Speeding fines and Huxtable healing

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

All of my bowls were dirty, so, like any self-respecting bachelor, I ate my cereal out of Tupperware.

I’d just gotten home from a hard softball loss. We got mercy-ruled, which means the other guys beat us by at least 10 runs at least an inning earlier than the game should have ended. Which means we’re god awful.

On the drive back, I mulled over our defeat when the insides of my car went rogue, started flashing in bursts of red, blue and yellow. It was a rotten copper behind me. One from Bunnell. The worst kind.

This is it, I think. Guess all crime sprees got to end sometime (read about when I initially broke bad, HERE).

I did the deputy a favor and pulled over. I even turned off the engine and got my license and registration ready to go. This would show him that I was a good guy in a bad situation and, surely, he’d let me free with just a warning.

“I stopped you because you were doing 58 in a 35,” he said.

“Cockamamie!” I replied. “I thought this was a 60.”

“Not back there it isn’t,” he said, pointing over into town, by the Chicken Pantry and city hall.

I snapped. “Drat! My softball team just lost a tough one, officer. You understand.” Thinking that would do the trick, I started for the engine key when he asked me for my papers.

“Is this your car?” he asked.

“Better believe it,” I fired back, patting the dashboard. No way was I about to let somebody else get credit for my ’99 Civic, with its wearing paint and faulty starter. “The old green beauty?” I asked. “Oh yeah, she’s mine, all right.”

I handed my information over with a smile.

“This registration’s from 2006,” he said, returning it quickly. I rifled through my glove compartment, opened the folder where I keep my records. Inside, there were 10-year-old Cingular bills and expired insurance cards.

No up-to-date registration.

“You’ll have to excuse me, officer. I’ve never been pulled over before. Just your run-of-the-mill good guy in a bad situation, you know?”

And he said, “Wait here,” disappearing behind the lights, not coming back till a hundred years later.

Because of my clean history, he said he’d cut me a break — a $136 ticket instead of a $250 one.

“With friends like you who needs enemies, am I right, copper?” I slapped my knee and chuckled.

He didn’t

“I’m not going to cite you for the registration. I could. But I’m not going to. Because you’ve been cooperative.”

He told me to watch my side when pulling back onto the road. I dropped the nice-guy routine and told him to watch his back next time he saw me around town.

After a shower at home, I still felt dirty, sucking up to the Man like that. And, with my windows open, I could hear my downstairs neighbor hacking, coughing, sucking down cigarettes on her balcony. I smelled the smoke drift into my apartment, infecting my lungs and living room. I heard her cough, like she was about to hurl but never did.

I pulled my shirt over my nose to mask the odor.

After sinking into the couch, I scooped a huge spoonful of Lucky Charms from my Tupperware bowl and put it down the hatch. With every bite, I thought about how ceramics were overrated.

Dumb ceramics, I thought. What do they have that you don’t?

Truth is, I never could get myself to hand-wash. The whole process — opening the washer, pulling out a bowl, lathering, rinsing — it screams of domesticity. It screeches of order and suburbia, and I had a record now. A rap sheet. My criminal past had finally caught up with me.

I came inches away from a one-way ticket to the big house. And it’s true what they say: the joint changes a man.

Still, I’m young, no kids, single. That means I still have a few years left where I can do, and eat, and say pretty much whatever I want with full immunity. When I get home late, after losing softball games and getting speeding tickets, I don’t wash dishes and eat fruit cups. I pound Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and the Cap’n’s all-time greatest mistake, Oops! All Berries.

Only then can I relax. I collect myself, flip on Netflix and, like any self-respecting bachelor, enjoy a couple reruns of “The Cosby Show” before gently pulling on my sleeping cap and hitting the sack at a nice, respectable hour.

Because, tomorrow, I’ve got things to do. And even outlaws need their beauty sleep.