Near poppage for tossing a fictitious ciggie

Well, the long arm of the law in my small town was bound to catch up to me sooner or later, and sure enough last week my wild ways found me looking down the barrel of a citation book and ball point pen.

It was strange to be buzzing by the high school football field on a Thursday night, but since the first game of the season was scheduled to be a night-before-Friday-night lights game, we chose to let the girls attend their first dance lesson of the fall instead of cheering for our small town's gridiron gladiators.

So there we were, cruising by the field, craning our necks to be rewarded with the sight of our team having secured a 20-0 lead in the first half, when I caught a glimpse of a patrol car in my side view mirror.

I didn't think much more of it until a minute later when, after I had navigated a perfectly signaled left turn, I found myself pulling over to the sights of the flashy-flashies in my rear view.

Immediately I turn to my wife with my best, "what'd I do?" expression, followed up with a staccato scattering of rhetorical questions..."was I speeding...did I not signal...is there something hanging from my nose?"

And the most important question, keeping in mind that I'm a resident of a small town, "I wonder which of the half-dozen or so officer's, most of whom I know, is pulling me over?"

Turns out my wife and I spent more time explaining the higher concepts of law enforcement and the finer points of how to react when being popped by a cop than we did explaining to Deputy Babyface of the Sheriff's Department that neither my wife nor I smoked and even if we did, we certainly would not toss a used ciggie butt out of the window.

After a quick check under my car to ensure my exhaust wasn't dragging (the plausible explanation I offered for the "spark" that Sheriff's Deputy BF claimed to have spotted coming from my car), we were given a pleasant "You folks have a nice evening" toodaloo and sent on our way.

My opinion? It was game night in town, Sheriff D BF spied a slightly lowered rice-rocket putter by, heard the non-stock exhaust note and thought he'd see what kind of trouble was stirring behind my Oklahoma legal 25% VLT window tint.

I still chuckle to think about his brain toot when he peered in to find a middle-aged stay-at-home-Dad and his nuclear wife and two doe-eyed daughters in dance tights and ballet slippers staring up at him.

Wifey says I need to get an "adult" car. I don't know, do these things happen to pick-up truck driver's in my small town?