Recently,
my husband, Stephen, was driving to work when a police officer pulled him over.
This, in itself, is absurd. My husband motors like a grandmother. He always goes
the speed limit and is the safest driver—irritatingly so—that I have ever
known.
So when he rolled down the window of his 1995 Beretta to talk to the
police officer, he told him that he couldn’t imagine why he was being pulled
over. He knew he wasn’t speeding. He knew his car was well-maintained. He knew
he hadn’t broken any laws.
The
officer smugly replied that he had seen my husband texting—and that is against
the law. My husband responded by laughing.
Why
would an otherwise model citizen laugh in the face of the law? You would have
to know a deep, dark secret about Stephen to understand why. He is not like the
rest of us. He doesn’t own a cell phone.
The
officer insisted he saw him texting and Stephen stated that, quite simply, that
was impossible. When Stephen finally convinced the man in blue that he lived
his life without a cell phone, the officer expressed shock at how he could
possibly survive. Stephen said, quite well, and he had no desire to
jump on the 24/7 communication bandwagon.
He drove away without a ticket—and after having received a cheerful apology. This experience, however,
calls into question how valid any ticket written for texting truly can be if a
man who doesn’t own a cell phone is pulled over for such an infraction. Maybe our law
enforcement community could use some sobriety tests of their own—or at the very least, some
eye exams.
