FourBux

My free eye exam, courtesy of the Arizona Highway Patrol

Okay, although what I’m about to tell you may sound like I got busted and am just sore about it, but I can assure you, that’s not it at all. I’m more than happy to have those who actually commit crimes be punished. I’d be the first in line to submit to the authorities too, if I thought I was in the wrong. Well, maybe not first, but I’d definitely be in the vicinity of the first part of the line.

A little back-story: I have this strange tendency to perspire when I consume food or beverages. I don’t know what it is or why it happens, but it’s probably something to do with my metabolism or not drinking enough water. I haven’t had a chance to look it up yet, but it’s always easy to tell if I’ve had coffee, or wine, or onion rings, etc. I like my wife’s garlic dishes, but only if I’m working in the garage for the next few hours.

I’m also drawing courage to relay this from fellow blogger Laurie Kendrick, who recently posted a story about the joys of the diet drug Xenical which will make you laugh, probably make you squeamish, and also drive home the point to never, under any circumstances, buy a used car in Texas. If it were I in that story, let’s just say you’d never hear about it. Unless it happened to my famous nameless friend “I know a guy,” in which case you’d get every juicy morsel, pun intended. I guess we don’t have to just share the clean and shiny parts of our lives on these things, right?

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I was invited by a couple of friends to come out to a dive bar and hear another friend’s band play. Anyway, since I heard about the plans at the last minute, I got there at 10:00PM; right at the time they were slated to go on. I ordered a beer and found my friends, both of who had been there a while, and were finishing their first drinks.

Just then the band members came over and told us that they had gotten pushed back to 11:00PM, hopefully we could hang out for a while. It’s 10:30 at night, three married guys are out at a bar after 8:00PM for the first time probably a year. Trust me, we’re not going anywhere. We played pool, ate chicken wings (Mild? What are you guys? Girl scouts? Next time we’re going “Death”), and of course, drank beer. We stayed until the band was done and cleaned up, and left at 1:30. Over the course of the three and a half hours, I had three beers, the last of which I had finished at 12:30, ate seven chicken wings, and drank two glasses of water.

Yes. I’m a huge partier. Thanks for noticing.

At 1:30 when we parted ways, I asked the one of the two friends who were driving if he was okay to drive, and he said he was fine. I know friend B probably wasn’t, but since they carpooled, no biggie. If you’re not driving, as far as I’m concerned, have at it.

On the freeway on my drive home, I was following about 200-250 yards behind a small white Geo Metro-looking Suzuki, and watched as he drove, at full speed, into the back of a black party bus. I pull over to the side of the freeway and hit the hazard lights, and run out into the road to see if this guy’s okay. Fortunately for him (not so much for his car), this guy was three sheets to the wind. Hell, maybe six. Completely hammered. The entire front of his car was flattened up to the base of the windshield, airbags deployed, all the glass except for the back window gone. And this guy stands up out of the pile of wreckage and says “Puuuuush, please hep puuush” in broken English.

While he and I push his flattened car across three lanes of traffic to the shoulder, the waiter on the party bus grabs the bumper and some of the personal belongings that came out of and off the car over to the side. From the looks of the car, I’m surprised this guy was alive, much less conscious and walking. The waiter speaks Spanish, so they talk while the drunk guy digs out his wallet, fumbles with it, and then just hands it to the waiter, who tells him to go lay down in the bus. I make out the words “coache” and “aire acondicionado”. It was hot out there and we weren’t sure this guy should be standing beside the freeway.

He asks to borrow a phone to call his wife, because he can’t find his. Yeah, as it turns out, we found it for you. It was about fifty yards up the freeway where it landed after it was ejected from your car. Go figure. Looks like those driver’s education videos were true.

He wanders off towards the bus and the driver arrives, who’d been on the phone with the police. He’s Russian, speaking with a huge accent, which makes it really difficult to hear and understand him over the din of the traffic. The waiter tells me the guy has a Mexican driver’s license, expired, and we discover soon so are his plates. We chat about the accident, whether there were clients on the bus (thankfully he had just dropped them off and was headed home), think he’ll throw up in there, that kind of stuff.

I was glad to see that so many people pulled over to see if there was anything they could do, including an off-duty officer, who said that he called the Highway Patrol for us. As he was pulling away, he shouted to me to turn on the hazard lights of the busted car so nobody rear-ends it. Really? There’s no engine left, no steering column, and certainly no electricity. Good thing I brought my magic wand. I waved him away and he left.

