cops

Arousing the Attention of Law Enforcement, and Vehicle Customization “Don’ts”

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14corolla

I try to avoid interactions with law enforcement.  I think most rational people do.  I’m intimidated easily enough, and I really don’t want to be bothered anyway, so I try to just live my life, quietly obeying the rules and generally blending into the wall.

I learned a disturbing truth a few mornings ago.  I should know better, too, but I wasn’t paying attention.

On my car (the illustrious Corolla S, with the 6 speed manual, which is an awesome ride) you can just leave the lights and fog lights on (which I usually do) and they will turn off when one turns the ignition off.  But for some bizarre reason I turned the lights off.  When you turn the lights off, the DRLs (headlights only) still come on.  Usually that’s not a real issue.

The headlights are HIDs and are insanely bright, so I didn’t notice that the parking lights or tail lights weren’t on, as I went off on my merry way through the cop obstacle course between my house and the Y.  I’ve been known to see as many as six cops between my house and the Y (1.8 miles.)  This is particularly odd, considering I make this trip between 5 and 5:15AM.  I know there are quite a few speed traps in that small stretch, so I plan accordingly and keep at a painfully slow 35MPH to avoid an unplanned and expensive speeding ticket.

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So I was completely shocked when I had a cop light me up.  I know I was only doing 35 or maybe a bit less, so what in the flying thunder could this guy want with me?

I did remember the most important thing from my CCW class- let the officer see your hands, because he knows you carry the minute he runs your plates.

So as I stuck my hands out the window, all I could say was, “My weapon is in the trunk.” Which it was.  I’m not about lying to cops.

He asks for my driver’s license, and then asked me if I knew my tail lights were out.  Then it dawned on me- I looked at the dash and realized for some reason I’d turned off the lights and was just running on DRLs.  Oh. Shit.

So the officer- who thankfully wasn’t being a douche bag about it, even though he would have had the right- ran my license.  Seeing I had no record, or outstanding warrants, or reason to believe I was running a meth lab out of a late model Corolla, let me go once he verified that yes, my lights all work- when they’re turned on.

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At least I didn’t get a speeding ticket.

I have to wonder if I’d been treated differently had I been younger, male, or belonged to a different ethnic group.  I know Steve-o was randomly pulled over several times when he had his Audi.  The demographics didn’t look good- a 20 year old kid driving a late model Audi A4 in impeccable condition, in an area where the average young 20 something is unemployed,  on drugs, and not averse to stealing things.  I think the cops just couldn’t believe that someone of Steve-o’s demographic actually worked and earned money to buy a nice car via legitimate means.  In their defense, considering most of his age cohorts, I understand their incredulity.

 

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So… the place of notoriety for those of Steve-o’s generation is the “Busted” paper- getting your mug shot plastered all over Central Ohio.  The list of names (center) were all the bizarre names I found in just that one issue of the “Busted” paper.  Anyone with the last name “Hunt” should really have their head examined before naming their child “Michael.”  Another one I found funny was the name “Ciera,” as if her first name should be “Cutlass.” And the name “Crystal,” no matter how you spell it, leads me to want to call her “Crystal Meth.”  Note to self: do NOT use the “Busted” paper as a reference source for potential baby names.  Although I’m sure some people do.

The badly painted (likely with a house roller) Cincinnati Bengals tribute Civic is a more typical vehicle for someone of Steve-o’s age to be seen driving.  Either that or this distressed Accord:

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This looks eerily like Steve-o’s first car, a ’92 Accord with about 400K on it.

As soon as he could afford it, he traded it on a ’95 Integra- but he’s had plenty of cars since then.

 

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I mean, right MEOW.

Steve-o got to sit in the back of a cruiser (twice) while the cop verified that his temp tag was legit right after he bought the Audi.  Not long after he got his regular plates he got pulled over (again) and the K9 officer who pulled him over thought it appropriate to go through the Audi with the drug dog.  I doubt if they found a cough drop or a gum wrapper, (Steve-o is one of those people who doesn’t eat, smoke or do anything in the car that might leave a mess) but the dog did leave behind some hair and slobber that provoked Steve-o to pay for a $150 detail to remove.  In some ways I’m glad he traded the Audi for a (newer, yes, but less ostentatious) Jetta.   He’s not been pulled over once in the Jetta.  Apparently that’s not as much of a head turner as the Audi.

