I’ll never forget the time I received my first traffic ticket. It happened on Christmas Eve
at the busiest time of day. My mother, sister, and two sons were riding in the car with me, and
we were on our way to a shopping mall. Mother was afraid we wouldn’t reach the department
store before it closed, and my sons wanted to have a gift wrapped. I wondered how I was going
to manage all of this. To add to my problems, the traffic was terrible; cars of all shapes and sizes
seemed to be intentionally blocking my progress. I kept thinking to myself, “This car has to go
faster,” while I pushed the accelerator toward the floor. I watched the speedometer zip to fiftyfive
miles per hour in a twenty-five mile zone. “So what,” I thought. “I’m almost at the mall.”
Little did I know, however, that the police were waiting just around the corner for me. Their
radar device had caught me speeding; my brief career as a race car driver was at an end.
Embarrassed and angry at myself, I sat fuming in the police car for forty minutes as an officer
wrote up a very expensive ticket. Afterwards it was too late to complete any of my errands, and
I had to face four frowning passengers, who expressed negative opinions about my driving for a
long time afterwards. Needless to say, that pale blue ticket will forever hold a spot in my
memory.