Rearview Mirror

I drove for six and a half straight hours today. The end result was my blessed reunion with Shea. I have driven from New York to Cleveland faster, but I have never made the trip east in such good time. Since my last trip on these roads did not go without incident: My Last Trip, I was especially aware of my speed. This apparently did not factor into my record time.

While I was driving, being cautious of hiding cops, I began rerunning all of the times I've been pulled over in my life. I write that as thought it's happened numerous times. It hasn't. But it's happened enough. The time I was thinking of mostly today really had me cracking up.

I believe it was back in 2002. Spending the summer home from college, I was at my parents house and heading down to a party about a half hour away. While I was driving the windy, narrow roads, I peeked in the rearview mirror to check out my beautiful hair. Well, it was a good thing I looked, because there was a piece out of place. I would have none of that. Concentrating solely on taking care of that out of place hair, I took my eyes off of the road. This wouldn't have been a huge problem if the road were straight. But, the two seconds that it took me to get my hair in tip-top shape, the road took a sharp curve.

When I looked back at the road, I was driving on the left-hand side of the road. Unfortunately, I was not in Europe where that is acceptable. Even worse, a car was coming. We were set to crash head-on. Through my instantaneous panic, I was able to see that this was not just any car; it was a cop. Before I could even comprehend the ramifications of fixing my hair in the rearview mirror, I was able to jerk the wheel and bring my car back to the right side of the road.

I immediately knew that cop was doing a u-ey and coming to pull me over. I didn't even let him turn his lights on, I just surrendered, pulling over voluntarily. As he approached, he asked the basic questions: licence, registration, and the such. Then, he asked what in the heck I was doing. His best guess what that I was changing cd's. I laughed that ridiculous guess off and told him exactly what I was doing. "I was fixing my hair, " I explained, as that was a completely acceptable thing to be doing while driving on windy roads.

The officer laughed and told me that probably wasn't the best idea. He warned me that that is how accidents happen. I enthusiastically agreed with him. With that, he told me to please, for the sake of everyone's safety, to never fix my hair while driving again. Since I agreed to this, he allowed me to go free of charge. My hair must have been looking really good!