Bang bang

I am CERTAIN I am going to die by bullet, at the hands of a police officer. The past couple of years, that fact becomes increasingly clear. I believe I have spoken of my intense DISlike for all things police/sheriff/highway-trooper/cop related in the past. This morning, I am compelled to write about it again. All my life, I have been respectful of the law. I taught my kids to be the same, I can still see my little guys faces when they saw a police car---such excitement. That was not the face I was wearing yesterday, when I had a little conversation with one, on the side of the highway. That's not the face I am wearing now, as I learn of a run-in that D had with TWO of them on her way home from work last night. Let me stop here and tell you that I have never been nor am I now the kind of person that hates all authority. I have been before and probably will be again, the one that NEEDS the help from them. I know that their job must be eighty-four different kinds of hell, and a job that I would never be able to do. I KNOW all that. But I also know that many of them just plain assholes. And those are the ones that I generally run into. I have SEEN what small town cops do to kids, their lives made a living hell, just because some little nobody cop decides that they don't like you. I have seen it, and i have lived it to a small degree. I have watched young people in this county go from one legal problem to another, and YES they obviously were doing something in the beginning that they shouldn't have been, but from that point on there are no breaks, once a young person is in the system, it takes a miracle to get them out. I have personally watched them being harassed, perhaps humiliated, depending on your definition of the word, all in the name of the law. My sons had issues with them, and YES, they deserved what they got for doing wrong. I am not one of those kinds of mothers. Wrong is wrong. But back the fuck off, once they have been punished. YS was arrested for driving under the influence. He was under the legal drinking age at the time. He should never have driven after drinking, he should not have been drinking. He would not have been considered drunk had he been old enough to drink in the first place, he blew under the legally drunk range on the blowey-thing. (How's that for a term?) But any amount of alcohol in a nineteen year old kid is considered legally drunk. So he paid for what he did. And I paid. And he paid some more. And I know he learned a valuable lesson. It was probably worth the costs, in the long run. But he had to move away after that, they wouldn't leave him the hell alone. He wasn't doing anything wrong, although they tried like hell to catch him in something. That was two years ago. Last year, I had a little run in with them myself. H and I were driving along, minding our own business in Utah, of all places. H was driving, and he is such a careful driver. Carefu lto the point of being ridiculously irritating. So he was in the process of slowing down, when the speed limit dropped by ten mph. But the Utah hiway-peetrollman couldn't let it go. In the end, two hours later, after standing beside the highway in twenty degree weather at eight in the morning for more than two hours, with all my vacation laundry spread along the side of the highway, he let us go. He couldn't find any drugs or weapons, which is what we were searched for. He didn't even give us a speeding ticket. He was terribly disappointed. I was freaking SEETHING mad. H was just begging me with his eyes to shut the hell up, and it was only for him that I did. Left to my own devices, I would probably still be residing in their local jail. After that, my attitude changed. I think that most of them aren't worth a damn. Which brings me to the current story. I was pulled over yesterday, for speeding. 62 in a 55. Okay, I'm guilty. Give me the fucking ticket. No, he wants to chat. I don't feel like having a friendly conversation, I am late for my mom's bday lunch. Give me the ticket. No, he wants to talk about the kind of car I'm driving, does it get pretty good gas mileage? Fuck, I don't know. GIVE ME THE TICKET. In the end, i don't get a ticket. Just a warning, like he was doing me such a favor. Yea, I'll slow "it" down, whatever the hell "it" is. Wanker. Then, I get up this morning and read (in her blog)that my daughter was pulled over, not once, but twice, TWICE on her way home from work last evening. Apparently all vehicles were being pulled over, and the second cop wanted to search her vehicle, which by now I would have said "no" to, but she agreed. And they found a beer bottle under the seat, a beer bottle that has been there since last November, I know because it was MY beer bottle, I drank it on the way to the airport when we went to Vegas, so that I could, in fact, get on the plane. I told her to throw it away when we returned. That didn't happen. It was buried under the front passenger seat. I know I should not have been drinking in a vehicle. I am aware. I would have paid the ticket for open container without whining had I been caught. I was breaking the law. But I know that cop knew that bottle had been there forever. I know he had to. It was bone dry-for one thing. It was buried, for another. But he made her walk the line, blow in the blowey-thingy (there that term is again), and recite the alphabet backward. (I couldn't so THAT one at any time, drinking or not.) She blew a zero. 0. ZERO. NOTHING. So he gave her a speeding ticket, for five miles over. Fucking Wanker.