Oh, the shame...

You may wonder why this is going on a blog that my parents are going to read.

Perhaps this is a bad idea.
Oh well.

So I was pulled over by a policeman for the first time ever last night. But let me defend myself! It's 3:30 AM, we've just been to (another) gay club and (another, more friendly!) diner with Rachel's friend, and we're headed back to Northfield on a totally straight and mostly deserted stretch of highway. I am going 71 mph - which anyone who has driven on 35W knows is not fast at all. A gigantic trunk gets on the on-ramp just to my right, and it looks like he's about to change into my lane, so I swerve a bit and go around him. No danger, everything's fine. A little while later, I am being pulled over for going 71 in a 55 mph zone.

So here's the theory - cop sees out-of-state car full of college students swerving around a truck at 3 in the morning, and thinks they might be drunk. This makes sense based on his actions, too. As much as I'd like to demonize all police officers, this guy was perfectly civil, and basically asked me a bunch of questions to determine (I think) whether I could answer coherently. And I guess since I had no prior DWI's or anything, and I was super calm the whole time (if a little reluctant to share that we'd just come from a club - I left out the fact that it was a gay club) he let me off with a warning. (And might I add, he pulled me over literally 50 feet before the speed limit changed to 65.)

So, no harm done, no fines, no strikes on my license, and I maintain that I did nothing particularly wrong, just... damn. There's something kind of shameful about getting pulled over. Like, you see the lights in your rearview mirror and it's like you're five, and your hand is in the cookie jar, and you can hear your mother's footsteps coming down the hall, and even if you get your hand out in time, it's just - too - late - to wipe the crumbs off your fingers. And even if she doesn't notice, or doesn't care, you knew you could've gotten in trouble for something totally dumb, and that's just embarrassing.

Not like anything like that has ever happened to me.