Do I agree with profiling?  Not necessarily, and I realize that if Steve-o appeared to be anything other than what can only be called “super white” that a simple, “have a seat in the cruiser” could have turned far uglier.  Cops are human too.  I know I profile. I know I hit that door lock switch extra fast in certain parts of town. I’m not saying it’s right to do it, but everyone does.

 

 

Sheena Loves Cops, and Other Tidbits Better Left “TMI”

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Cops can also be creatures of habit.  I know a couple of them who love to park across the road and watch Jerry when he’s getting drunk and stupid out in the garage.

I’ve said before that my mentally challenged Husky mix, Sheena, has Issues.  One of Sheena’s passions is to escape the confines of our back yard (and it’s not that difficult considering it is surrounded by a rather elderly, oft-repaired fence) so that she can play with the kids at the Drunk and Domestic apartments behind the body shop.  Sheena has never met a human that I know of that she doesn’t like.

This mentality seems so foreign to me in a dog, especially because I am used to dogs being quite a bit more aloof.  Clara and Lilo have to be carefully introduced to new people and strange dogs.  You have to earn their trust.  Sheena is not like that at all.  She is a 75# galoot who will love you forever just for petting her.  This makes Sheena a bit more difficult to manage than the other two in some ways.  Unlike a normal dog she doesn’t really alert on strange people encroaching on her territory.  She only really barks when she wants to go out.

Jerry, as is typical for him, decided to get shitfaced last night.  Jerry being shitfaced is not news, but I was bound determined to get an early bedtime and at least try to get some sleep.

So I turned off the phone and shut the bedroom door at about 9PM, hoping at least for a quiet night.  I should know better.

Around 10:30 I hear incessant pounding on the front door.  Clara and Lilo start in going nuts barking and howling and wanting to eat whatever’s on the other side.  Jerry is running around with no shirt on babbling incoherently (thankfully he still had pants on) until I caught the word “cops” in the prattling.  So I put on enough clothing to be decent and go out to investigate.  Sure enough, there’s a cop car in the driveway, two cops on the porch, and Sheena’s sitting in the back seat of the cruiser sporting that shit-eating grin that only dim-witted dogs can completely pull off.

I apologized to the cops, (who must have really thought I was some kind of a nut job running outside in an old t-shirt and shorts with no makeup and my hair sticking straight up) thinking that either I’d be fined or otherwise in some kind of trouble, but they were cool about it.  They said Sheena was no problem at all, and she got in the car with them most willingly.  To their credit, they weren’t interested in making my life more difficult.  They just wanted to make sure Sheena got home safely.  They could have been dicks about it had they wanted to be- by rights, even though she is duly licensed, because technically she was neither confined nor leashed, they could have taken her down to the Dog Shelter and I’d had to gone to a rather unsavory part of town and paid $125 to retrieve her.  Yeah, it’s easier to just go around the corner and drop the dog off at home, because everyone at the D&Ds, and the cops, because of how often they are called out to the D&Ds, know whose dog it is.  Sheena is rather memorable if only because of her resemblance to the Abominable Snowman.

Close enough…

It’s a good thing Jerry generally doesn’t remember the nasty epithets that roll so easily off my tongue when I am rudely awakened- let alone rudely awakened and then left to deal with cops.   It’s also a good thing that Jerry had a shred of sentience back in that crude reptilian part of his brain that kept him from interacting with the cops, mouthing off, and getting his sorry butt carted off for drunk and disorderly.  In Ohio all it takes to get busted for drunk and disorderly, and to get to spend the night in the nearest correctional facility, is for a cop to see you shitfaced.  Jerry knows this from personal experience, and suffice to say that retrieving him from public custody would be far more expensive and unpleasant (and I would have to encounter a far more unsavory crowd) than trying to retrieve Sheena from the Dog Shelter.

