I Fought The Law And The Law Won

 

It was one day in the late 90’s, and as if the impending doom of Y2K wasn’t enough, I was having an asthma attack, and my puffers were empty. Okay, maybe not a full-on flareup, but just enough to make me short-winded and grouchy.

 

I was home alone with my babies, and the breathing issues were bad enough to be annoying, but not so bad as to warrant packing up the kids and making a trip to the pharmacy.

 

Now you’d think that access to air would be enough motivation to go uptown, but you know what they say – if you can handle going grocery shopping with two goats, you are then, and only then, equipped to take toddlers into the store. Also, it was on the tail-end of the era where you could leave your kids in the car for just a moment and still hold your head up in society. And besides, my car was a standard and I knew that at least one of them – we won’t say which one – had the ingenuity to get unbuckled and figure out the parking brake.

 

So I waited until later in the day when I knew my mom was in town and could stop by for a few minutes. When she got there I bolted for the pharmacy and the promise of fully functioning lungs.

 

By this time I was quite beside myself and likely somewhat delirious from lack of oxygen. It dawned on me that I was supposed to fix something about the placement of the expiry sticker on my license plate, but who had time to deal with that now – I needed to BREATHE!!!!

 

And as these days tend to go, I was one block away from the store when I noticed the flashing lights in my rearview. I may have actually been banging my head on the steering wheel when one of the members of our local police force pulled up behind me.

 

All the most vivid words from the vocabulary of my youth returned to me, and as the officer approached the car he says, “Good afternoon, Sir!!” Wait… what? Sir? PARDON??!!

I had a really short hair-cut at the time, but… SIR??!!

As I looked up, he realized his faux pas, and said, “Oooooh.” Awkward pause. “Sorry.”

 

Now, it was an honest mistake, to be sure. It’s just that, in the realm of Stay-At-Home-Mothering and physical appearance, the fragility of our self-esteem can be likened to that of… a snowflake.

 

And soooo…. the oxygen deprivation, the sleep deprivation, the Maybe-It’s Maybelline deprivation of that day (or any day) all came to a head and I started raving, “I’M SORRY!! I KNOW THAT MY LICENSE STICKER IS SCREWY, AND I’M PLANNING TO FIX IT, BUT I JUST NEEDED MY MEDS RIGHT NOOOOOW!!”

 

Goooooood. Good answer. I’m pretty sure I saw his hand slip down to his holster.

“Well, actually… You rolled through that stop sign and you aren’t wearing your seatbelt.”

“Oh. That.” I felt lucidity returning while what was sure to be piles of cash and merits slipping away.

He must have had experience in recognizing a full-on pre-collapse because his response was, “But… Since I called you Sir, I’ll let it go. And try to get the license plate fixed up.”

 

I thanked him and promised I would. There wasn’t much else to do besides resolve to grow my hair a little longer and make an effort to put on make-up every once in a while. Oh, that and stop breaking multiple laws in a single bound.

 

Lesson #1: If you feel like you are suffocating, don’t wait too long before you go for help or oxygen – whatever oxygen looks like to you. A drive, a nap, a chat with a friend. On-duty police officers don’t count.

 

Lesson #2: When you come across someone who has clearly waited too long to go for help, now might not be the time to fix or reason with them. And it’s probably not the time to focus on everything that’s going wrong. It’s time to listen, and do what you can – even if that might mean letting go of what you should do, even if only for the time being.

 

I wonder what it’s like being in a job where you often see people at their worst. I wonder how often I see past people’s worst and try to understand what brought on the unhinging.

 

Probably not often enough.

 

But I’ll get another chance – if I stop long enough to look past the crime, and see the desperation and gasping for air that’s behind it.