Pat's Story

Several days ago I called for reader’s funny stories so here is my first guest post:

Pat Scales

We have two homes.  We primarily reside up in NY where I work but we have a small place down in Jersey, not too far from the shore.  My outings tend to be mid-week when I am up in NY and my wife is down in NJ.

On this occasion, the locations were reversed and I was down in NJ.  I waited until dark and then headed up to an LGBT friendly bar in Asbury Park.  I stayed for two drinks and was driving back to the house when I was pulled over by an Asbury police officer.  I was wearing a short coral lace dress, high heels, hose, makeup and wig.  To say the least I was not happy being pulled over, especially by a cop who seemed younger than my own children.  He took my license and registration back to his car and I sat in my fuming while his lights, high beams and search light kept my car well lit. 

He wrote me a speeding ticket for doing 41 in a 30 MPH zone.  I flipped my wig.  I had prior speeding tickets but this was a straight, flat, traffic free road and doing 41 surely did not feel like I was driving too fast.  Being dressed as I was I was not in a position to argue.

 Since my license was in NY and the ticket was from NJ I decided to simply pay the fine and hopefully put the matter behind me.  I original thinking was that my wife would likely be more upset with me getting a ticket than with me driving while dressed.

 So much for that plan.  Within a week of getting the ticket, we received mail from two different local law firms who must have a practice of scouring the traffic court docket for clients offering to defend me in my speeding ticket case.  Since I was at work when the mail came in she wanted to know what the letters from lawyers were about.  I was able to dance away from that.

 About a month later, we received an envelope with a check in it from Asbury Park.  It looked official and she opened it before I got home from work.  I had miscalculated the surcharges that were being applied to my ticket and the clerk sent me back a check for $5.    At this point, I had to come clean about the speeding ticket, since she had a copy of the ticket in her hand.  I conveniently forgot to tell her I got the ticket while wearing a lace cocktail dress. 

I hate the double life but it seems to go with the territory.

Pat