’m a pretty law-abiding kind of guy. I usually follow the rules. I bring my library books back on time. I don’t litter. And I only give the finger to old Asian-American drivers. If I was a fruit, I guess I would have to be a peach.
However, I do have one semi-glaring criminal tendency. I get a lot of speeding tickets. I don’t think I’m an unsafe driver. I’m not reckless. I don’t drive under the influence of anything except backseat drivers. I don’t weave in and out of traffic at 90 miles an hour with my right arm around a “big, nasty redhead” and use the lover’s knob to change lanes. No, I don’t drive like that. But I admit I have been known to drive a little faster than the speed limit. I guess I just have a lead foot. Some would say a lead head.
As I have mentioned a while back, I used to even budget for speeding tickets when I went on vacation. Yup, we’d head out for Colorado, or New Mexico or Nevada or Montana, and I’d allocate a damn 150 bucks to pay off the speeding fines, and that was usually pretty accurate. And I remember once being with my kids, Mike and Casey, just before we drove into Arizona, and I said, “You watch, I’m going to get a damn ticket.” Two minutes later I see the red lights flashing from behind a billboard, and I said, “Daddy never lies.”
Another time I was with Casey up in Canada, and we’re cruising through Manitoba after seeing a minor league hockey game in Brandon, and I didn’t even know we went through some tiny-ass town. I hear a siren and the Mountie guy with the cool hat stops me and is kind of incredulous and all I remember is I couldn’t figure out the kilometers-per-hour to the miles-per-hour ratio thing. He just kept shaking his head and I think he mentioned something about Americans are a-holes, eh.
I can also recall a couple of other out-of-state ticketing adventures. One time I was in Wyoming, Red Rock or Green Rock, some Rock city place, and a Rock cop guy pulls me over and gives me a ticket for going 27 in a 25 MPH zone. Two miles over the limit! I don’t call that speeding. I call that a reason to cry.
And once my 39-year-old son, Mike, was driving with me in Utah, and I just let him take the wheel because I thought finally he was old enough to drive, and he got a ticket faster than Obama can change his mind. It was fast, baby. And although I was dizzy, I was able to tell him, “I’m proud of you, son, you’re the Lead-Foot Loin-Springer I had always hoped for.”
And I’ve had three, count ’em, 1-2-3, speeding tickets right here on Altadena Drive heading south just before New York Drive. It’s a 35 mph zone, and it seems harmless enough. But you’ve got momentum from going downhill and you’re just cruising at about 40 or so. You’d have to be a sissy or a commie to go slower. I knew I had a problem when, after the third ticket, the cop comes up to me and says all cheery-like, “Hi, Jim.” Yes, he called me by my friggoni first name. Jim. He called me Jim.
My latest brush with the law happened just last week. I was coming down Lake Avenue from Altadena. I wasn’t speeding speeding, but I was regular speeding just a bit. The speed limit was 35 and I was, maybe, doing 40 to 45. Just fast enough to make me feel slightly better than the other drivers, but not unsafe in my own Mensa mind.
Then I looked to the right and my eyes met the eyes of a motorcycle cop. And in that split second of eye contact I instinctively tried not to look guilty and the copper instantly noticed my guilty-ass fake-not-guilty look and kind of pulled his helmeted head back just a little and eyeballed me even harder. And then I, of course, to confirm my guilt, hit the brake like the dumb-ass lead-footed speeding nitwit that I am and will always be.
As soon as I touched the brake and the cop saw me slow down, he knew he had my worthless butt in his Protect and Serve hands. (Now, there’s an image!) So he guns his bike and whips out behind me, and I see him in my rearview mirror, and his red lights go on, and I cuss myself out, and eventually pull up to the curb right in front of the McDonalds near Orange Grove. “You want fries with that citation, loser?”
The copper comes up to my window and says, “Do you know why I stopped you?” I said, “Because I have a bad Facebook photo?” He said, “You look worse in person,” and informed me that I was going 50 in a 35 zone. I offered that I was going 40, tops. He then inquired if I had ever heard the expression “Going like a bat out of hell.” I said I had heard of that expression, but this here particular bat-mobile I was driving was barely going fast enough to get out of purgatory.
He had no sense of humor. He gave me the speeding ticket. And since I couldn’t see any excruciatingly bad old Asian drivers around I gave him a kind of proxy finger. I kept it below the window so as not to hurt his feelings.
Even though I’m a speeder, I’m always considerate of others.
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
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