Both Clara and Lilo are terrified of cops, especially two big burly ones like the ones who brought Sheena home, but Sheena seemed to like the attention.

I’m glad the cops had mercy on poor Sheena.  She’s had a rough enough life.  However, either Jerry needs to find Sheena’s current escape hole (not usually difficult as an uncoordinated 75# dog has to fit through it) and patch the fence (again,) or refrain from letting her out the front door (which considering how shitfaced he was last night is within the realm of possibility.)

Activities for Introverts, Strange Phrases, Aging as it Relates to Discretion

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There’s nothing like the Nintendo DS (I have the “lite” version, not the funky 3D one- and I’d love to get the Hello Kitty skin, but I do have the full HK case, so why do that?) for geeks.  You don’t have to be a geek to appreciate the DS, but I am a big fan of word games and various solitaires, and as far as hand-held games are, it’s probably the best one for that.  I bought a DS so I would have something to occupy myself with when I was recovering from my hysterectomy.  It was well worth it.  The 3D version, which just came out last month, would be cool for action games- but I generally don’t play action games.  The only action games I have are “Jackass” and “Sims”. I haven’t gotten past the first level on Jackass, and I haven’t played with the “Sims” game much yet.  Most of the time I’m either playing Scrabble or Freecell (or Tuxedo or Sea Towers, on the Solitaire Overload package) or Bookworm, or the Crosswords DS game. 

This is gaming excitement for this old cougar.  Gratuitous use of the DS also keeps me from throttling people when I am forced to wait.  It’s that whole Type A personality mentality that doesn’t like to waste time- unless of course I’m occupying my mind with something else.  Waiting in the Dr.’s office, or waiting for car repair, or anything else I have to wait on gets my nervous tizziness going on, and it doesn’t help that most public waiting areas subject you to either 1. bad pop music, 2. CNN or other depressing,  extreme left-wing biased “news” broadcasts that insist Obama is the greatest President since Lincoln (gag), or 3. Oprah/Jerry Springer/Montel/Judge Whoever, etc.,  which is enough to make me want to hurl.  If I’m playing a game I’m at least a bit distracted from being irritated and kept from excessive clock-watching.  I do have Scrabble on my phone, but the DS version is a lot easier to maneuver. 

If I do have to watch one of those made for TV hokey small-claims court programs, why not bring back the People’s Court with Judge Wapner?  Unless of course, Judge Wapner is dead.  As of today, or the latest info I can find, Judge Wapner is still alive, but he’s 91, so he’s probably not much for making a comeback into the courtroom.   I like to watch the exciting courtroom stuff like they show on TruTV, where the victim’s entire family beats the hell out of a murderer in the courtroom or something cool like that.  I just can’t get riled up about some jackoff leaving skid marks in someone’s grass, or someone wanting reimbursed for her pain and suffering over a crappy hair do, and other petty stuff like that.   If I’m going to be pissed off enough to take someone to court it better be worth my time and aggravation. 

I understand that 99% of the rest of the world is not wired like me at all, so I’m the one who has to adjust.  I can’t expect the rest of the world to cater to my preferences, unless of course I can pay for that privilege.  The ability to pay for solitude and to require others to come to me for necessary services could be a mixed blessing too.  Howard Hughes was able to pay for the amount of isolation and catering he wanted, and look how he ended up- emaciated, naked, hooked on drugs and over all a pathetic mess.  The reality is that many introverted people, if given enough money (and a bad enough case of OCD, which oddly, is one disorder common to introverted people that I have remained free of) could end up exactly like Howard Hughes.  Whether I like it or not, I have to interact with other humans face to face.  I am generally not paranoid about dirt or germs or weird stuff like that.  I’m just not terribly social unless it is on my terms, and with the very few people that I actually enjoy socializing with.   Most of the time I’d rather not talk to or interact with anyone, but there are things everyone has to do that they don’t always want to do. 

I like shoes too much to resort to wearing Kleenex boxes on my feet.

