Boo Hoo Officer

February 22, 2010

I am trying to remember the number of moving violation tickets (is that redundant?) I have gotten in my lifetime, and I can't come up with a total. I know I received a couple speeding tickets driving between Louisville and Cincinnati when I lived in Louisville, but attended Xavier in Cincinnati. The speed limit was 55 and Sammy Hagar and I have some things in common. Well, actually we probably only have the one thing in common, I can't drive 55. I know I got a ticket for speeding while driving from Bemidji, Minnesota to somewhere else. Please don't tell me that if you tell the officer your reason is that you have to go to the bathroom, that they will give you a warning, because it did not work for me, and I really did have to go. There are not a lot of pit stops between Bemidji and...anywhere. I don't remember the other tickets, but I know that I had enough points on my license to be in danger of a large fine and losing driving privledges. I knew enough about speeding tickets to know that the fine in Kentucky way back when was $52.50 plus $1 for every mile and hour you were over the limit. My ticket was for $72.50, so I must have been doing like 57 MPH or something. That Xavier Mathematics degree is coming in handy right now.

Beth just reminded me that I have gotten two tickets in the "short" amount of time we have been married. "Seventeen years", I stupidly said (since it has been eighteen).

Why is she sticking her nose all up in my blog business? Well, she saw the title, and she knows that she is the topic for today's blog. We have had a long-standing feud that cute girls never get tickets. She claims that she got a ticket once for running a stop sign near the house she grew up in, but I can think of a couple times since I've known her that she has been pulled over only to receive a warning. There was that pulling into the zoo time when we lived in Buffalo, and there was that other time when you were going somewhere and did something illegal and got pulled over and then...OKAY, I don't remember specifics, but I know ther have been other times.

So the proof was in the pudding (what the heck does that mean anyway?) this past week. There is a spot near our house where almost everyone goes straight, but we need to turn left. Therefore, the go straight lane gets full and no one is sitting in the turn left lane. It is very tempting to cross the double yellow line and zip up to the light so you can be first when the light changes and then get to our house 47 seconds sooner. So Beth did this the other day. Oh wait, did I mention that on the corner of this intersection is the police station? Oh I didn't.

So Police Officer dude pulls over Bethie, and asks her if she knew why he pulled her over? Don't you just love this question? I mean, how many times is this not obvious? I have known every single time that I was going too fast, but they always asked me the question. Is it some sort of entrapment trick? Like if their radar detector wasn't actually working, but they sensed you were speeding by the way the way your lips were curled back around your ears and the loud screams coming from your passengers, they could ask you the question, and if you said, "cause I was speeding", they could use that as a confession. I don't know, but I do know that Beth knew why she had been pulled over. She owned up, and THEN GOT A WARNING!!!! Now, I am grateful that she got a warning and that we did not have to spend the money on a ticket, but I am pretty sure this ugly mug would not have gotten off with a warning. I am tempted to give it a try.

How long do points stay on your license?

So let me know. Are you cute? I mean, are you cute and have never gotten a ticket? Please take my informal survey. So far the votes that are in are 1 not cute, plenty of tickets. 1 very cute, no tickets.