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It's a Thursday evening just like any other [It was January 22, 1998, if I remember correctly]. I'm heading home… a stop on the way to the health club. Just for reference, I'm driving my 1969 Camaro. First off, I'm not going to even venture in the Freudian arguments of my car, myself, and their implications of… compensation. I also won't stereotype about people who drive muscle cars and their respective intelligence. The simple truth is that, despite the fact that I'm normally a conscientious driver (I can hear some of you laughing out there…), I occasionally do some pretty stupid things while driving my car.
So I'm heading down the road and I see my friend Jim driving his truck on the right hand lane. Now, my next turn is a right hand turn… and it's in less than a block. You can start to see the wheels turning. The question becomes do I pull in behind Jim or do I speed up, cut him off, and slow down. Use your imagination.
Not only do I cut him off, I try to be as humanly obnoxious as possible. So I speed up and I edge towards the far side of my lane. As I'm getting closer to passing him I veer towards his truck (you know… for the claustrophobic effect) and try to time it so that I cut him off with as little room to spare as possible. I then tap on the brakes. Like I said, "as humanly obnoxious as possible." Jim is pretty used to my being playful, so he just lets me be. I make the right turn and speed away.
Jim didn't see the police car either.
As I start to turn off to my place, I wave goodbye to Jim as he passes. This is when I notice the police siren and flashing lights behind me. Now, somewhere along the line, I have developed a fairly harsh sense of honestly. So, as I'm seeing these lights flash and I'm turning into the parking lot, I'm thinking to myself, Frank, you're such an idiot!
I pull over. The officer gets out of the car and approaches me. Jim doubles back and pulls into the parking lot with a grin from ear to ear. You know… your basic nightmare.
The police officer asks me for my license, registration, proof of insurance; you know, the basic stuff. He was also under the impression that while I was waving to Jim, I was actually hiding something under the seat. I step out of the car and offer to let him search it. He declines. He notices that I have a set of license plates in my back seat, I point out that I have personalized plates and that the old ones are still sitting in my car. Now, I'll admit that I don't look like the most honest, law-abiding citizen in the world, but I don't look an escaped convict either (well, at least not most days). At this point, Jim has parked his truck, approaches my car, and tries to contain his amusement. I'll never live this one down.
Well, the dialog between myself and this police officer continued roughly like this:
"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
"Umm... because I cut a guy off"
[as he sees Jim approaching] "Who is he?"
"Oh, he is the guy I cut off"
"Do you two know each other?"
"Yeah, we're friends"
"You cut off your friend?"
"Yes, I was just playing around."
"Well, you shouldn't cut people off, even if they are your friends."
Smartass. Well, he lets me go without issuing me a ticket and with one sound piece of advice. Thank goodness; I'll admit that I deserved that one. It all leads me to wonder why is it that men do stupid things to try to impress each other? Jim walks over with a silly smirk on his face; he hears the last of the conversation with the police officer, who packs up and drives off. After giving me the grief I so richly deserved, Jim takes off as well. Sigh! I park my car. Go home and change for the health club. I then go do my workout.
The next day the news spread like wildfire and naturally people stop by to poke fun. Afterall, what are friends for? At least I didn't get up on stage in front of hundreds of people wearing a pink tutu to juggle scarves.
On a more serious note, although I recognize the fact that I'm Chinese and its cultural implications, I normally forget about it when it comes to seemingly trivial things, like getting pulled over. It later occurred to me that some of the things that occurred that night (implications that I was hiding something, looking at the contents of my back seat, …) may have been tied more to who I was rather than why I was pulled over. Would a short-haired Caucasian male driving a BMW be asked these questions? The real answer is that I'll probably never know, but at least I can keep a careful eye on it. I'm often mistaken for Native American, it amazes me how differently people treat me when they find out that I'm actually Chinese.
March 12, 1998
