wasn't until the officer started walking back to his car that I realized the third, and very big, strike was about to come. My drivers license had expired the week before on my birthday and I had forgotten to renew it. Mason, who hadn't asked any question up until this point asked quietly, "Are they going to take you to jail?" I told him "no" and hoped I was telling the truth. It didn't take long for the kind officer to re approach my window. I rolled it down and immediately exclaimed, "It expired last week!" He nodded his head, yes. That kind kind kind man then told me that although I had failed every single thing so far I had gotten one thing right and that was my kids were buckled into proper car seats and since that was the most important thing he wasn't going to give me a ticket. I couldn't believe the bullet I had just dodged. Good things like that don't usually happen to me. I swore up and down I would renew my license immediately and told him Thank You about a million times. Whew, that was a close one. However, I never have been very good at learning from my mistakes and I still have not renewed my license...better get on top of that.
