Have You Ever Tried Driving the Speed Limit?

A smartphone rings (buzzes) on the nightstand, its display lighting the darkened room. As it vibrates it drifts closer to the stand’s edge.
Bzzzt…Bzzzt…Bzzzt…
Fumbling noises can be heard, then a brief silence. Finally a groggy voice comes across.
“…hu…hello…”
“Todd! Todd! Don’t hang up!” I exclaim, agitated, nearly shouting.
“Who…who is this?” Todd asks, still mostly asleep.
“It’s Ken! Don’t hang up Todd!” I say again.
The line falls silent for several long moments.

“Todd?”
“It’s…it’s…six. Six AM.”
“Yes. Well, it’s Six AM where you are.” I agree. I don’t really understand his point, I do have a watch you know.
“It’s Six AM…Sunday!”
“Yes, Todd.” Now I’m growing impatient. My watch does have a calendar built right in.
“It’s Six AM, Sunday. WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME!? Are you going to miss work tomorrow?”
Without even waiting for an answer, Todd continues.
“Could you not have called me at 10AM, or 8AM? Could you have called at 7AM?!”
Fair points, most of them. I guess. I should explain why I’m calling, it is the weekend after all. Let me start at the beginning.

It all began as I was driving south down I5 Saturday morning. I had the cruise control set for 69, not a care in the world except for all the traffic slowing me down. The traffic seemed heavier and slower than normal. I could only guess that it was because of a sea of brake lights caused by the State Trooper who happened to be traveling along in the slow lane. For some inexplicable reason this caused most of the cars on the road to decelerate to the slow lane’s pace. Herd mentality, I guess.
Most of the cars on the highway had slowed down, with one notable exception. In the fast lane I rocketed right on by the glut.
“It’s a passing lane,” Trooper Mickmack corrects me.
I passed them right on by in the passing lane.
Apparently noticing the headway one could make in the fast…passing lane, the trooper makes her way left, eventually pulling in behind me. I suspect Trooper Mickmack was also in a touch of a hurry because she pulled up onto my tail. As a matter of fact, she pulled right up on my bumper, tailgating me.
Now at that speed tailgating is quite unsafe, so I moved to the right to let her cruise past. She did not pass, however (which would have made this a much shorter and less interesting story). Instead, Trooper Mickmack continued tailgating me for some time observing, I’m sure, how safely and conscientiously I was driving.
She eventually lost interest in my driving clinic and flipped on her flashing lights, presumably to run down some other notorious felon who was likely headed for the lawless state of Oregon. Even though the fast lane was now wide open and she could have simply sped right around me, she continued tailgating, now with her flashing lights strobing my mirror. Not wanting to deter her high speed outlaw chase, I again shifted right into the even slower lane. Still the trooper tailgated me on into the slower lane.
Uncertain why she continued following so closely, I surmised that she likely ended up hooking her bumper right onto mine. Deciding that was the only possible explanation, I pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped so we could unhook our bumpers and she could be on her way after the desperado.

Trooper Mickmack strolled up to my window doubtless to make sure I had not been flustered by our bumper situation and opened with some uncharacteristically casual conversation.
“So, uh, how fast were you going back there, 70? 72?”
“No ma’am,” I replied, “had the ole cruise control set right on 69.” I patted my dashboard above the speedometer. 
She paused for a few moments before continuing.
“Do you know what the speed limit is here?” Her temperament seemed a bit leisurely for someone who was letting a desperate fugitive speed away and I was also pretty sure she already knew the answer. I didn’t want to argue or poke at her mistake, however, so I figured the best course was to play along with her pop quiz.
“Well now, let me see,” I began with a thoughtful look into the sky while stroking my beard. “The sign back there said 60MPH, so I guess that would make the speed limit 69.”
“It would make it sixty-what?” she asked, suddenly much less leisure in her tone.
“69.” I restated. “My wife, who used to be a cop, always says ‘69 if you’re fine’ …so…” I eye her subtly up and down.
“I said, over 9 and you’re fine,” my wife corrects me, now acutely interested in our conversation.
The trooper leans into my open window.
“Did you see my cruiser in the right lane? Did you notice that all the other traffic slowed down when they saw my marked cruiser?” she asked with a bit of a huff.
“Well, yes,” I started. “That was all quite inconvenient until I was able to weave around them and restart my cruise control.”
She paused again, staring at me. She blinked a couple times.
“You didn’t think you should have slowed down when you saw me?”
“Well, no.” I countered. “The last time I tried that tactic the arresting officer seemed quite displeased with how I had slowed down so sharply when I’d seen him.” Checkmate.
“Have you ever tried driving the speed limit?” She asked, not ready to concede.
“Well now, let me see,” I considered, stroking my beard and staring into the distance. “No, no I don’t believe that I have. Does following a slow car in the fast lane count?”
“The passing lane,” my wife corrects.
Our banter continues a while longer allowing the renegade to safely depart the trooper’s jurisdiction and into Oregon. By the rising pitch in Trooper Mickmack’s voice, I sensed growing tension and moved to de-escalate the situation before it got out of hand.
“Can you not cinch the cuffs down too tight ma’am, bum shoulder and all…” I de-escalated with all my might.
By the lack of circulation in my wrists I quickly realized that my opinion of tightness was not the same as hers and that my de-escalation techniques needed some work.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” Todd asks. “Uber is…”
“No Todd. The judge already implied I may be needing an Uber for a while.”
“The…judge?”
“Yes. Judge Merril T. Bones.”
“Mr. Gack, I can see here by your driving record that you might want to consider an Uber,” Judge T. Bones suggests.
“Oh, yes sir,” I replied, excited that he had taken notice. “I could get people to their destinations very quickly!”
“That is NOT what I meant,” apparently done complimenting my driving prowess, the judge continued.
“You seem to have a callous disregard for the rule of law,” he admonished.
“Well now, I wouldn’t say all that…” I started, but Trooper Mickmack interjected before I could finish.
“He shouted out the window ‘Catch me if you can, Sucka!’ ”
“He shouted what???”
“In my defense,” I explained to the judge in my defense, “she did catch me.”
“Quiet you!” The judge appeared to be growing a bit tense. I started to de-escalate but was abruptly cut off by a book the judge threw directly at me.
“Does this story have a point?” Todd interrupted while the judge proceeded directly to sentencing. It seemed my de-escalation had failed. Again.
Todd continued interrupting, “Or an ending?”
“Well, Todd, to make a long story short, do you know how to say ‘¿Dónde puedo esconderme de la ley? Estoy huyendo de la policía!’ in Spanish?”
The line is silent for a few tense moments.
“And I won’t be able to make it to your Zoom call tomorrow morning.”

Author: Ken Gack

Ken Gack changed the names of some of the characters in this story to protect the innocent. He did not change the name of Ken Gack, who was likely not innocent.