Last Friday, I was on my way home from running a couple of errands, driving down a street I had traveled hundreds of times. I came to an intersection where the light was red and veered into the right lane. I stopped, looked to my left and saw no cars coming, so I made my right turn to continue on my way home.
Or so I thought.
As soon as I made the turn, I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw a police car coming up behind me. “Five-0, be cool”, I said to my dog, Ike, who was riding shotgun. That very next instant, he sped up to get right on my bumper and flipped on his lights. I cursed to myself, and pulled over to the side of the residential street I was driving on.
I put the car in park, rolled down my window, and watched in the side mirror as the cop approached my car. He was short and stocky, with dark blond hair that he wore in a closely cropped crew cut. He looked like a cop sent over from central casting. He arrived at my side, sized me up, and asked for my license and proof of insurance. I handed them over and he examined them. After a few seconds, he looked back at me and said, in a tone dripping with attitude, “So, do you think these street signs around here don’t apply to you?”
My inner smartass begged me to answer, “Yeah, pretty much,” but I resisted, mostly because I was genuinely confused as to why I had been pulled over. “What street sign are you referring to?” I asked.
“The one back there at the intersection that says ‘NO RIGHT ON RED, SCHOOLDAYS 7:30am-4:30pm,” he informed me, none of the attitude having left his tone.
“Oh, that one…Yeah, I saw it,” I replied, with a hint of arrogance in my voice.
He became incredulous. “Oh, so that street sign doesn’t apply to you,” he said, his voice filling with anger.
“Not today, it doesn’t. Today isn’t a school day.”
A wicked smile came across his face. He glanced at his watch, and said, “Well pal, last I checked today is a Friday, and Friday’s are a school day.”
Without saying a word, I pointed to the sign outside of the school across the street from where I pulled over, no more than 50 yards away from the intersection where I had made the allegedly illegal turn. In big black letters, the sign read: WELCOME BACK! SCHOOL STARTS AUGUST 21.
He read the sign and turned back towards me. “That don’t matter. School days are Monday through Friday, and today is Friday. You made an illegal right turn on red on a Friday, which is a school day, it don’t matter if school ain’t started yet.”
“Yes, it does,” I replied. “If they had intended to prevent right turns on red Monday through Friday, the sign would have read ‘No right on red, weekdays’…But it doesn’t. It goes one step further. They specified only school days. Thus, it doesn’t matter if they could have school on a specific day. In theory you could have school any day out of the year. What matters is if there actually is school on that day. So just because today is Friday doesn’t mean it’s a school day. It’s only a school day if school is in session. And according to that sign and the noticeable lack of activity around here, it isn’t.”
The cop’s eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched, and his face turned red. A vein appeared above his right eye, and for twenty of the longest seconds I can ever recall, he stared at me. The tension was palpable and the silence awkward. The only noise was Ike’s heavy breathing. Finally, his anger and embarrassment subsided enough to allow him to speak. “I’m gonna go run your license,” he snarled. “It had BETTER come back clear.”
He returned three minutes later and threw my license at me. His face was still red. “If I see you do anything around here, and I mean anything, I am going to pull you over and write you a ticket.” With that, he turned around and walked back to his car.
I pulled away, careful not to exceed the 25 mile speed limit. I turned to Ike and said, “That law degree is paying for itself, one $90 ticket avoided at a time.”