I’ve noticed the older I get the more I get like my Grandma (Mom’s mother, who died back in 1990 at the somewhat untimely age of 74) and my Great-Grandma (her mother, who died in 1992 at the age of 94.)  They were at least in appearances, classy old ladies.  They both knew how to dress.  When Grandma died she had over 500 pairs of shoes, all size 8 1/2 AAA.  Mom wears the same bizarre size, so she inherited a nice collection.  These weren’t cheap shoes either.  They were all quality, good leather shoes- brands like Florsheim, Hush Puppies, Connie, Reebok, and her personal favorite, Naturalizer.   I try to buy my shoes on clearance, because I am cheap, but I can’t abide cheap shoes.  I will spend money on shoes, but I will go to the thrift store and the Target clearance rack to buy clothes.   I buy along the same lines as Grandma did- well made leather shoes, only I need a 7B.  I didn’t inherit Mom and Grandma’s narrow feet.  Steve-o did though.  Very few dudes wear a size 13A.  His feet remind me of giant bird claws.  Creepy.

Anyway, Grandma was the type of person who spoke her mind even if it was politically incorrect or just downright embarrassing.  I will never forget the time I took Grandma and Great-Grandma to K-Mart together.  Neither of them ever learned to drive which I thought was a bit odd, but I didn’t mind taking them places. 

Grandma had worked as a lingerie buyer for a large department store for many years.  When I was 13 (and already a 36C) Grandma warned me how important it was for me to wear a good quality support bra, otherwise I would be looking like the native women on National Geographic before I turned 30.  Gravity has taken its toll (I’m 42 after all,) but the puppies would likely be a lot further south today had I gone braless like a lot of my friends used to do.   Grandma knew all the ins and outs of lingerie and fitting foundation garments.  She also knew the good stuff from the cheap stuff.

When we walked into K-Mart there was an absolutely horrible hot pink, red and black nightie type thing on the display mannequin.  There were bright red hands stitched to the chest area of the nightie thing, as if some ethereal form were copping a feel of the mannequin’s puppies.  Grandma simply had to comment.

“You’d have to be a whore to wear something like that!”

Then Great-Grandma (not to be out done) spotted one of the Behemoth Women Wearing Spandex which are unfortunately (pun intended) wide spread in the entire Central Ohio vicinity.  There’s a reason why K-Mart sells size 20 women’s underwear, which could also double as a front end cover for Jerry’s Tacoma.   Great-Grandma  had to comment on her shocking sight of the day too.

“Look at the big ass on that!”

Both of them were laughing- loudly- all the way through the store, and I have to admit I was too, because their observations were spot-on. 

I think as people age the “traffic cop” function of the frontal lobe of the brain gets a bit tired out.  We stop censoring everything and just say it like it is.  In some ways I think that can be a good thing.  I even see Mom doing this to some degree, which is shocking, because she has always been so straight laced and prudy.   When we were kids she thought “fart” was a cuss word, and we weren’t allowed to say “fart.”  We had to say, “passed gas,” “let a stinker,” or “went toot.”  Now she is a hard-core road rager.  She flips people off and calls them stupid assholes out the window, and worse. 

Maybe that’s why Grandma and Great-Grandma never drove.  Mom’s a terrible driver.  She has also been known to cuss out cops, which is not a very wise thing to do.  If ever there were a time for the frontal lobe of one’s brain to engage, it’s when talking to a cop.  I find the phrase, “Yes, sir, Officer,” to be a very appropriate one.  “F*** off and die,” is not a cop-friendly phrase.  Neither is,  “Don’t you have better things to do than to torment old bitties?”    I agree that sometimes cops do lie in wait for the occasional speeder, but the little old bitty doing 95 in a 25 (in a Ford LTD- granted it did have a 351 Windsor, but still,) is a hazard to the public.  She’s lucky to have only gotten a speeding ticket and not a conviction for reckless op.  That’s why Dad won’t let her have another V8.   I’ve been in the car with Mom.  I know how she drives.  I side with the cop.

I should get Mom this t-shirt.  Maybe it will help if she’s wearing it the next time she gets busted.