What Is Your Most Interesting Encounter with the Police?

We had just finished up at a booksale… my wife is a bookie, um, I mean an online book-dealer. If we hurried, we might get to our favorite restaurant 30 miles away just on time for the lunch specials.

Too late, I saw the blue lights.

The officer said I was going 82 MPH. He was not judgement, he just looked sadder than anything you could imagine as he warned me that I was risking our lives. I could see that he was truly despondent at the thought of us dying so stupidly. His momentous sadness seemed to give him an archetypical aura, like Death in Ingmar Berman’s The Seventh Seal.

The ticket was for a large amount of money, but it was this officer’s demeanor and the enormous sadness on his face that haunted me.

That was 7 years ago. It was my last speeding ticket.