Highway Patrol Officer number one showed up, I’ll call him Senior, and the tow truck right after. Then officer number two pulls up (Junior), and the flurry of activity begins. Once they have a handle on who all the players are they want to talk to the driver who caused the accident.

“He’s resting in the bus, up there,” and off they go. Once they get there though, it turns out that Public Enemy number one walked right past the bus, off the freeway, and disappeared into the neighborhood below. Vamoosed, I believe is the technical term that the police blotter used.

Now we got us an all-out manhunt! Get the dogs, boys!

As I sit on the trunk of my car doing five pages of witness paperwork, which included probably some of the most detailed and graphically pleasing diagrams the Department of Public Safety ever received, the guys wife and son drive up. The young officer immediately set to work on them, who quickly discovered that once they found out that Papa flew the coop, they weren’t really sure the knew who he was talking about. Que?

Officer Jr: “Weren’t you called by Mr. P_____ earlier, and didn’t you come to pick him up?”

Wife: “No, we were called by someone, but we don’t know who he was.”

OJ: “Why did you come then?”

Wife: “I don’t know. Just to see what was going on.”

At that point, Officer Junior decided that they were impeding his investigation and demanded to see some ID, which they both produced. Party foul! Both of their licenses were issued in Mexico, and were both expired. Officer Junior twitched with anticipation…now he’s got two people without proper ID, one of which was driving on an expired license! Happy birthday to him - a Twofer!

While he explains that basically everything they’ve done tonight has been illegal, and that they’re going to have to come downtown with him, Officer Senior does the paperwork from the air-conditioned car. By now I’ve been standing beside the road for over an hour, sucking exhaust fumes, trying to get out of the phosphorous smoke from the road flares, and just generally getting tired. It was still almost 100 degrees outside, and the pavement emanated heat, but fortunately the party bus folks brought out bottles of water and cans of icy Sprite, so we had our own little tailgate party there on the overpass.

Next time I have an accident, remind me to aim for the party bus. There’ll be snacks!

I hand my paperwork to the older one, ask him if he needs anything else from me, to which he says no, just make sure my phone number is on there if they need to reach me. “Right” I think…a Mexican national driving on an expired license plows his car with expired tags into the back of one of Scottsdale’s finest purveyors of group party transportation, then flees the scene and you think there will be questions? Have you even seen the news lately? Sorry, but his case was closed as soon as he survived.

I say thanks and as I head back to my car I wave to Officer Junior, who takes a break from his international incident and comes over to me. In what I can only imagine was his desperate attempt to pick up the spare, he flicks his little flashlight in my eyes.

“Soooo, where you been tonight?”

Great. Here we go. Church social? Old-folks home? Donating blood? What is it that you want to hear?

“Out with some friends, listening to some other friends’ band.”

“Have anything to drink?”

“Yes, several hours ago.”

Remember way back up at the top where I said that anything I consume immediately works its way out of me, seemingly through my skin? Ah, yes, now I see the connection!

“You reek of beer.” Of course I do. Chicken wings, too, and if you’re really good, water.

“Mind if I give you a little test?”

“Sure. No problem.”

“Okay, follow my pen, using just your eyes” and he proceeds to do the side-to-side sweep, trying to trip me up with half sweeps and quick reversals – like I was a kitten. Dude, put a feather on that and you can totally rub my tummy. The only place I even blinked was when he held the pen up to the end of the still-pulsating light bar on top of his car. I was really hoping the backwards alphabet wasn’t next, because I can’t do that when I’m drinking iced tea. For some reason though, I can still recite all my prepositions…I wonder if that would have impressed him? Aboard, about, above…

“Your eyes are bloodshot.” I actually laughed.

“My eyes are always bloodshot” I reply, but what I really want to say is no way, really? Of course they are. I’m tired. I’m standing beside the freaking freeway for an hour plus, breathing in the chemicals from your flares, staring into your stupid wig-wags, and, oh yeah, you’re pointing a flashlight into my eyes. Guess what? Your eyes are red too, chief. Mind if I give you a little test?

“I don’t want you to drive. Is there someone you can call?”

That really threw me. I’ve always been the good kid, grew up into the good guy. Don’t have any illegitimate children running around, no warrants out for my arrest. Never been on Jerry Springer. And here I am, standing beside the highway, possibly facing a DUI charge? Much less one I didn’t deserve? Talk about rattled, for the first time of the night I started to think there may be a problem for me.

“Excuse me?” It wasn’t that I didn’t hear him, I didn’t believe him. Plus, I wanted to know if he meant someone like a friend to come pick me up, or someone like a lawyer. This was my first time, after all.

