Encore!

"Excuse me, ma'am? I pulled you over because I clocked you at 75 in a 55," says the officer good-naturedly, shining a flashlight into my eyes.

"Urgh."

"See that over there?" He points to a sign just a few feet away. "That's where the 65 zone starts." Lame, lame, lame! "Uh, ma'am? Why don't you have your seatbelt on? And what's that smell? Are you drinking?" He peers suspiciously into the cockpit, blinding me in the process.

"I took it off to get my registration from the glove box. What smell?"

"The alcoholic one. Next time, don't remove your seat belt until you roll down the window for the officer."

"Next time? Such faith." The officer laughs guardedly.

"Had anything to drink?"

"No, sir. It's this..." I pull out Bath & Body Works Japanese Cherry Blossom hand sanitizer.

"...Can I see that?" He asks, holding out his hand. I give it to him. He sniffs it, applies a little dab and grins. "Roger that," he says. I give him my license and registration and he goes off to process it while I fume and pout and text Steven. He comes back a couple minutes later with a pink sheet of paper on a clipboard.

"Here's your citation - no fine, but here's the mandatory court date. You don't have anything on your record, so you can plead Prayer for Judgment. They'll knock it down to 9 over and your insurance company will never know. Oh, and you don't have to show up at the courthouse at 7:45; that's just when it opens. Understand?" He scribbles "PJC" helpfully in the comments section of the citation.

"Yep. Yes, sir."

"Alright. Stay safe, have a good night."

"You, too. Meh meh."

So. That's the... SIXTH time I've been pulled over in the last couple years. You would think I'd learn a lesson, any lesson - but all I seem to do is get so good at finding my license and registration that I remove my seat belt prematurely. I guess that's a lesson. I wonder why the ticket I got on the Ohio Turnpike last fall didn't show up in my record.