By Lee Scott
Why is it when we have a police car behind us do we feel so guilty? It happened to me the other day. One of the Beaufort County Sheriff cars was behind me as I was driving on Sea Island Parkway. I was not speeding. I made sure of it. My hands were on the steering wheel at the ten and two position. I was not talking on the phone and I had turned off the radio in case his siren came on.
GUILTY, my conscience screamed at me. Yes, because although I was not speeding at that moment, that Officer and I both knew, I had been. Maybe not that day, but some other day I had been speeding. You know that same guilty feeling when you are speeding along on I-95 and a car passes you and ten minutes later you see him pulled over by a State Trooper. We feel self righteous and at the same time, so lucky that it was not us caught that time.
It is not only speeding but other moving violations, like stop signs that illicit this guilt. I have a confession and I am assuming that the statute of limitations has expired so that something that happened over thirty years ago cannot bite me. It was the late 70s and early 80s and I had the habit of doing rolling stops through neighborhoods. My three year daughter reprehended me for not stopping completely at a stop sign one morning and that is when I invented “Stop. Go.” I told her that as long as you looked carefully and no one was coming and you said “Stop. Go” that you could go through the stop sign.
Imagine my surprise some twelve years later when she had her learners permit and rolled through a stop sign saying “Stop. Go.” “What are you doing?” I asked her. “Mom, you said if I said “stop go” than you could roll through a stop sign.” Oh the sins of parents. I assured her that she was mistaken and that one always stopped at a stop sign.
So now you can understand my guilt and know how happy I was when the officer pulled off on a side road. I started to breathe better. Because truthfully, I believe that someday Karma, or a State Trooper, is going to get me for all those rolling stops.
