Speed Demon

I was driving down the road yesterday and looked in my rear view mirror and saw this:

Now, I pride myself on being a fairly good driver. I've taught 4 children to successfully drive, and I haul teenagers all over the state. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what I had done.

The last time I got pulled over was more than 20 years ago. I was traveling to Utah with two children and a sleeping husband in tow, 5 or more months pregnant with Adam, and going up and down the hills of Wyoming. We had rented a little car from CMU for our trip and it struggled to make it up any kind of hill. So after all that laboring, it was nice to take my foot off the gas and fly down the hill. I figured my speed was sort of averaging out, you know. If you combined the uphill speed with the downhill speed and divided it by 2, it would equal the speed limit. And there wasn't a soul on the road. Except, of course, a policeman. I still don't know where he came from.

When he pulled me over and saw the kids, the hubby and my round tummy, he took pity on me, I think. I explained my speed theory (don't think he bought it) and after he came back from checking on my record, he gave me a warning to slow down. Which I did, after my heart resumed its normal beating pattern.

So, fast forward 20 years to yesterday. I quickly pulled over racking my brain to think what I could have possibly done to warrant this humiliation.

"Ma'am", says the police officer. "Uh, yes?" I said. "Did you realize that you didn't stop at the yellow light before you turned?" "Well, no, I guess I didn't." (Isn't it ok to turn on a yellow light?)

"Yellow means stop," he said. Hmm, I thought red meant stop. But apparently, when you are turning right in a busy intersection and the light turns yellow, you should stop! I wasn't going to argue the point. Somehow in all my years of driving and teaching driving, I missed that one.

Just a warning to all you reckless drivers out there. And . . . good news! I got off without a ticket! Whew!