Most fears are deemed irrational by a lot of people. Cops? A fear for me. I've not gotten in trouble with police before, but something about police cruisers sometimes creeps me out. I slow down even if I am going the speed limit, I tense up, I'm thinking, "Don't pull me over, don't pull me over. I have all my info if you do, but please don't."
I know that cops can break certain traffic rules, as can ambulance drivers and the like. Some cops don't signal, for instance, and speeding is generally one of them as well. These last couple nights, however, have been very strange.
I was coming home from a friend's house around 10:30 or so on Monday, and I took a different way home than I usually do. Otherwise, I wouldn't have seen this: a few cop cars were ahead of me, and one just had his brakes on, the one ahead of him had his yellow emergency flashers on. I am trying to navigate between the one with the yellow flashers (on my right), and a parked car on my left, to a stop sign that is less than 10 feet in front of me. I feel very cramped and like I am going to hit one of these cars. Okay, so maybe I have a little depth perception issue, but it has gotten better with practice.
So, that was strange, especially since no one was doing anything wrong.
Then tonight, as I make my way home at about 12:15, I again go a different route, but a separate one than before. Otherwise, I would have seen the following scene right in front of me and bugged out. So, I am going straight ahead, when I see a cop car on my right with it's yellow flashers on. Then out of no where zooms this car (which is a police-related car because of the red and blue flashers where most people have their headlights). It does a crazy circle U-turn and almost bashes into (from my view) the police car that has its yellow flashers on. Then I notice on the other side of the street, a car with it's yellow flashers on, and I see smoke coming out the exhaust pipe. My brain tells me it's smoke because of a car accident and that's why the police are there. Upon closer inspection, this second yellow-flasher car is another police cruiser. As I slow to a crawl, I look inside this second cruiser expecting to see a cop inside. There is none. The car behind me is getting impatient, as I am going 5 in a 20 mph zone. I speed up slightly, still thinking something's amiss.
I have decided to dismiss it as police messing around, but why late at night, but not too late, when there is still traffic. I thought that since I interrupted their fun they were going to arrest me. I even tricked myself into believing that the car behind me that was annoyed was a cop too.
This is not a huge neighborhood I am talking about here. This is not in the middle of a boulevard (thank God) but it nonetheless is a highway where people are driving, so I think it is inappropriate to scare the living daylights out of someone who isn't especially keen on driving at night anyway.
Penny for your thoughts.
