I almost got arrested last night. Seriously.

"I've GOT to hear this." B, my co-worker said, "I mean, unless you don't feel comfortable telling the story."

"It's not like I was running around Germantown in the nude or anything"

"Oh, yeah, she's a serious fugative from justice!" my boss piped up as she came by. I had already told her the story over the phone. "We knew you were gonna be trouble when we hired you! Somebody - call America's Most Wanted!"

Great.

And didn't I just write, yesterday, about losing important documents in a volume of mail? That's what my whole problem stems from - a $25.00 ticket for not having my seat belt on. I got it over the summer when I was coming back from the Shipping Station. The police were stopping everybody. At the time, I suspected that they were looking for someone, but I was really shocked when the cop wrote me a ticket for such a thing when I was literally within a block of my house.

Incidentally, I can remember when privacy advocates objected to the seat belt law on the grounds that it was a slippery slope: that the police could just pull people over at random and say "I didn't think you had your seat belt on". Originally, the law was written in such a way that they had to stop you for something else, and THEN if you didn't have your seat belt on, they could also write you a ticket for that. Now they can pull you over any time and say "I didn't think you had your seat belt on." And this winged creature, honest as I am, would never think to say, "Of course I did, I just took it off when you came up." Because I didn't have it on, I had just unhooked it at the stop sign because my asthma was bugging me and my chest hurt.

Which is what I intended to say when I went to court, which I planned to do as soon as I got a court date. Only I never did, at least not one that I remember getting in the mail. And, in the course of human events, my life being what it is, I eventually totally forgot about the $25.00 ticket.

The state didn't though. They suspended my license!

I found this out last night when an officer pulled me over because my tail light was out. Technically, there was nothing wrong with my tail light. It works fine, but it isn't red. You know that list of things I learn every day? Well, that's on it now: a tail light has to have red glass or covering to be legal in Maryland.

You want to know what else I learned? Maryland drivers licenses are supposed to have several layers of laminated coverings on them. Mine, for some reason, did not. I guess because it was a replacement for the one I lost when my handbag was stolen. After quite a long while of talking with the police officer, whose hand was at one point hovering quite near his gun, I learned that he really thought that I had given him a fake license.

I could tell that the officer had no idea what to make of me. Was I animal, vegetable or mineral? I freely admit to being a little weird. After all, I HAD just come from making a paper face, sticking it onto the artificial Christmas tree at the office, and a pair of "hands" for it to hold up a sign that says, "It's not easy being green" in order to cheer up the morning crowd. But assaulting an artificial Christmas tree isn't a crime - not even in Montgomery County.

What had the police officer confused was that I was babbeling. I wasn't babbeling incoherently, but I WAS babbeling. Police officers scare me. I look at anybody who is bigger, tougher, stronger than me and armed as a threat. I'm sorry I can't help it. There is just something in the makeup of my personality that does not buy into "protect and serve" as the model that all police officers opperate under. I think there is a small minority, like there is in any other occupation, whose motto is more like "absolute power corrupts absolutely." As a pacifist, I can't help but be alarmed on some emmotional level by a huge man leaning over, shining a flash light in my face, with a sidearm at his waist. I've seen too much video, heard too many stories in the girls' room....and, it's true, I admit it, had too many bad experiences with bad men....and the police were no where around when THOSE things happened. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that all cops are bad - I still believe that the majority are good people doing a very difficult job. They need to be armed because the bad guys are. But there are bad apples in every walk of life, in every occupation. And I had no way of knowing if Officer Moose was one of the good ones or the bad ones. He was just the one I had to deal with.

"Are you sure you haven't been drinking?" he asked me in genuine puzzlement.

"Officer, I'm quite sure. I just got off of work. I'd be more than happy to take a breath test."

"Would you be willing to take breath test?"

(oh, great, not only is he confused, he's on seven second sattalite delay! said the detached part of my mind which is always observing, never involved)

"Of course." I said, sincerly, and I did. Thank God the police have those things available, because if I'd tried to get out and walk I surely couldn't have. As it was I felt like I was going to pass out as it was.

He took the little cube and went back to his car. And then I became really, truly frightened. "What if he says it showed something? You only have his word for it that it's not tampered with - that he even did it right, or that it works. Can they fake those things? Is he the kind of person who would do that? He might be, he might not be. He already said he could arrest me. I've heard of cases like that, where a young woman was arrested because they said a field test showed the flour she was carrying was cocaine. She was vindicated, of course, but that took awhile. But why would he do such a thing? I'm not attractive any more - I don't have to worry about that. Unless he's just crazy. Do they have a quota? It would only be trouble for him to arrest me - unless I've made him angry, or he's already angry, or needs to arrest a white woman to balance out some balance sheet somewhere."

My stomach lurched, but I firmly resolved not to throw up. After all, there was no guarentee that I'd be able to clean myself up any time soon.

"You certainly don't have any criminal record" the officer said coming back to the car peering at me, really, the way people look at exotic birds in the pet shop, "Did you really not know about all these problems?" It seems I had also overlooked my emissions notice. That was due in October.

"Officer, you are not dealing with either Thelma OR Louise here." I said firmly.

His eyes widened and he began to laugh. "I am a law abiding person who has never harmed any one, except the deer, but I already mentioned that. You have no idea what my life is like. I'm on the second shift at an insurance company, I have medical bills out the wazhoo. Hell, it's possible somebody stole our mail, somebody stole my handbag right out of my house last year! We're trying to sell our house to pay our bills, and we're moving, and I'm not trying to get one over on the State of Maryland. My life has just lately been really, really, really disorganized."

"Oh. Is that when you got this replacement license?" He asked. I nodded, and he morphed from Moose to Teddy Bear in 15 seconds. That's when he explained about the coating and laminating on the license, "But you have got to address these problems, otherwise things are going to be REALLY bad."

And he gave me a boat load of tickets which he had already written, and advised me to go to court. He intimated I should plead stupidity, which, I guess is not a crime either.

So, tomorrow a DMV-ing we will go! I already told my boss I was going to be late to work. She told me, if the cops showed up, she'd claim she didn't know me.