I just wanted to get home. I didn’t have any crazy expectations. Fortune let me down, however.
The week after all the snow fell, my commute to Baltimore got a little more cumbersome than usual.

First of all, some roads still had snow covering part of the travel lanes. That really didn’t bother me too much. I understood those delays.

Then I had to deal with the various and sundry plans which municipalities and counties had to remove some of the huge piles of snow. That slowed me down a little bit, but not enough to make me too upset.

I had the biggest problem with other drivers, some of whom seemed better off staying home and waiting until spring. When there’s no snow on the road and no plows on the road, we should all agree to drive at a normal speed without causing undue harm to others.

That philosophy apparently didn’t work for a lot of people so as I got close to home two weeks ago, I just wanted to make the final few turns, park the car and sit on the couch.

Then I saw him. I started to pray when I noticed the lights on top of the car. I hoped God would spare me just two blocks from my house. I wanted this particular officer to somehow not notice the burned out headlight on my car, something I had only recently noticed.

God didn’t answer my prayers.

When I made the second-to-last turn before reaching home, I saw the flashing lights behind me. I didn’t know what to do with snow piled high along the travel lane. I wanted to make the final two turns before home and face the music there, but I worried he wouldn’t appreciate me making his traffic stop more convenient for me.

So I stopped in the road and turned on my hazards. I could almost see my house from where I sat. I felt so helpless. I hoped that didn’t get me some sort of ticket for stopping there, but I didn’t have any other option. Luckily, the officer agreed.

He checked out all my papers and gave me a form which provided me with some time to get the headlight fixed before I faced any real violation. I made the final turn and parked the car to end the day a little more frustrated than usual.

Of course, changing the headlight bulb in my vehicle did not prove as simple as I had hoped so I had to actually make an appointment with a mechanic, swap cars with Maria – a real hardship since I had to find my radio stations on the dial and move CDs to her car to make the commute tolerable – and get the bulb replaced by a professional.

I sucked it up because I once kinda, sorta blew off one of those “faulty equipment” notices that the police give out years ago and ended up having to pay a lot more in fines at the end of the process. I didn’t want to go through that all again.

I just wanted to get home without any problems. I should know better.