500 word Essay on Driving
Feb 3, 2008
The Little Pink Slip
On Sunday night I was given a speeding ticket. It was the first time I had been given a citation for driving, and it was a wake up call that I had gotten lax in my driving habits. I was speeding along, not paying attention, and gradually I accelerated to thirty-seven miles per hour. I was in a twenty-five mile-per-hour speed zone. Suddenly, headlights appeared out of the darkness, and tailed me closely. I wondered who was tailing me so close, and by this time I had slowed down to the speed limit. When I pulled into the driveway, the headlights still followed me, and then out of the darkness suddenly the car that had been tailing me started flashing police lights, signaling me to stop. There was really no where to pull over, so I just put my truck in park, “Awe shit,” where the only words out of my mouth. A man walked up and identified himself as an officer with the Fort Lewis police department. I found it strange that he looked like he was wearing regular police clothes. He looked like a civilian police officer. I guess that is the way some of them dress. Anyway, soon I was preoccupied with looking for my Kansas driver’s license, my military ID, my truck registration papers, and my proof of insurance papers. The officer went back to his SUV. My thoughts started racing, “Maybe he won’t give me a ticket, maybe I’ll just get a warning…maybe he’ll realize it’s my first offense and he will have mercy on me.” But, alas, I was not as lucky as my roommate. He came back with a little pink slip of paper with my name on it.
Getting that ticket has wakened me from sleep. It was the first of many things; the first traffic violation, I received my first negative counseling statement, and now I am writing a five hundred word essay instead of relaxing with my guitar or writing poetry. I understand the counseling statement, but it still stung like a razor sharp pencil. I had worked so hard to never get one of...