So how did we find ourselves in what seemed like a sleazy lawyer's office being told if we pay him a couple hundred dollars he will talk to the judge over lunch and get Ben's latest speeding ticket fixed? This is not what I envisioned as the start to Ben's adulthood way back when I held my first born in my arms and dreamed of him being a famous or successful person some day. It happened because of a bad speedometer and Ben's lead foot. You see, Ben was a very confident new driver, and why not? He was at the age when confidence just oozes out of a teenager, and driving a Vette didn't hurt either. Of course it was a Chevette not a Corvette- big difference in case you know nothing about cars. The car was the first in a line of cars sold to our teenage kids from Uncle Pat and it had to be towed here from the other side of the state because it wouldn't run. I think it cost around $350, was blue with a white hood and was Chevy's answer to the Yugo (possibly the worst car on the planet). Somehow we found out what was wrong with the car and Ben was off to the races. Well, not literally, but he did drive fast. He told us that he was told that police do not pull you over for speeding unless you are going at least 7 MPH faster than the speed limit, and being the bright young man that he was he just added 7 MPH to any posted speed limit sign and he was on his way. Adding to this situation was a high school girlfriend who seemed to keep Ben's attention until the latest possible second before he had to leave her house and drive across town to meet his 12:00 AM curfew. So you take a teenage kid in a heap of a little car racing though the streets just before midnight, what more could a cop ask for? They must have taken turns pulling him over- I can hear them on the radio talking to each other, "He's heading your way Mac, I got him last night, you can pull him over tonight, blue Chevette with a white hood, man did he try to weasel out of a ticket last night, he will really be desperate tonight! Ha Ha Ha!" So after the third ticket, the visit to the lawyers office to fix it, and the new high risk insurance policy for Ben and his "Vette" I decided something had to be done about this situation. Clearly fatherly lectures were not cutting it, so I decided to put the car through a speed test and guess what? The speedometer was 5 MPH slow! So now the light began to shine on this problem clearly- we have a teenage driver in a bomb of a car driving at least 12 MPH over the speed limit late at night, it's a wonder he ever made it home at night instead of going directly to jail. Problem solved. To my knowledge that was the last speeding ticket for Ben, even his juiced up teenage brain was able to comprehend the situation and realize he needed to slow down. So things settled down after that, eventually the Vette was replaced with a more respectable Audi 5000, the girlfriend moved on to other boys, and Ben became that famous, successful son that I always knew he was destined to be.
This story is a little hard to read, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. Before I get to that, though, it's really fun to see these memories of our youth from your perspective, Dad. I think I always had the feeling that you knew exactly what you were doing in all matters, but it's nice to know that you were sort of winging it at the time. Which is a little how I feel most of the time now that I'm an, uh, adult.
ReplyDeleteSo here in DC the traffic is bad, people drift in and out of lanes without signals, cars drive slow for no reason, and taxis prowl the streets looking for opportunities to pull over for a rider and block two lanes of traffic (three lanes if they're really talented). A couple months back I took Olivia to work on a Sunday morning, and I was enjoying driving back home when the city is quiet and the roads are clear. I believe the presence of Mr. Wheeler came over me a little, and I passed a white Mercedes Benz in a short tunnel, going perhaps 40 or 45. We both stopped at the red light on the other side, and the Benz driver rolled her window down and shouted something at me. I thought perhaps she was cussing me out for passing her, though I'd done nothing wrong. But being innocent doesn't stop people from being angry at you. But when I rolled my window down I heard her say, "Be careful! They have cameras in these tunnels and it's a 25 zone!" I nodded and thanked her and drove home a little more slowly, grateful to have avoided another speeding ticket.
Fast forward to last weekend and I accidentally parked in a commercial loading zone and got a small parking ticket for it, which I decided to pay online the other day. I entered my citation number and it pulled up my parking ticket. And also a speeding ticket from July! I knew nothing about it, had received nothing in the mail, and would never have known about it if I hadn't also gotten the parking ticket. But it was from that long-ago Sunday morning, when the streets were empty, and a kindly DC resident warned me of the cameras in the tunnel.
Since then I haven't driven above 25 miles per hour anywhere in the city. Neighborhood streets, thruways, two-lane highways, and even the interstate freeways. I'm not going to risk it. I don't care how many hundreds of cars are pooled behind me with their horns blaring. Mr. Walker is here to stay.