Just as I pulled through the intersection with a four-way stop sign, I saw a police car parked a half a block away. As I slowly eased on through the intersection, I saw the police car pull away from the curb. Oh, shit, I thought. I bet he is going to stop me.<\/p>\n
I fit the profile: Old white guy, in a late model Volvo, clean shaven, casually dressed. I had left my hoody at home; it’s a bit hot here today for the hoody. I had just switched the radio from loud rap music to NPR. I looked like I could be someone’s grandfather.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, he was after me. I have watched \u201cCops\u201d on TV, so I knew to turn off the engine and stay in the car. He came up to the door but stayed behind me somewhat. I had to turn my head way around to see him. He acted as if he didn’t want me to see his face. Since he was the one that stopped me, I thought I would let him start the conversation. He did. He wanted to see my driver license, registration, and proof of insurance.<\/p>\n
I guess based on my profile, he didn’t feel the need to look up my license plate or call to see if I had any outstanding warrants, because he never left to go back to his car to do that.<\/p>\n
He asked, \u201cDo you know why I’m stopping you?\u201d. \u00a0I ventured a wild guess and said, \u201cCould it have been for that rolling stop I made at the stop sign?\u201d. Yes, it was. \u00a0Honesty is usually the best policy.<\/p>\n
Then, again probably based on my profile, he said he was only going to give me a warning. Or it could have been because I looked so pitiful, old, remorseful, non-combative. I can really turn it on if I need to.<\/p>\n
After that the lecture started. I paid full attention. I would have taken notes but I didn’t have any paper. I nodded in agreement about how a ticket can go on your record, causing your insurance to go up. I got wide-eyed when he explained about all the reports from this neighborhood about drivers running stop signs. Ooo!<\/em> I guess crime is rampant around here. <\/i>Then, I interjected, \u201cI live in this neighborhood, I hope that drivers obey the stop signs\u201d. I should have been penalized for saying something so cheesy as that, but I wasn’t. Afterwards, I realized that I had broken one of the rules for how to act when you are stopped by the POLICE. Keep your hands in sight and don’t say anything unless you are asked a question. Only answer the question.<\/i><\/p>\n After the lecture, he just kind of disappeared back to his car. I didn’t get a chance to say how much I admired the police and that I rarely get stopped and how I have an uncle that is a retired police office. I didn’t even ask him his name. \u00a0I didn’t know the etiquette about who should drive away first. But, since I was in front, I left first. I stuck my head out of the window to look back for oncoming traffic before pulling away. I wanted to look like a model of driving perfection.<\/p>\n I must admit I came to a full stop at every one of the damned stop signs on my way home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just as I pulled through the intersection with a four-way stop sign, I saw a police car parked a half a block away. As I slowly eased on through the intersection, I saw the police car pull away from the curb. Oh, shit, I thought. I bet he is going to stop me. I fit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3qUzP-3E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}