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May 26, 2004 Ever had a nanny? Neither have I, except I used to call my grandmother "Nanny." But tell you what…let’s play a little game, you and I. I want you to pretend that you’re a child again. You’re a child and you have a sister near your age. Each day, the two of you are cared for by a nanny, a nanny hired by your parents. Now, one day you and your sister are outside playing under the watchful eye of your nanny. You stroll over to the barbecue grill and pick up the large butane lighter your parents use to ignite the charcoal when your family has cookouts. You fire up the lighter and turn to the nanny to show her the pretty flame. At this point, the nanny screeches, leaps at you, tears the lighter from your grasp, and yells at you to go to your room for the remainder of the day. Once in your room, you take a break from sulking in order to gaze down at the back yard below your window. You observe your sister standing beside the barbecue grill. She’s holding the same butane lighter that the nanny snatched from your misguided grasp a while ago, but she’s holding something else in her other hand. A can of lighter fluid. You lean out the window and yell at the nanny, "Look at what my sister’s doing!" The nanny turns to look at you, then at your sister. She stares at your sister for a moment, then shrugs and turns back to the book she’s reading. Well, now. Enough of the hypothetical. Consider the following true event. A little while back, I was scheduled to meet someone on business. On the day of the meeting, the usually heavy traffic in that particular metropolitan area was much lighter than usual, so I arrived almost a half hour early for my appointment. The day was breezy and beautiful, so I decided to use my time wisely. On the way to my appointment, I had noticed a lovely park nearby, and now that I had some time to kill, I thought it might be nice to park beneath a shade tree and listen to the Book-On-Tape which I was then "reading." I drove back to the park, found my shady spot, and pulled out my audio book. My in-dash tape player wasn’t working, but I had a small cassette player with headphones in the glove compartment. Out came the cassette player, in went the tape, on went the headphones, and I spent a nice, productive twenty minutes before leaving to make my meeting. I was about three blocks from my destination when I heard the abbreviated "woop" of a siren behind me. Looking in my rear-view mirror, I saw a police cruiser, the officer motioning for me to pull over. I assumed that I was inadvertently blocking his pursuit of someone, so I pulled to the shoulder of the road. I felt fairly puzzled when I noted the officer pulling over directly behind me. The cruiser door opened, the officer exited, and he walked up to me. "Sir, do you have any idea why I stopped you?" The officer wasn’t smiling, but he was polite and his demeanor was pleasant and non- threatening. "No, sir, I don’t. I didn’t think I was speeding. I wasn’t, was I?" A small, tight smile flitted across his face and he reached toward my face. I felt him take hold of something and tug on it. And I then realized that I was still wearing the headphones. After listening to my audio book, I’d turned the cassette player off and unplugged the headphones. After placing the tape player back in my glove box but before taking off the ‘phones, I had rummaged through my briefcase to make sure I’d brought some necessary things. This little distraction had proven pivotal. "It’s a $200.00 fine for wearing headphones while driving, sir." The officer peered at my license and registration, and then pulled out his citation book. That got my attention. I attempted to explain, speaking rapidly in order to stop the Pen of Doom from writing. I told the officer how I’d been listening to an audio book while parked, and how I’d forgotten to remove them. "Besides," I reasoned, "the tape player wasn’t even on." The officer smiled skeptically. "Look," I pointed out, "the tape player is in the glove compartment. Not connected. Not playing." I listened, horrified, as the officer explained that he could write me a ticket merely for wearing the headphones, even if they weren’t plugged into a tape player. The logic behind this particular offense, he told me, is that a person with headphones on his head cannot adequately hear ambulances or other emergency vehicles nearby. "But," he said judiciously, "I’m not going to write you today. I’m just going to give you a warning." So, after the officer made a radio check of my vehicle and me (to ascertain that I wasn’t wanted on any outstanding warrants), he let me go, bade me a courteous goodbye, and even helped me pull back onto the roadway. I was only seven minutes late for my meeting, but my contact refused to see me since I couldn’t "be relied upon to be on time." Fine or no fine, it had been an expensive day. Sounds maddening, doesn’t it? Well, before you sympathize with me, allow me to add a few insult- to-injury details. While the officer was electronically checking up on me, four (that’s four, gentle reader) separate vehicles zoomed past us on the road with stereos turned up so loud that I could feel the bass line in my chest when the vehicles were almost a block past me. When the officer returned to hand back my license, I asked him if it were illegal to play a stereo at such high volume levels. "Not unless you do it at midnight outside your house," he grinned. So, then, let’s review. If you wear a pair of non-operational headphones on your ears while driving, you’re hammered for two portraits of Benjamin Franklin. (And please don’t miss this important point: even if I had been listening to the audio book when the officer pulled me over, it’s difficult to imagine that I could have been listening to it at anywhere near the volume of the quartet of drive-by noisemakers’ stereos.) But if you play a stereo sans headphones up at volume level 11 and rattle windows in a quarter- mile radius, you’re as good as gold. It’s a good thing the vigilant officer protected me from myself. Rest assured, someone out there wants to be your nanny. ------------ About the author: S.K. Orr is a published poet and writer whose work has recently appeared, among other places, in The Houston Chronicle. He is finishing his first novel. Email: skorr60@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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