You know you're getting old when . . .

You know you are getting old when you are pulled over by a sheriff and told you are driving too slow. Yup. We were out on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I came to a four way stop at an intersection. I had made a wrong turn so I didn't really know which way I wanted to go. I made a left and the sheriff pulled in behind me. The road turned into the on-ramp for Highway 2, a two-lane state highway. All of a sudden, the sheriff had his lights on. When he came to the window, he asked me if I knew why he had pulled me over. I had to admit, I had no idea. He then told me that I was creating a hazard because I had not accelerated fast enough onto the highway, and to make things worse, I had changed lanes (to the slow lane.) It was only after he asked me the next question that I understood that his stop had been a pretext. He asked: Have you been smoking marijuana today? I was thinking, do you know I work at a prosecutor's office and my fiancee is an attorney and we were out birdwatching and having a picnic! He said he smelled a "faint wiff" of marijuana. Really? In your imagination? Because I have a beard and S was wearing a bandanna, we were profiled as stoners.

While I understand what wend through his mind: they are driving slow and look like a couple who might smoke pot, as a prosecutor, it pisses me off when cops do things they are not supposed to do. What if I did have a trunk full of weed? A good attorney could have shown that his stop was pre-textual. Since when is it illegal to drive carefully?

We were just waiting for him to pull us out of the car and ask to search the vehicle. He stopped just short of crossing the line and let us go on our way. I guess he was hoping we would just confess, which a lot of people do. The people who could best take advantage of the fifth amendment really don't understand it. Just watch an episode of COPS and you can see that.

So, because I was able to keep my mouth shut and not make any smart-mouthed comment to the officer (which is a way you can get an officer looking for something, anything to cit you with) we were let off, but S has not stopped giving me a hard time for driving like an old man.

Driving Record

I just sent in my bar application--that required self-reporting confession of past acts that must be revealed to the bar before they will let you sit for a two and one-half day exam. The hardest part was trying to remember all of the addresses where I have lived for the past 5 years. I have moved four times during law school! I also had to least all past crimes including traffic infractions and parking tickets.

I noticed some interesting things in listing out all of my confrontations with the law (you can assume that haven't been all that many since I passed a background check to work at a prosecutors office.) I must have been afflicted with the all-too-common testosterone fueled need for speed for a couple of years in my late teens and early twenties. I had a string of speeding tickets throughout my college years and also enough unpaid parking tickets from the university parking enforcement that I once had my vehicle towed, but for the most part I mostly had a lead foot.

IN the years after graduating college, I pretty much stopped getting speeding tickets, but I had several tickets for expired tabs. I see a lot of people in court who are in court on a suspended license from not paying speeding or other tickets. Most of them are poor and choose to pay for food or new clothes for their kids than pay for speeding tickets and often they are pulled over because they didn't have valid tabs on their car. The reason people do not have valid tabs can be nefarious (stolen car, stolen plates, etc) but they can also be economical (can't afford the emissions test, the licensing fees, etc) or because you are lazy and forgetful. The latter was the case with me. The latter was true for me. I can remember putting off going down to the licensing place until I got the no tab ticket.

But in the last three I haven't had a thing, not so much as a parking ticket. Part of that is the result of not owning a car for a year and one-half. There was no speeding then. The other part has been working in a personal injury firm and a prosecutors officer transforming me into a defensive driver and strict follower of the traffic code. When you read about thousands of car accidents, DUIs, reckless driving cases you realize what a dangerous place the roads are and how important it is to be a careful driver. The other added benefit of not speeding and keeping your tabs up to date is even though you may get places a bit later and you have to make sure you check your mail, you sure do save a ton of money. $112 speeding ticket? No thanks.