apricot

"They say that heaven is like tv. A perfect little world that doesn't really need you. And everything there is made of light, and the days keep going by. Here they come....."
I still didn't get it here. The suburbs covered in snow, an excess of yuletide cheer that ended up as grey slush on the roads. Since I'd come home from Europe in December, driving had cease to been a panic attack and had almost become to be an enjoyable experience again; taking control of something much bigger than me and manipulating it to go where I want, top speed. Laurie Anderson blaring away on the cd player hooked up with one of those little gadgets to the car's tapedeck. Okay, so my mom's Passat wasn't the classiest car on the block, but come on....I'm in Delaware. It's pretty damn close. I looked to my left and saw, in the middle of the road, what looked to be a giant black eagle struggling to make it off of the asphalt with a broken wing. I almost screeched the car to a halt and got out, but remember...I don't really like animals. My pity gene is used up primarily for puppies and sea-cows, not scary carnivorous birds. Nor did the idea of slamming on my breaks seem appealing to someone who was currently driving on a road covered with what appeared to be four inches of Slurpee. Instead I did what I think any normal human being would do in the circumstances; slowed down to rubberneck.
Running my hands through my recently cropped hair I peered out my window, and was able to discern to figures from the flapping shape. The large Eagle was actually comprised of two smaller birds of the same variety; not quite pigeons but not pretty or interesting enough to be described in length. So lets just assume they were pigeon-esque. They appeared to be in battle, but the longer I looked (i had to swivel my head around after i passed by, slowing my driving down to a mere crawl of 20 mph) the clearer the event became. One of the birds had broken its wing, or had been run over, and the second one was literally trying to airlift his friend out of the middle of the road using his beak. It would have broke your heart; the futility of it. I don't know the exact aerodynamic involved in flying, but Im pretty sure it has something to do with weight and mass, and if you double it, you ain't gonna be taken off. I think that's why chickens can't fly. Because they are sort of fat. (See: Alice Cooper in 100 Most Metal Moments on VH1)
"Now see, THAT'S devotion..." I thought, but before my mind could hit its stride on the bitter tirade that it loved to circle around my brain like a defunct merry-go-round as of late, I was pulled back to reality by a sound a loathed so well.
Let me first describe to you the road I was on, however. I guess it was more of a street actually; certainly not a highway (I dont think I've ever seen a highway with fraternity houses on either side of the road) it wasn't the stretch of road in Newark Delaware known as Main Street (a pretty apt title, it really is like, the main street. Probably of the whole state) but it ran parellel to it. Yes, I guess technically i was still in the suburbs, but I had to literally keep driving another minute before I hit a larger interstate section in which car dealerships would have replaced the greek letters. It was almost quaint to think about how most of these kids living with their alpha omega brothers wouldn't really have to move that far for their future profession.
"Oh.....shit" like a good Pavlov dog, my head swiveled immediatly at the sound, and sure enough, a cop car was trailing behind me, lights ablaze. I thought of how I had slowed down to a crawl to watch the birds; maybe there was some good samaritun law of hickville that i had missed? A mental image of me getting out of the car and wrangling those two birds into my trunk suddenly struck, and I managed to simultaenously pull over to the shoulder of the road while laughing and banging my head against the steering wheel. Like I said, I've gotten a hang of this whole driving business.
This by the way, was not a good day. Getting up at six am (because, as usual, my mom thought that if I had an appointment/lesson/job any earlier than two in the afternoon, it meant i should get up with her at the butt-crack of dawn) and had yet to get any coffee since I had just had a dental apointment. No cavities, but then again my boyfriend had dissapeared off the face of the earth to be sucked into some vortex with the she-demon of an exroomate, so I guess my karma was just trying to balance each other out. I was broke, literally broke, and the last time I got a ticket it had put me in the hole 300 bucks (or it would have if I hadn't contested it in court). It just amazed me how someone who drove as rarely as I did could somehow fuck up as often as I did. "Cars are just like boys," I thought, "lulling you into a false sense of security and before you know it you're going 100 miles an hour and heading for a burning wreckage." Totally forgetting of course, that I had been barely crawling along the road, and you cant actually control where cars go. "Let it go," I muttered, "bigger problems. Turn on the cute face."
By the time I rolled down my window, all I managed was a constipated grin. The bald officer reminded me of Miguel Ferrer, which wasn't really a good sign despite my crush on Forensic Agent Albert Rosenfield.
"Good morning, I am Sergeant ____ _____," he said, and the name was lost as my mind went into panic mode at his title, "do you know why I pulled you over?"
I shook my head.
"Well, do you know where Cashew Mill Road is?"
Despite having lived here for 12 years of my life, I really, really didn't.
"That crosswalk you just passed?" He raised an eyebrow and seemed to smile a bit, "it intersets with that other road, you just came down on? Come on, you just turned off of it."
"Oh, oh, oh!" I smiled sheepishly, (maybe I could tell him Im a suicidegirl?) "right. I'm sorry I was crawling, the roads are really icy."
It was Sergeant Special Agent Albert Rosenfield's turn to look confused, "actually, I was pulling you over for going 25 in a 15 mile zone," He must have seen the disbelief in my eyes because he continued, almost apologetically, "its just that six kids have been hit on that crosswalk this year."
The thought seemed to sober him up and he became all business again, license, registration, insurance.
*here's the part where I start babbling because I lost my wallet a year ago and my only license I carry with me is provisional from when I'm 16, and its out of state, and I had no idea what an insurance card OR a registration slip looks like, so i hand him a photocopy of my sister's driver's ed certificate instead, and my Blue-Cross Blue Sheild insurance*
Sergeant Whoever quirks his eyesbrows again, and I can't tell if his amusement at my stupidty will work in my favor. "Not from here?" he asks, writing something down on his pad?
"Well, uh..." I think of how to handle that question, "my mom is, but I just got back from London."
"Drive a little bit different there, do they?"
My face turns beet red, and I mumble out some pathetic response. So much for cute big-eyed anime Drew flirting her way out of a ticket. The cop goes back to his car, probably to CB his friends for back-up. Finally left to myself, I resume my calming technique of making close friends between my forehead and my steering wheel. Well, I resume until I look up and catch the copper, who was clearly in the middle of writing, his pen hovering in mid-air, his head cocked to one side. And laughing. I slump down in my seat and turn off the engine.
When he emerges again, after what seems like an hour of waiting and contemplating exactly how much they could charge someone for going 25 miles an hour, he sighs and stoops down to talk to me. My head hurts, not surprisingly.
"Listen," Sarge says, "Im going to cute you a break. I could charge you with speeding over ten miles an hour at a crosswalk, but Im going to cut it down to five. This way you only have to pay 30 bucks instead of 80, but if you get another ticket in the next six months, you're going to get points on your license. Understand?" I nod and probably gush some form of thanks, but he waves my hand away.
"This is something you are old enough to take care of yourself," he says, and at first I think he is admonishing me for being too old to not know better, until he adds "If you're smart, you probably won't tell you're mom how you scraped your bumper while pulling over, either." He then gets in his car and drives out of my life; the special sergeant of my dreams. And I never even caught his name. I guess I could always go to court to contest and hope he shows up, but why try to recreate a beautiful moment?