Can’t drive 35

For his birthday present this year, the state of South Carolina gave my dad his very first speeding ticket ever. The trooper was actually a few days early with his present, but he had to catch Dad while he had the chance, as Dad was only in town briefly for a business trip, and was apparently moving quite rapidly.

If you’d ever driven with my dad before, you’d understand how much fun this is for everyone else in the family. It’s not that Dad’s usually the slowest driver on the road, it’s just that he’s the slowest one not driving a tractor. The man has a helium foot. School buses pass Dad on winding country roads. When we used to take family drives through Amish country, we’d have buggy drivers whipping the back of the station wagon and hollering for Dad to get out of the way.

He is not a man who likes to test the limits of his vehicles. That task is left to my mom, who racked up enough speeding tickets on family vacations to win the position of Permanent Navigator, though she also moonlights as the Passenger’s Side Brakeperson, slamming down her foot on the floorboard at the slightest hint of brake lights. In all fairness, the right side of the car always seems to stop when the left side does, and we have Mom to thank for that.

But we were all shocked to learn that not only had the trooper clocked Dad going 55 in a 35, but the ticket weighed in at a whopping $440. I guess the town of Camden, South Carolina expected Dad to finance a new stadium for their minor league baseball team, the Camden Speedtraps.

After amassing my own collection of speeding tickets over the years, I’ve learned to look at it this way: it costs about a nickel each time you speed, and every few years, a cop will come along to collect. For Dad, though, that way of looking at things really doesn’t help much. He got charged 440 bucks for the first time he’d ever sped in his life.

At least Dad handled his ticket better than my friend Johnny, who was recently pulled over for not fully stopping at a stop sign.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” the cop asked Johnny.

“No, sir, I don’t,” Johnny replied.

“You rolled right through that stop sign back there. That’s a moving violation,” said the cop.

“Is it possible for you to give me a warning? There wasn’t anybody else in the intersection,” Johnny said.

“Sorry. I can’t do that. And this ticket is going to be about a hundred dollars,” the cop replied.

At this point, Johnny became incensed at being caught for such a minor violation. I can understand his sentiment. Over the past twenty years, I’ve personally witnessed Johnny doing countless things for which he should have been arrested, most all of which were more entertaining than rolling through a stop sign.

So Johnny, always adept at ignoring the little voice in his head that tells him to keep his mouth shut, proceeded to inquire of the officer, “Well, how much is the ticket for selling crack?”
Johnny learned shortly thereafter that pointing out laws that you happen not to be breaking doesn’t help you to avoid a traffic ticket, but mouthing off to a cop does ensure that you’ll lose in court when you challenge that ticket.

The good news for Dad in all of this is that his trooper made a mistake, and the ticket ended up only costing $75. It was the ribbing from his family that turned out to be expensive. Here’s a sampling of his birthday card this year from his loving children: “It’s funny how fast birthdays come up on you. Kind of like state troopers. We hope you get a chance to slow down on your birthday!”

You can ask Mike Todd for his license and registration online at mikectodd@gmail.com.