License and Registration, Please

No one likes to get pulled over by the cops. If you're anything like me, you start thinking about any possible illegal thing that you may have done in the past, oh, I don't know, five years. "There was that one time that I jay walked," or "Damnit, I was indeed talking on my cellphone without using an ear piece." Sometimes I even get so paranoid that I start thinking along the lines of, "Do I look like anyone on the current FBI's Most Wanted List," or "This cop is going to think that I am reaching for something other than the registration that I keep in my glove compartment and I'm going to get tazered in the back of the head." (Side bar: Why is it called the "glove compartment?" I don't know anyone with hands big enough to need gloves of that magnitude, except for Sasquatch, and he doesn't do a whole lot of driving.)

I must say that I haven't been pulled over many times in my life - I am a pretty decent driver. The four times that I can recall were for the following reasons:

• Blowing off a red light at 3:30 AM when there were absolutely no other drivers on the road ... except for the car that I watched pull up behind me at the light after double checking to make sure it WASN'T a cop (damnit). I was lucky enough not to get a ticket that time, but got verbal warning. And as a result, no matter WHAT time it is, I don't blow off red lights (unless I'm already moving on a yellow light).
• Speeding. There was a car that had been in front of me (going down a mountain, literally) that kept slamming on its breaks and there was a cop behind me. When I got off the mountain, I passed the car in front of me and took off - I needed some space between our cars because I was really irritated. And then the cop pulled me over. That time I got two written warnings. One for the speeding (although the cop never bothered to tell me how fast I was going, nor did he write it down on the warning), and another for not having proof of insurance even though it wasn't my car and my friend had thrown out the most current insurance card and kept the expired one. Stellar. But now a days, I really won't go more than 5 over on residential streets and no more than 10 over on the highways.
• Following too closely. Yeah ... apparently I was following a police officer too closely. She didn't feel that I had left enough space in between her cruiser and my car. At one point, she slammed on her breaks to try and get me to rear-end her (which she actually told me when she pulled me over was my "warning" - I had thought she was trying to miss a squirrel). I quite honestly didn't know I was tailgating and when I asked her what the legal space was for traveling behind a police officer, she told me 250 feet. When I later looked it up, that space requirement was for officers responding to an emergency with lights and sirens (she had neither on). She gave me a written warning. And as a result, I now make sure that there's three seconds of space in between me and the car in front of me, and at stops I make sure I can see the bottoms of the back tires of the car in front of me.
• Failure to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. This one I got a ticket for (despite the fact that I thought I was going to pee my pants and was less than a minute from my house which is the whole reason I didn't stop all the way at the sign - cop didn't buy it). The most irritating thing about this one is that my father had the trap set (he's not a cop, just a neighborhood watch type of guy). There were a lot of complaints of people blowing off that stop sign, so he got the trap set. OH, and he forgot to tell me about it. Stellar. But now, I come to a complete stop at all stop signs. Which, I might add, gets me beeped at, cussed at, etc. I had one person speed past me, hang out their window, cuss me off, give me the finger, lay on their horn, ALL IN THE OTHER LANE OF ON COMING TRAFFIC, and then cut me off while blowing through the next stop sign. The one where I, again, came to a complete stop. Where was a cop then?

I guess you could say that all of the times I've been pulled over really did teach me a lesson. Sometimes I wonder if it works on other drivers. I'm guessing probably not.

The one thing that pisses me off beyond belief is that people STILL talk on their cell phones without a head piece (regardless of whether or not it's legal or illegal to do so in your state). I know the research says that the distraction is less to do with holding the phone and more to do with the conversation, but there is no need to add to the chaos by taking a hand off the wheel to hold the phone. USE AN EARPIECE! I also hate the fact that I can drive by 5 cops in a day and every damn one of them is on their cell phone and also NOT using an ear piece. ARGH!

No matter how many times I've been pulled over though, I still feel like I'm going to hurl. I get freaked out and think that I'm going to be dragged "downtown," accused of a crime I didn't commit, the object of mistaken identity with no alibi to make everything go away and an incompetent legal aid attorney that wouldn't be able to get the judge to give me bail.

And then I think, "Man ... I watch way too much 'Law & Order'."

- The Incident