Speed Trap

You know what they say... Make haste slowly. This is my personal credo since I am twice as likely as the next guy to burn my wrist while snatching the entree from the oven in the middle of a dinner party, or drop a ladder on my head while rushing to finish painting that little patch of wall that's just out of reach, before I scoot to a meeting that I would have been on time for if I hadn't picked up the paintbrush in the first place.

Yesterday, Señor and I decided that, as long as we left early, it would be a fine idea to travel a highway battered by Hurricane Irene to go see his Mom. If we left early enough, we might avoid slow traffic where multiple lanes had been narrowed to one. Our intentions included stopping for 8:30 Mass in North Conway at Our Lady of the Mountains, where one of Señor's friends is the pastor. The trip should take about two hours. We left our house at 6:20am, stopping for coffee (6:25am), a bathroom break (7:10am), a bagel (7:35am),  and were breezing through Chocorua when a NH State Trooper pulled us over at 7:55am, thirty miles from the church.

Now Señor has never gotten a ticket... not in my memory. Señor doesn't get tickets. No school superintendent wants that kind of blemish on his record. God forbid that any school board member might ever have the opportunity to equate reckless driving with the management of their school district. Noooooooo!! Not on Señor's watch.

So as soon as the officer flicks his index finger in the universal language of traffic violations, I feel Señor's blood pressure start to sky rocket - from 110/70 to 150/90 -  in less than five seconds. As he pulls the car to the side of the road, I sense that Señor is operating from a zone somewhere west of "Please, God."

"Your license and registration, sir."

Señor removes them piece by piece from his wallet - a time-worn accessory that resembles a leather billiard ball. It's stuffed with old business cards, buy-ten-get-one-free fast food membership cards, the credit cards that are too numerous for the minimal space allotted to them, notes to himself, correspondence from employees and graduate students, photos, prayer cards, coupons for $5-off at Friendly's and $2-off at Papa Gino's, and a modest amount of cash, including the all-important Emergency Twenty.

Señor hands the officer his license, and then the car registration. Then he looks at me and states in a low voice, "I hope I gave him the current registration." He roots around in the billfold and, triumphant, holds up last year's registration. Or was it the year before that?

"Where are you headed?"

Señor in total earnestness says, " We're headed to Berlin to see my elderly, 86-six-year-old mother." Sigh. As if she were knocking at Death's Door.

Then the officer poses the question that State Troopers can rattle off in their sleep, "Do you know how fast you were going?"

Señor: "Around fifty?"

"Do you know what the speed limit is?"

"Forty or forty-five?"

"No, it's thirty."

------ crickets -------

Then Señor said that we were hoping to see Father Don for 8:30 Mass. Honest.

Then I added a line about picking up a couple of homeless people on our way to helping out at the soup kitchen for lunch... before our stint at the Salvation Army. Seriously...

Just kidding. Luckily, the officer scribbled a warning and Senor's driving record retained a clean bill of health. Whew.

We had a good laugh at our unspoken embellishments, thankful that Senor's mother did the trick.