“If you get in and drive that car, I’ll pull you over, so do you have someone who could come get you?”

It’s now about 2:45 AM. Who do I want to piss off more? My wife, or a friend?

“Fine. I’ll call my wife.”

Let me tell you, that was the best conversation EVER! Any conversation that starts out with “The DPS thinks that…” is bound to be a doozy.

After she agrees to come get me, I go back to Senior and ask him if I have to leave my car here, or can I pull it off the freeway and leave it there. I actually used the word “protocol.” How could I be unable to drive if I could come up with that one?

He looks up from his paperwork over his glasses. “What? Why?”

“He said he doesn’t want me to drive.” Hoping for a reverse of the “aw, Dad, Mom said I could” thing, but no dice. He sighs and calls over Junior, who comes over and says, complete with the look, “He’s been drinking. Wife is coming to pick him up.” Senior looks at me, sighs again and says “You’ll probably want to pull your car off the freeway so some nut doesn’t run into it.”

“He said he’d pull me over if I drove it.” And that if I left it he’d ticket it, but I let that one go.

Senior had obviously dealt with Junior’s, um, enthusiasm before. I got the impression that if he was going to call the shots, he can baby-sit the results. After, of course, he gets done arresting the other guy’s family.

“He can escort you off the freeway once your wife gets here.”

By the time she did, it was just myself and two DPS officers hanging out beside the highway, sipping Sprites. From Junior, I learned that the average person can metabolize one drink per hour, and even that is too high for many people. One in ten drivers on the road at night in Phoenix are over the legal limit. And that the human head weighs seven pounds. If they thought I was a criminal, they’re being pretty chummy - cavorting with the enemy as it were. She pulled in behind the cruiser and Officer Junior went over to her window.

“I’ve already given him the lecture, so you could go easy on him.” Thanks buddy. I appreciate that. That’ll make for a fun ride home. Understandingly, she was fuming. I was afraid she was going to grab him by the throat and take off, with him hanging outside her car.

I walk up and all I can muster is an “This is so humiliating. I’m really sorry about this.” There’s no way I can’t sound guilty, so why bother.

Senior must have told Junior about his commitment to deliver me safely off the road, because he gave me implicit step-by-step instructions.

“Okay, I’m going to escort you off the freeway. My lights will be on and I’ll pull out and block traffic, then you pull out in front of me. If you take off, I’m going to arrest you!”

“That sounds fair.” It didn’t really, but this was his show. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I want you to take the next exit and turn right. Don’t take off! Pull onto Center Street and pull into one of the parking lots there. Your wife will be behind me. If you run, I’ll come after you!”

“Seriously, I’m not going to run. Why would I?” I haven’t committed a crime yet tonight, I’m certainly not going to start now. And I’m starting to get angry at the implication.

We start our little parade down the freeway, and by now I’m pissed. I figure if there were grounds to do anything, they would have done it already. I’m also a little indignant at the suggestion that I would be driving drunk and that this newbie is yanking my chain. Or trying to teach me a lesson.

And what is that lesson kids? Recite it with me: Don’t stop to aid an accident victim if you had alcohol at any time that day. That’s good.

The speed limit on this stretch of the road is 65. Now, Officer Junior didn’t say anything about the speed of the escort, and with my wife the caboose in our little angry processional, I’d like to get close to the speed of all the real drunks on the road, so I accelerate to 65. As fast as possible, too, just to get his motor running. At 65 I set the cruise just to ensure my compliance and ride it until the exit approaches, using my turn signals, slowly taking turns and obeying all the signs.

My office was right around the corner, I decided to change the plans a little, and park there. I didn’t want my car towed from some strange office building’s lot for parking overnight, so I drove around the corner, up the hill, and into my office lot. I backed into a spot and put it in park. I hung my parking tag in the window, put up the sun shades and locked everything down.

Obviously perturbed that I didn’t follow the script, Officer Junior pulls up and rolls down his window - “If I come back in a little while and your car is gone, I’m hauling you in.”

“Deal.” I wave to him and get in Wife’s car. I unload a tirade the likes of which she’d never experienced from me. She begins to see what happened, and then we ride home in silence. Because Officer Junior had “the talk” with me, of course. To her credit, my wife was understanding, and although clearly torked at having to come rescue me from my first (and quite possibly, my last) Guy’s Night in forever in the middle of the night, she didn’t push my buttons.

Once at home, I got cleaned up and on my way to bed, and she made the comment that let me know it was all going to be all right:

“You know, you didn’t stand a chance with that sweating thing.”

It makes me smile.

“Tell me about it.”