Keep your eyes on the road

Have you ever been driving along and, all of a sudden, a police car pulls out behind you? When that happens, everything important in life narrows down to one question:

Is he going to pull me over?

So if you're on the interstate, you slow way down, hoping he'll get tired of the game and pass you. If you're on a two-lane road, you stick it at the speed limit and pray.

But what if he follows you?

What if you're turning into your neighborhood, and he turns onto the street behind you? Did I just run that stop sign? Was I going too fast?

Do you breathe a sigh of relief when his lights remain dark, but start to get antsy when he stays on your tail anyway? Do you think, I can't wait to get to the end of the street, because surely he'll keep going and I can continue on my merry way?

But what if, when you get to the end of the street, he turns behind you?

Does your pulse pick up even though you know you came to a stop at that last stop sign, he can't possibly have a reason to pull you over, he'd have done it by now if he were going to, why is he still following me?

Then you get to the stop sign for your street, and you breathe easy. It's practically a dead-end street, so you're in the clear. He'll continue on, and you'll go home and play with your babies. You're still shaking a little, but ready to relax.

And then he turns behind you. Again.

Okay, okay. More coincidence. You know by now he'd have already stopped you if there were something wrong. But maybe you have a tail light out? Maybe he is making sure you go home (curfew, anyone?) Maybe he thinks you're driving a stolen car? Maybe there's someone hiding in my back seat waiting to kill me the moment I stop?

Let's not get carried away.

Finally, after the longest thirty seconds of your life (because you're creeping up the street at 5 mph just to make absolutely darn sure he doesn't have a reason to turn his lights on) you reach your house. You turn into your driveway.

And he pulls up in front of your house and stops.



This happened to me yesterday as I was coming home from work. The friendly somewhat taciturn officer got out of his car and started up my driveway. As I got out, before I could say anything, he grunted, "Your alarm was going off."

Alarm? Oh, our alarm. We got a house alarm about a month ago, and we're still working out the kinks. The police had already made one visit to our house, a few weeks earlier when my mom was staying with us.

I won't tell you who set the alarm off.

As the officer approached, I said something idiotic like, "Oh, I wondered why you were following me," and let him in the house. To my surprise, it was a somewhat legitimate visit, as neither my husband nor I had been home when the alarm went off. The best we can figure is one of the cats managed to knock something over and set it off using the motion sensor downstairs.

He checked things out, made sure everything was fine (either it was or whoever was hiding in the closet has now been there for over 24 hours and apparently isn't planning on coming out anytime soon) and left.

And I finally relaxed. But I did look out my window one more time to make sure he had gone.