10/8/08

An older draft found in my archives, not published.

1) I get sent to outer SE Ptld to pick up a lady early one morning and take her for her daily meth dose at the clinic. I have about 10 mins before I'm due there and only a few blocks away so I stop to watch the ducks wander around the side of the road near a tiny little pond where they apparently live.

They're waddling along, being just as cute as ducks and baby ducks can be. As they start to cross the road a SUV comes from the other direction and has to stop to let them go by. The other driver and I exchange smiles and watch the ducks when I notice something ... odd. I did a double take, then got out of my car 'cause one of these poor little baby ducks has a DART sticking out of the side of it's neck!!! The lady asks me what's going on, I tell her and she gets out to try and help me herd the poor little duckie to one of us so we could do ... something. I dunno what. The momma duck hustles her babies away from the big mean people and off into the lake. I called the p.d. They said they would send someone out.

2) I had this girl get in my cab crying, quietly in the backseat. She tells me where to go, and if I could, get her there quickly. I take off. We're at 15th NE Alberta going to St. Johns. I get to MLK to go N and as I pull up the light turns red for me. I whip up to the corner and take a quick look left, there is only one car coming at me in the inside lane. So I jump on the gas and whip out into the outer lane to get out of the way. Well, turns out this one car was a cop. And he pulled me over. I turned off the meter, apologized and had a nice, loooong chat with the cop. He was angry. He didn't care that I pulled out in the far lane to get out of his way.

I ran the red light and pulled out into the wrong lane. blah blah. This guy read me the riot act. Up, down. Everything.

He: You know that if I wrote you a ticket you would lose your license, right?

Me: No chance. I've only had 2 tickets in my entire 30 yrs of driving and they were both over 5 years ago.

He: This is 2 violations in one incident. Yes, you COULD lose your license and since you drive for a living you might want to seem a little more concerned about it.

Instead of being concerned, I argued. Cuz that's just what I do. Especially when I feel someone is trying to belittle me in front of someone else. So we chatted. For quite awhile. Finally I say ...

Me: Dude, either write me a ticket or let me go. This girl has some place she has to be.

He: looks at the girl in the back, crying All right. Just because I don't want YOU to waste any more of your customers time I'm going to let you go, but you need to be a LOT more careful.

3 comments:

Manic Witch said...

What an asshole! He had no intention of writing you a ticket or he would have done so and just been done with you. Talk about abusing the badge.

Sizzle said...

Some cops, I swear, just want to puff up their damn egos when they pull people over. They don't seem to care about the law, more about being right and berating a person. I have an awful time keeping my mouth shut when I get pulled over.

King of New York Hacks said...

yeah there just programmed to forget that they are one of us. They have no idea how hard we work for our money and dont just wait for a paycheck and full benefits. I remind them of this calmly and usually they just say slow down...ok ok i will ;-)