The Inevitable

So it finally happened. After driving recklessly for 9 years, 11 months, and 10 days, I got my first speeding ticket.

I was three hours from home on I-68 or I-79 or something like that, jamming out to something ridiculous on the radio, and flying past some minivan puttering along in the right lane. When the West Virginia Highway Patrol car flipped on its lights and clunked into the grass of the median to do a U-turn into my lane, I knew I was toast.

He got me at 87 in a 70. Oops.

But like every single West Virginian I've come across, he was remarkably and genuinely nice. After the incredibly stereotypical and completely unanswerable "Where ya' headin' in such a hurry?" question, he actually made his "where are you coming from, where do you work" interrogation sound like friendly small talk. Didn't even want to pull me over - but of course, there was that minor fact that I was almost going 20 over. Said he couldn't pass that one up.

I would have gotten 6 points on my license if he'd written 87 on my ticket. I don't really know what that means, but he made it sound bad. Probably something horrendous like license suspension and three years hard labor in the tobacco fields of Virginia. What I do know, though, is that "as a courtesy" to me, he didn't write 87. Instead of hard labor, I will be paying a small fine to a small county in West Virginia, but I will not have any points on my license.

I thanked him for his generosity, promised to slow down, and pulled away knowing that I totally deserved a ticket with a big red 87 scrawled all over it. And then I painfully drove 69 the entire rest of the way through West Virginia. Because they're so damn nice there!!!