Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

‘Daaaaad, get me outta this!’
- the estimable Warren Zevon

A coupla weeks ago, I had my first Happy Friday at my new job. A coupla days ago, I had my first Unhappy Friday at my new job.

Finally got caught speeding. I was too pissed off to blog about it before now (although a few friends got vitriol-fueled emails from me that day… hope I didn’t scorch any eyebrows with those angry missiles missives…).

Y’know, I’d've been able to accept it without question if I’d been caught doing what I normally do (which I have no trouble admitting is against the law)–cruising along at 120 kph in a 90 kph zone. But he stopped me after I’d had to accelerate to pass a couple vehicles. I mean, you gotta go faster to pass. Don’tcha? Ya gotta take the speed in context. Don’tcha??

I’d come up behind this transport truck that was pottering along at around 90 (okay, yeah, it was the speed limit, so big rosy kudos to that weenie). I pulled out to peek at the oncoming traffic and when I decided there was enough time and space for me to get around this guy, I pulled out into the opposing lane. Whereupon I spotted a small car in front of the truck–so close that I would have to pass both of them in one fell swoop. I had room to do it, so that’s what I did–I got my ass in gear and got around them. Apparently at 124 kph, which the cop (who happened to be in a camouflaged car further up the road in front of the little car) caught on his radar gun. He pulled off to the shoulder and waved me past and then pulled back in behind me and turned his lights on.

“Wha’fuck?!” sez me.

So I pull over.

The cop looks like Violet Beauregarde (mebbe more pink than blue, but certainly the same shape) as he squeezes out of his cruiser and waddles up beside my car.

Asks for my license and tells me his radar said I was going 124 kph. “Yeah, because I’d just passed two vehicles” (he’d have no way of knowing, of course, that I’d been going 120 kph for much of the rest of the drive, too *cough*).

Apparently, he’d expected me to stamp on the brake as soon as I got back into my lane instead of just taking my foot off the gas pedal and letting the car slow down on its own to the speed limit (theoretically). I mean, it’s not as though there wasn’t enough room for it to do that between the car I’d just passed and his up ahead of me.

Once in awhile in my life I do actually show good judgment. Believe it or not. So I didn’t argue with him. (Later, at work, some suggested that I should’ve argued with the speed he caught because I might’ve been able to talk him down a few kph. I didn’t realize that was an option, having never gotten a speeding ticket before.) I’ll just pay it. All two hundred and fifty-fucking-nine dollars of it.

But I will continue to wail that it is unfair that he took my speed outta context. Context counts, dammit! If he’d caught me just speeding along for no reason, then I wouldn’t be here whinging about it.

And, yeah, coincidentally or not, the song playing on the car stereo while this was going on was, indeed, Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money”. But Dad can’t get me outta this ‘cause Dad ain’t gonna know about this.