Saturday, January 1st, 2005. There I was, innocently driving home from a wedding reception so I could get ready to work the night shift at a seedy gas station and be a responsible member of society. My plans were quickly thwarted, however, by the cop who was just LOOKING to pull someone over. Now, for real, my great friend’s husband is a police officer, so I actually legitimately love officers for all they do for society while getting hated on… But all I did was assume the red light was turning green and start pulling over the white line only to discover that the left turners that were NOT there were going to get an arrow. So I went 5 feet over the line, tops. And this guy pulled me over.
He gets up to my car and sticks his face in my face. He was probably in his 50s, with a cleft pallet and a molester ‘stache. He’s trying to figure out if I’m drunk, and I’m trying to figure out if I know where the heck my vehicle registration is. He asks me for my info. As I’m digging through my glove box, I find a speeding ticket from 6 months earlier. It was 78 bucks. Aaaaaand I knew I was in trouble.
Molester ‘stache takes me back to his car and runs my license. I can see his screen as I sit there counting the minutes that I’m late to work. At the bottom, there’s an asterisk and the phrase “suspended license.”
Um. Ummmmmmm…did I know that???
*Panic* *Devastation*
He looks at me. He looks at the screen. I start babbling that I didn’t know my license was suspended nobody called me or mailed me anything and can you please let me off the hook here I have to work…… Pretty sure “blablablapleasedontkillmeblablabla” is all he heard as he called one of his other officer buddies to find out if he really HAD to arrest me for possessing my license (apparently it is much more egregious to possess your suspended license than to be driving on a suspended license).
He gets off the phone and shoots me a long, sad look. I knew it. I was done-for.
He gets me out of the car and has me place my hands on the vehicle. I am dressed in a black skirt and a grey top from the wedding. I am standing there in the worst part of town with my hands up against the car and my legs spread, like some crazy, marijuana-laced woman straight out of Cops. If that isn’t enough, as he’s molesting me (or patting me down, whatever), two more police cars show up, EACH containing two adorable officers. So now (if you’ve done the math), there are five officers watching the poor chubby girl bawl her eyes out and get patted down by molester ‘stache.
After I was carefully felt up and it was clear I was not stashing any illegal weaponry on an inner-thigh holster, I was cuffed. Yes. Handcuffed. Behind the back. This was no easy feat either because I was about 95 pounds overweight at this point in my life and if any of you are packing on some extra poundage, you know that getting your appendages to do things out-of-the-ordinary can be difficult. He had to use two sets of handcuffs, end-to-end, to make me as comfortable as a person in handcuffs can be.
He shoves me in the back of the car. Now, apparently the back seats of these particular police cars are designed for the ass of a skinny crackhead. They are hard plastic and molded. Also, there is barely enough leg room for my knees to fit. All of this, combined with the handcuffs, about forced my face into the fence thing that separates suspects from the cop in the front seat.
So I am still bawling, I have my face pressed against the hole-y glass, and this poor cop is trying to comfort me, saying “It’s okay…this doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Thanks man. That is super helpful.
We pull up to the police station. I note the brilliance of pulling into a double-sided garage and closing the doors before letting the criminal out of the car. Wouldn’t want the overweight girl in heels to take off running. I suppose it’s good for crackheads who seems to have extra energy and wiggliness and half a mind to take off running.
We go in, and they take EVERYthing away from me that is not covering a naughty part. Shoes, bracelets, ponytail holder…everything. As they start booking me, a kindly looking gal brings me a bin of rubber sandals to wear (I can’t wear my own shoes because I might spear someone with my chunky heel). She says, “Don’t worry – they’re totally sanitized.”
Oh good.
I trudge into the holding area. They guide me to the finger-printing and mug-shot-taking area. I can see why everyone, no matter who they are, has a terrible mug shot. I look like a punching bag at this point. The picture-taking gal counts down and I manage a meager smile. She glares at me and says “NO SMILING!” She starts counting down again. Somewhere between 3 and 1, the craziness of this situation hits me, and I start laughing. Hysterically. She glares at me even harder…but when my hysterical picture pops up on the screen, I’m only laughing harder.
I’m not sure which picture she chose, but I would like to think that next time I get pulled over, the picture that pops up is me laughing so hard I can’t breathe, looking like a really sad, crazy, punching bag.
I am then ushered to the phone area. There is exactly one phone. I am waiting behind a very drunk fat lady who is in jail for drunkenly abusing her children. This does not make me feel better.
Finally, I get to make my call. Fist, I call my manager to let him know that in fact, I will not be at work by 11pm. Next, I need to find a way out of here. Now my entire family is still at this wedding reception, so I call my roomie and bestie, Sonja. My bail is 75 bucks. Surely she can get me out of this! She sadly informs me that she has no cash and doesn’t have the pin number for her new debit card yet. Bah! Sonja fail. Who else can I call this time on a Saturday night? Ugh, nobody really.
So I do it. I call my dad. He doesn’t answer. I call my sister. She answers. I can hear the music rocking, and I shout at her that I’m in jail and I need someone to come bail me out. She says WHAT!!!!??? I can’t hear you! So I raise my voice. This time she hears me…as does everyone else in jail.
Then, my mom is on the phone. I yell to her that I’m in jail and I need someone to bring me 75 bucks. Then I hear her tell my dad, who says something like “YOU’RE KIDDING ME.” Dad is even more deaf then the other two, so once he’s on the phone, I’m basically screaming at him in the nicest way possible.
As I trudge over to the seating area – which is lovely…it is a bunch of chairs facing a ceiling-mounted television, and lined on three sides by jail cells. I am telling you, without exaggeration, out of the 15 or so total people in this part of the jail, every one of them is drunk. They’re passed out, mumbling at themselves, looking around in fascination, or whatever. A one legged Native American in a jail cell keeps yelling at me to come on into his cell ’cause he’ll show me a good time. They tell me that he is in almost every night, otherwise he sets all of the downtown garbage cans on fire.
At this point, I decide I need to use the restroom. I shuffle back towards the entrance, where the bathroom is. Who should I see but one of my fellow parishioners at church. He’s a police officer. He stares at me, like he didn’t believe I was there…and says, “What on earth are you doing in here??” I tell him I forgot to pay my speeding ticket and practically run to the bathroom.
Awesome. And tomorrow morning is church.
Finally, I hear the word that someone has paid my bail. It takes almost as long to get booked OUT of jail as it does to get booked into jail, so after about an hour and a half of sitting in there, I am released to almost my ENTIRE family, who had to all pile into the Suburban and come get me (2 parents, 3 sibs). I immediately collapse into my dad’s arms and start bawling. He piles me into the car and my mom starts railing on about how could they arrest someone for something so stupid and so on. I appreciate her indignance on my behalf, but I STILL have to get to work.
Finally at about 1:00 AM, 2 hours late for my shift, I get to work. I look ridiculous, but who really cares on a Saturday night. Basically anyone who comes in at this hour is wasted anyway.
I was super angry, and I took my anger out on all of the drunks who stumbled in at bar close looking for beer. Guess what? It’s illegal to sell beer to someone who is already drunk. So although I almost had a riot on my hands at 2am, the only way those people, who were all driving drunk and should’ve been the ones sitting in jail, were going to get alcohol at my gas station would be to pry it out of my cold dead hands….
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