YOU WISH FOR

Dear Spike:

Be careful what you wish for.

Today I was driving to the university when the lights on Fourth South went down. I don’t know why people always seem to panic when signal lights go out, but they do. They pull up to an intersection, look left, look right and then blast through irrespective of the order in which they should go.

Which on Fourth South — along which our city’s light rail trains run — creates a particularly dangerous situation.

But as luck would have it, after crossing safely and watching in my rearview mirror as another driver narrowly avoided getting T-boned by a train, I saw two police officers on motorcycles on the next street up.

“Hey guys,” I called out my window. “The signal lights are out back there and with the trains crossing there, it’s pretty dangerous.”

One of the two — a tall, young guy with curly brown hair and bronze Oakley sunglasses — looked back at me and shrugged.

“We don’t do traffic control,” he said.

“Well,” I said. “It seems kind of dangerous back there without anyone to direct traffic.”

“Thank you for your opinion,” he replied brusquely.

I rolled my eyes and rolled up my window. About halfway to the university, I began to have what the French call “L'esprit de l'escalier” — instantly regretting, as I replayed the incident in my head, that I didn’t respond in some clever way. . .

“Well sure, I understand. We wouldn’t want you to break a nail, Mary.”

“If it would help get you over there, I can go get a box of donuts and throw them onto the road.”

“If you’d like, I’ll go direct traffic and you can sit here and look pretty on your cute little bicycle.”

In the end, I decided, I simply should have asked for his badge number and driven away — slowly and while making all appropriate turn signals. By the time I was at the university, I was rather upset with myself for not doing just that.

A few hours later, you and I were driving up the hill to the post office when a police officer stepped out into the road and waved me over to the side. The same guy who’d earlier been too important to direct traffic was now working a speed trap — and had caught me doing 48 in a 30.

And so now, of course, I have his badge number — on a ticket he wrote with a wry smirk on his face before telling me to “have a nice day.”

So, like I said, be careful what you wish for.

Love,
dad