Hello, Mr. Policeman

My little car doesn’t have enough storage space to move the kids to school, so Sean borrowed a truck from someone at work. This week, we’ll load up the back with all of Amy’s stuff to take her to school. And this week, we will secure the tarp and net much better than we did last week when we loaded the truck with Michael’s stuff. Because we do not want a repeat of meeting one of Michigan’s finest this week, like we did last.

Just as we got on the highway, we realized the tarp was flapping in the breeze. We pulled over to secure it, and as we were working, a blue car with blazing red lights pulled up behind us. He sat in the car for a few minutes, and when he came out, he asked, “How’re we doing?” 

(If you look closely, you can see two patrol cars stopped. 

Thankfully, the officer in the first car waved on the second.)

“Well, we’re taking our son to college and the tarp started to blow away, so we just pulled over to fix it,” explained Sean.

The officer gave us a confused look. “Your son?”

We had no son with us. He was driving his own car with the girls and decided to keep on going.

I jumped in to explain about him driving separately, when he politely cut me off and asked Sean, “Is this your truck?”

“No, it’s a company vehicle,” he said.

“Can I see your ID, please, sir?”

Why did he need Sean’s driver’s license? I couldn’t figure out what was going on. We weren’t doing anything wrong. We were pulled way off the side of the road. We hadn’t been speeding (Sean was driving). As I was trying to process the scene, he looked at me and said, “Your ID, too, ma’am.”

And then it hit me. The policeman heard us say we were taking our son to school but there was no evidence of a son anywhere. We had a truck-load of stuff, all covered by a tarp and netting and we were driving a truck not registered in our names. We looked awfully suspicious.

After he ran our names, he came back, handed us our licenses, and convinced that we were not thieves stealing a GM truck with a bunch of contraband in the back, proceeded to talk to Sean about the truck. Seriously. The two of them stood there admiring the truck as I tried to secure the netting on my side.

Moral of the story – check the netting before leaving the driveway. But if it flies off, at least the truck will be a point of conversation.