Unlucky driver or just plain bad driver? You decide.
I live on the western side of Winnipeg in an area called
Charleswood. There is a 1,100 acre greenspace called Assiniboine Park and Forest very
close to where I live. It’s a big park! It has 3 main entrances off of Roblin
Blvd, the main one in the middle of the park and two more on the southeast and
southwest corners.
One Saturday morning I was out running errands. I was driving
past the park and I noticed that the police had set up a speed trap at the main
entrance. When I got to the southeast entrance there was a second speed trap and they had stopped someone and were in the process of ticketing him. I
remember the car and the driver very clearly. I remember the car because I'm a car guy. I remember cars. I remember the driver because he
looked really mad.
I finished my errand (it only took about 10 minutes) and
turned around and headed for home. When I got to the southeast entrance of the
park the guy who had been getting the ticket was gone and the speed trap was
gone too. When I got to the main entrance of the park, that speed trap was still
there and they had someone stopped….. Same guy! The light was
red so I had to sit there for a few moments and I got a real good look at the
driver. His face was as red as a stop sign and there appeared to be wisps of
steam shooting out his ears. He looked like…. well…. a guy who had just gotten 2
speeding tickets in less than 15 minutes.
The light turned green and I proceeded on just as the cop was handing the guy his second ticket of the morning (it wasn't even 10:30 yet). I hadn't gone more than
a quarter of a mile when Mr. ticket guy (let’s call him "Swifty") passed me. He was moving at about warp factor five. I watched him coming in the rear view mirror. His
face was brilliant red and the steam that had been coming out of his ears earlier
had been replaced by smoke. He had the steering wheel in a death grip. When he went by, it was like the starship Enterprise in the opening titles of the original Star Trek series. Whoosh!
Remember
when I mentioned that the radar trap that had been at the southeast corner of the
park was gone when I went by on my way home? Well, guess who had moved to the
southwest corner. You got it. Strike three! When
I got there, "Swifty" was pulled over to the side of the road and he looked like he was on the verge of spontaneous combustion. He was getting his third ticket in less than thirty minutes
and he was getting it from the same guy
who gave him the first one. I wonder how that
conversation went,
“Hi! Welcome back! Haven’t seen you in a while! What's it been? 20 minutes? So how’s it going? You looked like you were having a bad day the last
time I saw you. Is it getting any better?”
I didn't see "Swifty" a fourth time but I have this mental image
of the two cop cars leapfrogging each other all the way through Charleswood so that
each time one car released him after giving him a new ticket the other one
would be waiting for him half a mile further down the road. Maybe they had a little pool set up to see how many tickets they could issue him before he figured out that he should slow down.
But the best part was, I tried to imagine the scene when he got home – his wife
waiting at the door with a scowl on her face, rolling pin tucked under her arm, “You're LATE! You said you'd be home 45 minutes ago! WHERE WERE YOU?”
And that, dear friends, is where divorce lawyers come from……
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