I got pulled over on Saturday, but received no ticket. Wooooooooo, says I.
It was rather late (I had actually just turned the clock in my car back, as it was 2am EDT and 1am EST) and was heading home from the Carmen cast-party (Carmen opened TEH BOMBZORZ, as expected) and traffic was heavy (I don’t know why; this is the third parenthetical aside this sentence, a new record even for me). Over on the right hand side of I-95, the cops were sitting with their flashers going, which usually indicates they’ve already pulled over somebody, so slowing down is dumb. Everybody, of course, slowed down, including one idiot that swerved in front of me and then hit the brakes.
So I flashed my highbeams, swerved around him, and accelerated back to a healthy seventy miles per hour. Apparently the policefolks disapproved of this move, so they chased me down.
“What’s going on?” he asked. He appeared to be one bright policeman. What does one say to that? I went with
“Um…nothing, officer.”
“Where you goin’ in such a hurry? I saw you whip in and out of traffic back there.”
“Well, sir, the fellow in front of me swerved into my lane and hit the brakes when he saw you folks, so I had to swerve around him to keep from hitting him.”
The officer grunted at this. “You have anything to drink tonight?”
“Yes sir. I had two beers about 2 hours ago.” This was true; I’d stopped drinking at the party around midnight.
“Just two beers?”
“Yes sir.”
“Got your license, registration and insurance?” I handed them over, and he went back to his car, while I sat and waited. I couldn’t figure out exactly what they intended to charge me with; he couldn’t possibly have clocked my speed from where he was. I assumed they might charge me with an unsafe lane change, which I figured I could probably fight successfully in court, since technically a guy did change lanes in front of me and hit his brakes. I assumed I would probably get a warning for having one headlight out (the Mazda seems to go through them like Rush Limbaugh goes through oatmeal cream pies). After a few minutes, the cop returned.
“Slow down.”
“Yes sir.” I drove off. A surreal experience, all in all.
