Broken Record

Alright, so it is Monday! Monday night = Family Home Evening Night! So I am headed to my church to join in happy social activities (I think that night was a movie night). All's well, it is dark (yes it gets dark by like 6pm in the winter times-crazy I know) and I am driving along the highway blasting whatever classical tunes happened to be on the radio. I hum along absent-mindedly as my brain goes on auto-pilot--I have driven this route a few hundred times over the past couple years.

Hum, hummmm, humming....blin-ker, blin-ker, blin-ker (to the beat), humm, glance at the pretty horses, humm-new song, watch the cars go by, see sneaky police car catching speeders in the usual spot-smile-check spedometer even though I wasn't speeding in the first place, hummmm, notice roadkill got picked up, humhum ...blueredblueredblue... hmmuuh?

I snap out of my auto-pilot zone, something is different. Blueredblue...oh. I blink in suprise then I pull over, turn off my car and wait. A nice officer walks cautiously up to my car (I guess I shouldn't have left my window all the way down?) and politely informs me that I had a headlight out. I did? I knew it was on its deathbed but I didn't know the grave was so close. I apologized and thanked the officer for letting me know, my words sort of stammering around...I felt a little like a goldfish just opening and closing its mouth with a deer-in-the-headlights look. The officer was very kind and didn't give me a ticket, just let me on my way. I was very grateful.

On my way back home from the church it was quite a bit darker, and I was quite a bit more paranoid of getting pulled over again because of my now known headlight violation. I stucked in my courage and headed back the way I came. I got closer to my halfway-home point (where I got pulled over) being even more cautious of speed limits than normal. I passed the place where I was stopped a few hours earlier. Maybe a quarter mile later I saw another hidden police car veer out into traffic a few cars behind me. It didn't have its lights flashing-yet-but I had a feeling it was coming for me. I slowed down to let him catch up as he tried to manuver around the stubborn cars between us. I sighed as he got closer and blueredblueredbluered flashed in my mirrors, pulled over and waited as before. The officer got out of his car and got about halfway to my window, paused, then, "I'm really not stalking you...it's just a slow night." I laughed as he explained that he had just been sitting and pulling over burnt out headlights and we exchanged farewell's of "have a good night" and "drive safe"'s and went out ways again. I needed a smile that night and that is what I got. Needless to say I was less paranoid of getting pulled over the rest of the way home.

I had never been pulled over before, then I got pulled over twice in the space of a few hours! There goes my life goal of being able to go into a criminal background check with a clean slate. At least now I can say that my slate has character now. It is a happy character at that. How many people can say that being pulled over brightened their day?