Ticketed

For me, there's little that compares the heart-quickening panic of being pulled over. Seeing the red-and-blues glimmer in my rear-view mirror floods me with the same shame -- and bloodrush to the face -- I felt in elementary school when my behavior card was turned from green to yellow. (This rarely happened, of course. I was always too terrified of the dreaded card-pull to do anything "bad.")

While the mildly passive-aggressive policeman who stopped me last Saturday at 1:30 in the morning scanned my registration and license, I sat in the unforgiving (and really unnecessary) light from his headlamp and tried to stay perfectly still. I thought about the fact that I was returning from a hotel lounge up the street where I'd had a big, foamy beer...or two. I thought about how close my house was--a quick sprinting distance, really. I thought about sleeping against cold cement in a jail cell. I fumed over the fact that he had been lurking, lights off, at the corner, waiting for someone to ignore the obscure signage that demanded "No turning between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m."

What bothers me most about the process of being pulled over is the waiting, which seems designed to inspire fear, discomfort, doubt. Like some kind of base torture technique. As I sat motionless, hands on the steering wheel, I pictured the policeman and his partner leaning back in their sedan seats, sipping coffee and shooting the shit to stretch out my squirm-inducing wait. Does it truly take in excess of eight minutes to determine whether or not my car is stolen or I am a convicted felon on the run?

But the worst part is the Stockholm syndrome-like response I always have when I'm finally told I'm free to go. When the cop finally returned and soberly handed me the inevitable ticket, I actually said "Thank you," as I signed my name.