The Price of Raising a Genius

So, post could be called "when you know your youth has expired," or "How I got a $300 ticket for going 6 mph UNDER the speed limit" (it was entrapment I tell you!) But instead, I've kept the original title that I just happened to be brainstorming WHEN I got pulled over.

You see, it all started at 7:20 am. The four kids and I hopped into the van and headed off for school. Since we moved, our commute is now 30 minutes instead of 10. We dropped the Captain off at about 8, ran a fast errand, then dropped the Adventurer off at 9. I got back into the van, only to find that it was dead, and spent the next 45 minutes begging someone to give me a jump. Why do these things happen when Brandon is out of town?!?!

We got home at 10:00, played for two hours, and then left to pick up the Adventurer, who gets out of school at 12:30, exactly 2 hours before the Captain.

We went to the Library. We went to the grocery store. We got to the Captain's school early and waited.

Now why do I bother to tell a long story about my new 5.5 hours of commuting?

For the very simple reason that the Entertainer, my two-year-old who looks like a 4 year-old, and has a gigantic vocabulary and equally large cranium, is still very much two. There had been 5 hours of questions: "Mommy, what are those buttons on the stearing wheal?" "They are for the cruise control." "No, but what do they say?" And I go through the list: Accelerate, Resume, Cancel, On, Off, Cruice, Reset, some 40 million times over the course of 5 hours in the car that day. Over and over.

So while I was at the store, before we got the Captain, I grabbed a soda, so that I could make it home.

We got the Captain, climbed back into the van, loathing the fact that we had to be ready for a baseball game in two hours, with 4 cranky, sick kids.

I took the slowest, most direct path home, setting my stinking cruise control at 29 mph, in a 35, let the bubbly taste of sugar and caffeine sooth away the headache, tuned out more steering wheel questions, back-seat-quibbling, and the sound of a SCREAMING baby who had past her limit of car time somewhere around hour 4- and let the bubbly taste of sugar and caffeine carry me away to my happy place. Where I began to make a mental note to blog about the fact that my two-year-old, who will surely turn out to be a genius, had just cost me a nearly calorie-perfect day.

And then, that's when OUT OF NO WHERE, a cop stepped into the road, his stinking radar gun pointed RIGHT AT ME!

Apparently I driving responsibly in a school zone, for some IMAGINARY school that I don't even know if it really exists. Sure enough, there was a crossing guard hiding in the bushes, waiting to help the IMAGINARY school children across the road.

Stupid revenue-generating government programs. I can just imagine that conversation. "The state is in a budget short-fall, because we can't figure out how to count. What should we do to raise money?" "Ooo! Ooo! ME! I Know! We should set up imaginary school zones, have a bunch of cops hiding in a parking lot, and bust people who AREN'T REALLY SPEEDING! It'll be awesome!"

Sure, paying absorbant speeding fines will re-boot the economy. Ug.

Though I do have to say that I was really proud of Lilly. She continued screaming bloody murder when I was pulled over, and the entire time the guy was writing me the ticket. In the end, he decided that I was only going 9 mph over the IMAGINARY school speed limit, wich cut my ticket in half.

I hope he told his wife when he got home, and she made him sleep on the couch. Eeesh. I hope he hasn't been able to sleep all week, just thinking about the poor, haggared mother he wrote a giant ticket for, while he was trying to catch IMAGINARY speeders.

Though there is a part two to this... but that will have to wait, because I've only compleated 4.45 of my mandatory driving hours today, and the Captian might be a little offened if I don't show.