Speeding To Judge You

I underestimated how long it would take me to get ready for an important meeting. I was moving a bit slower than usual and was running late. I admit to speeding a little on the highway to try to make up time, though I made sure not to tailgate and to pass cars at a reasonable speed so it wouldn’t be too dangerous. Unfortunately, that wasn’t good enough, because I got pulled over by a cop.

The cop did all the standard cop things, asking how fast I was going, and for my license, etc., first.

Cop: “And where are you headed?”

Me: *Laughing nervously* “Oh, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Cop: “I’ve heard plenty of unbelievable things before. Where are you going?”

Me: “Is it that important to know where I’m headed?”

Cop: “Please tell me.”

Me: “Okay, fine. I’m going to meet the child I donated my kidney to for the first time.”

The cop’s face almost immediately hardened in a look that pretty much screamed, “I can’t believe you would make up such an obvious lie to get out of a speeding ticket.” From there on out, when he talked to me it was with a more brisk, almost angry voice that screamed his disbelief.

Cop: “You’re saying you donated your kidney to a child you didn’t meet?”

Me: “Yeah, it was non-directed. The hospital picked him and I wasn’t allowed to meet him until after the surgery. They have the surgeon and a camera crew and a bunch of other people there to film the meeting, so I really don’t want to be late.”

Cop: “Well, looks like you are going to be late.”

The cop then took his time to give me a ticket, one that was a substantially larger fine than any ticket I’d ever gotten before or after, and which managed to single-handedly put enough points on my license to put me in danger of getting it revoked if I got any other tickets for a while.

I’ve since talked to some friends who were police. They told me that it’s standard practice to lower how much over the speed limit someone was going when pulled over on the highway because everyone drives ten to fifteen miles over the speed limit there, and most cops agree it’s not fair to hit someone with such a huge fine just for going the same speed everyone else was going. Ten mph over the speed limit on a highway just isn’t as big a deal as doing it on a small local road, after all. But in this case, the cop presumably decided to punish me for “lying” to him by not lowering the ticket any. I honestly wonder if he may have also rounded up on my actual speed, considering how huge the fine was.

To add extra irony, when I finally got to the hospital, they basically made me sit and wait for another hour and a half before I actually got to meet the kid, so I was rushing for nothing. The kid was cute, though, and it was nice to finally meet him.