The police pulled me over in Bennington, Vt., last weekend when I was driving home from New Hampshire, and as soon as I saw the flashing lights, I wondered what the speed limit was, and how fast I was driving. Perhaps the speed limit was 30 miles per hour, and I’d been going 45. It hadn’t felt like I was driving that fast, though it was certainly possible, as I have a tendency to speed. I’ve slowed down in recent years, because I don’t like getting tickets, but still, sometimes speeding happens. In any case, I was sure I had done something wrong.
“Did you know that your license plate light is out?” the cop asked, shining a flashlight into the car.
“Uh, no,” I said.
To be honest, I didn’t even know that my car had a license plate light, although last night, when I was wandering through the parking lot at Target, I noticed that, yes, cars do in fact have license plate lights. And not just a few cars — like, every car. But whatever. I wouldn’t be getting a speeding ticket, which came as a huge relief.
“Have you ever been stopped in Vermont before?” the cop asked.
I gave it some thought, because it’s getting harder and harder to remember all the places I’ve been pulled over. New York, Alabama, Ohio, Maine ... maybe Georgia, and maybe New Hampshire. But not, apparently, Vermont. “I don’t think so,” I said. He gave me a warning, and off I went.
The last time I was stopped for speeding was in the spring, on my way to work. “Did you know you were speeding?” the cop asked. “Uh, no,” I said. “You were driving almost 20 miles per hour over the speed limit,” the cop said. “I have you doing a 74 in a 55. That’s awfully fast.” “Hmmm,” I said. “I guess it is.” A ticket was inevitable, of course, and by the time I got to the office I was furious, because it had been less than a year since I’d gotten a speeding ticket, although that one was in Ohio. Sympathy, however, was in short supply. “That sounds like a travesty of justice,” one of my colleagues said. “I mean, you weren’t speeding, were you?” “Ha ha,” I said. “Very funny.”
I have no proof of this, but I think I get stopped by the cops more than most people of the people I know. I’ve become a little paranoid about it — whenever I see a police car, I expect to get pulled over, and I’m always pleasantly surprised when I’m not. This paranoia set in after one particularly weird incident, when I was stopped while driving to an interview. I’d gotten lost, and was trying to navigate an unfamiliar residential neighborhood. I wasn’t speeding — I was, in fact, driving extremely slowly. But apparently you can’t do that, either, because the siren came on, and I was forced to come to a halt. Perhaps I’d run a stop sign without noticing? I waited to hear what I’d done.
“Was there a male passenger in this car?” the cop asked, scrutinizing my license.
“Uh, no,” I said. “Just me.”
“We received a report that a woman matching your description was driving around with a man who was doing drugs in the passenger seat of the vehicle,” the cop said. “Was that you?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “No, it wasn’t.”
A Kafkaesque nightmare was unfolding, but all I could think about was the interview I was late for. “Listen,” I said. “I don’t know if this is going to take a while, but I’m on my way to an interview, and I’m lost, so if you could tell me how to get to my destination, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise, I’m going to have to make some phone calls and let people know I’m going to be late.”
This information must have seemed credible, because the cops not only provided directions, they actually escorted me to my destination. And they never asked for my registration, which probably saved me a lot of trouble, because on that particular day my car was in the shop, and I was driving a colleague’s car. So in a sense I was lucky. But the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the police pulled me over and asked me whether the trunk of my car is filled with crack cocaine. (“Uh, no,” I’d say. “No, it’s not.”) Of course, these are the types of thoughts you have when you’re paranoid. Which is why you’re relieved when the problem turns out to be a broken license plate light. Or, better yet, nothing at all.
FILM FESTIVAL ALERT
I just watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps,” which whet my appetite for more Hitchcock. Fortunately, next week Proctors and The Mossey Group will present the It Came From Schenectady Hitchcock Festival in the GE Theatre at Proctors, which is a great place to see a movie. The festival will run March 11-13, with three Hitchcock films being presented each day. Films will also be shown later in the month. For a full schedule, click
here.
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