For those of you that don't yet know, I recently bought a piece of crap Pontiac Grand Am solely for the purpose of commuting to and from work in the winter. Apart from the pool of water in the trunk that pours out into the interior of the car and all over my feet, and a driver door window that won't open, the driver seatbelt clip is ripped off which makes it a real pain in the ass to buckle up when I get in the car. Combine that little problem with the fact that I have to wear 17 layers of clothes these days just to keep warm (making it difficult to put my arms down), and attaching my seatbelt in the morning is like strapping into a carnival ride, only without the toothless hillbilly in a torn red bandana to help.
But every morning after swearing a bit and (literally) splashing around trying to get myself into position to properly intercourse the two pieces of metal, I succeed and drive up the driveway to work, an errant belt screeching protest under the hood. This morning was no exception.
My ride takes me through two neighborhoods that I wouldn't otherwise have any reason to visit, nor do I expect would I generally be all that welcome. These are, coincidentally, also the types of neighborhoods where the police get in the habit, apparently, of pulling people over for the lamest of reasons - maybe they are hoping (or expecting) that when the driver window rolls down a cloud of pot smoke will billow out or there will be a pile of AK-47's in the passenger seat and they can put one more hatchmark in the monthly quota of arrests column.
This morning I was stopped at a particularly vexingly long stop light, listening to the radio and pretending I was in a lawn chair on the beach in Tahiti with my woman instead of bundled into a leather coat, scarf, wool hat, and gloves breathing in exhaust fumes on my way to the widget factory with all of the other lemmings. A police car pulled up to the left of me (in the left turn lane) and stopped a few feet in front of my car. It was obvious that he saw something of interest and was stopping to get a closer look - he was about 20 feet from the car in front of him.
I looked around and there was a guy walking up the sidewalk next to my car. He saw the cop, turned around and looked behind him, and then ducked into a bus stop shelter. I figured that his day was about to get worse, that the cop was going to harass him somehow, and went back about my business of pretending I wasn't there. The left turn light went green, and I watched the cop pull up to the front of the line and then cut into my lane, almost causing an accident.
As the lemming line started pulling forward, he pulled into a gas station and then turned around to position himself to pull back out into the road. I thought he was turning around, and thought nothing of it as I drove past him. As I did, however, he pulled out behind me and turned on his lights. Not having done anything wrong I assumed he was just going to pass me, but instead he pulled up right behind me. I pulled over and started the long laborious process of rolling my window down, which, because the motor is almost shot always makes me worry that it won't go back up. It finally finished squeaking down as he came up to the car, hand on his gun.
I thought that was a little extreme, but given the neighborhood (I was headed into the ghetto, an area I flirt with on the way to and from work in order to avoid the rest of suburbia's commuters) I figured better safe than sorry. I stopped reaching into my pocket for my wallet and put my hands on my lap where he could see them.
"I pulled you over because of your seatbelt" he said authoritatively.
"This one?" I said, pulling it up off of my chest into view.
"Yeah, well, when I drove by your before you weren't wearing it."
"Uh, yeah, I was."
He got pissed. "WHAT did you say?"
"Sir, I've been wearing my seatbelt since I pulled out of my garage."
He relaxed visibly at this, as if the fact that I said I had been following the law from the get-go meant he was no longer in danger.
"Oh. OK. You're free to go." He said, waved his hand at the road, and then walked back to his car.
Now, here's the thing. I know that he's got a job to do. But enforcing the seatbelt law? Really? I always sort of thought that was the sort of thing where if you got pulled over for something else they would give you a citation for not wearing your seatbelt if you happened to be stupid enough to leave it unbuckled. I never dreamed that people actually got pulled over for something like this. And certainly not with the cars full of pot smoke and automatic weapons driving around nearby.
Perhaps most ironic is the fact that he nearly caused an accident in front of me for the explicit purpose of pulling me over because I'm not wearing a seatbelt - which presumably he wants me to wear so that I don't get injured in an accident???
I'm thinking about painting the seatbelt in my Grand Slam bright orange so I don't get frivolously pulled over again, just in case I forget to put away the AK-47s in my front seat...
