Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Regrets from the carpool lane

One blustery January day, I met the face of a ponytail-slithering-just-above-the-collar female cop telling me my registration was expired.

Fortunately I had just renewed it online, and didn't have the sticker for my license plates yet. I had already updated my new address with the drivers license division. I wasn't speeding. I was off the hook. Yee-haw.

The thing is, she noticed my expired registration just down the street from my house. My house is a good three-point-five miles from Rainbow Girl's school. And like a good neighbor, she quietly followed me through 5 turns over 3 miles, parked to the side while I drove to Rainbow Girl's school and let me drop her off, and then pulled me over. I guess her female-ness had enough motherly sense to know that a minivan heading out at 8 a.m. was going to a school.

But her cop-sense found a gold-mine in trailing me that day. This same slithering ponytailed make-up-free female cop stalks the school in regular rounds now. I had never before seen her until I led her that fateful day in January, and now it's a perpetual stakeout. And as a testament to my crime-free neighborhood, she stalks out well-meaning parents with broken taillights, no seatbelts, or expired registrations.

I sit in the drop-off lane and cringe with my secret.


8 comments:

LGH said...

I've said it before; I'll say it again. You are a very powerful writer. I just love the way you tell a story.

JeffT said...

Before she heads over to follow you to school she lurks in dark trees waiting for me and 9 other guys to head home after early morning basketball. She has pulled over many a sweaty basketball player! (luckily not me)

Kelly Bryson said...

My father in law told me that those blue-black-blue horizontal striped stickers are cop immunity stickers. You get them if you are in state gov't or to put on your speedster wife's car if you're the county sheriff. Maybe you could get everyone at your school a sticker...Seriously though, talk about upholding each other in wickedness and secret combinations...
The cops mine our school drop off occassionally, but they give us a heads up by posting a big speed indicator sign the week before. I think they use a rotation system. Good thing you had your registration, because... (ooh, a story!)
My dad is habitually late, and had to go to court this last year to get it renewed, and that was fine- except he had to change his court date. So he took care of it, and got pulled over because the cop ran his tag at a light...and the little computer said he had skipped his court date, not changed it, and they ARRESTED HIM. He got to spend the night in jail with a man who could kept disrobing, and talking to HIMSELF, if you know what I mean. My uncle had to bail him out, and he was out $500. The bondsman doesn't return money for little misunderstandings like that. Just had to share:)

Lee Family said...

I think it's sweet to have a cop hanging around your kids' school. No sicko child predators are going to hang around with a cop stalking the schoolyard. Hey, did you know that Louisiana passed a bill that pedophiles will be CASTRATED. Go Louisiana!!

Mrs. Olsen said...

Thanks for the addition JThurgood. Success as a cop in Zion = stake out schools and churches. What a beautiful training concept.

KKB: I am loving the false arrest story. Gives me hope that the time the hubs was falsely arrested, he wasn't alone in his pain (that's a story for another day).

LeeFam: Louisiana? Are you sure? Wow!

Monica said...

Yeah, think of it as keeping your kids safer, not as turning in all your friends for driving too fast. Love the Louisiana law!! Is that really true? I've always said that should be the punishment for sex offenders!

paula said...

I'm with the sisters on this...I would think of it as making it a safer place. Way to go Louisiana...do they do this without the use of anesthesia..local or general? Now that would be justice. It probably doesn't stop them from doing it again though.

Mrs. Olsen said...

Okay Niki, effectively you just said that I was the "bomb" in an airport. How did this turn into a child abuse protest? I think that 100 parents in the carpool lane could keep away any lurking pedophiles.

No sell! This cop is annoying!