One Stray Pea

All of my rage has finally caught up to me and the other day I was caught breaking the law. It’s true, I’m a lean, mean, law-breaking machine. I scoffed in the face of the law, and it scoffed back, with a $104 fine and a “Have a nice day, ma’am,”. Yeah Chips, you have a nice day too.

Let me start at the beginning…so I left for school on Thursday and I ran into traffic. Now, it was 9:15, there was no reason for there to be morning rush hour traffic, all you people should have already been at work, get off my road! So I made a little detour from Satan’s Lair (a.k.a. I-75) and maneuvered my way to I-71. So here’s the scenario, I had left the house early, so I had no reason to speed until I got to Ridge Rd., where traffic enters the highway on the left. There was a semi-truck entering the highway and he was trying to get out of the fast lane, so he had his turn signal on to let me know he was coming on over. I, however, was in his blind spot, and in order to save my life, I hit the gas. Then I came around the bend and there was Eric Estrada’s twin with a laser. He actually stepped out into the fast lane and pointed at me and then pointed at the shoulder on the fast lane side. I may have actually said to myself, “Chief, I’m driving a mustang, not a 747, I see you,”. I briefly considered pulling over on the slow lane side because I wanted to see him maneuver 4 lanes of traffic on his motorcycle, then I reconsidered and thought perhaps he would give me a warning. HA! I don’t get warnings, ever.

So he walks up to my car and says, “Morning ma’am,” and all I wanted to say was, “‘Sup CHiPs!” even though I’m not in California, I’m still an idiot. He proceeded to tell me, “I clocked you going 70 in a 55. Did you not realize you were going that fast?”, to which I replied, “Well, let me explain..”. I proceeded to tell my story to which he said, “Well, the bad news is I only see you for a little second and I’m still going to have to issue you a citation.” I may have said, “Yeah, I didn’t think you cared why I was speeding.” He then said he was going back to write my ticket and that he would be quick and I said, “Good, I have class at 10″ and pointed at my watch for emphasis. That’s right folks, I am in full idiot mode at all times, I can’t turn that off. Just in case you don’t believe that, when he walked back up to have me sign my ticket I was munching on Cheerios (I take a sandwich bag of Cheerios for breakfast) and dancing to a sweet tune in my car. The trooper actually laughed and said, “Ma’am, I went as quickly as I could, just sign here and you’ll be on your way.” Oh, in case you were wondering, no, I didn’t really speed on the rest of the drive to school and yes I still made it on time.

The rule of the day is: do NOT get caught speeding by the highway patrol! Seriously, $104 for anything less than 25 m.p.h. over the speed limit. My other two speeding tickets (both obtained when I was a young and rebellious) were $50 court fee and $1 fine for each m.p.h. over the speed limit. Again, avoid the highway patrol at all costs, because they don’t have anything else to do but write you a ticket.

Filed under: Grumpy, Life in Cincinnati, Squawk Box on August 25th, 2007