hard day's night

I am a huge Beatles fan but that's not what this post is about.

This morning I decided to take myself out to breakfast and work on my sermon for Sunday. Around here, from about 7 to 8:30 am (peak productivity time for me), there always seem to be two young girls, two cats, a dog, and a wife making all sorts of noise. So if I'm going to get any writing done I either have to put on some headphones and some Beatles music, or PFR, or maybe some Collective Soul, or I must leave.

Today I left, and as I said, took myself out to breakfast. The meal wound up costing me $146.25. That's $6.75 for the bill, $2.00 tip, and $137.50 for the speeding ticket I got on the way.

Waaaah. I know--people get speeding tickets all the time. This was heinous though, because 1. I was guilty, 2. The officer was so chipper he came off sounding snide, and 3. I sped through a school zone.

It happened like this: I turned right onto Kaufmann road and proceeded past the blinking 15mph School Speed Limit sign without looking at it or even noticing it (I had to drive by the spot later in the day to find out where it was exactly). There was not a pedestrian soul in sight, though the school itself was plainly visible on my left. I was traveling at 30mph, the regular speed limit being 25. There was the police cruiser off to my right watching for speeders. I glanced down at my speedometer to reassure myself that I was not one of them. My hand almost went up in a friendly greeting, just because I was feeling good and there was an interesting story on NPR (which I cannot now recall).

Glancing in my rearview I saw the officer pull out, and on went those party lights. "Why is he stopping me?" I asked aloud, since there were no other cars on the road (did I mention there were no pedestrians either?).

Only when he arrived at my window did I realize what I had done. "You were traveling at double the speed limit; this is an active school zone," he said in the tone he must reserve for child killers.

I said nothing. People always sound disingenuous when trying to explain their traffic foibles. Officer Friendly even asked me if I had any excuses. "Most people try to make excuses," he said when I told him I had none. I wondered if that was an invitation or just an observation. He left for about three minutes and returned with the citation, on goldenrod.

Need I state that I got very little work done on my sermon over breakfast. Some progress has been made since then, but not much. It's gonna be a long night.