Normally I’m a law abiding citizen. But whenever a law enforcement officer comes around, I’m a rebel without a cause, just breaking the law out of nervous impulses. My wife normally calls me “old pokey” when I’m driving, but let me glimpse a patrol car in the rearview mirror and suddenly I’m Mad Max. When officers finally pull me over for erratic maneuvers, they never believe me when I tell them it’s their fault.
ME: “Officer, I was driving quite responsibly until you got behind me, then I got all nervous.”
OFFICER: “Sir, you were swerving all over the place, I’m going to need you to exit the car. When was the last time you had anything to drink?”
ME: “Eleven years, if you count that one drink of champagne. Thirty-five otherwise.”
OFFICER: “Sir, your pupils are dilated.”
ME: “I think that’s just from fear.”
OFFICER: “I’m going to administer a field sobriety test. Sir, will you count backwards…”
I may be the only teetotaler in history who has had to walk the line multiple times. Thankfully, I passed the tests, but I will say that walking in a straight line toe-to-toe is a lot harder than you’d think when your freedom depends on it. The problem is that even when I’m innocent, I act guilty.
The Trial, by Kafka, is my worst nightmare. In the novel, an innocent man is arrested for an unknown reason. Then he spends the next year trying to discover why and prove his innocence. But his neurotic behavior makes everyone assume he’s guilty. Then, in depressing Kafka fashion (spoiler alert), he’s executed.
Just the thought of that plot sends shivers to my epidermis. Once I thought it was actually coming true. It was the night when a sheriff’s deputy pounded on my front door. For a moment before I opened the door, I thought, “What in the world have I done to get arrested?”
Turns out, I had just left a gate open, and my cows were standing in the middle of the road. But I don’t think my heart has ever fully recovered.
That was funny — and sad at the same time. Fear can do crazy things to a person.
Yep, possibly explains why crazy things tend to happen with me involved.
Brilliant!
Thanks!
I have the same problem, when I’m innocent but realize someone even slightly suspects me of guilt, out of unavoidable impulse I act guilty. And the more I try to act not guilty, the worse it gets.
Yeah, I feel like I would fail a lie detector test if I was telling the truth just because I am so nerved up.
I love Kafka, but I never expected life in U.S to become as Kafkaesque as it is now. BTW, don’t feel too bad about it, those field sobriety tests are much easier to master once you’ve had a few, kind of like playing billiards.
That’s good to know. The hardest part I think is when they ask you recite the alphabet backwards starting with some random letter, like s or o or something. Just to say the alphabet frontwards I have to start at the beginning and sing the song.
I used to live on a street called Holiday Circle. Some guy who lived on Holiday Court was engaged in mail fraud. Both addresses show as ‘Holiday CR’ on the police screens. The police knocked on my door and were in the processes of arresting me when it came back that they were at the wrong address. They were worried I would press charges against them for false arrest, but I am a fan of the men in blue and it was an honest mistake. All I can say is thank goodness they didn’t find all those dead prostitutes I had stacked up on the back porch.
Yeah, maybe subconsciously I worried he would find my meth lab in the barn, but thankfully I had the barn door closed.
My husband always gets nervous like that when he sees a traffic cop. I don’t have that reaction at all, and feel confident that I’m within the speed limit buffer range. I wonder why people react so differently?
Good question. I suspect it has something to do with subconscious guilt for stealing a pencil from work or something.