Heads up!

As the officer's lights began to flash in my rear view mirror, I pulled over with the assurance of a life well-lived and a youth well-spent, so he could speed by to arrest some crazed drug felon wreaking havoc on the streets of Canby. Instead, he pulled ME over!

He'd been keeping pace with me through a couple of lights coming along 99E on the way into Canby from a very nice trip to Vancouver to play with grandkids. I'd been extremely careful to slow to the exact speed limit and kept it there, yet he didn't go by through the first light or the second. I had to turn left so I stepped on the gas a little, turned on my signal and changed lanes ahead of him and his lights flipped on. My life flashed in rhythm with his lights: I hadn't cut him off, hadn't sped, had used my signal appropriately, was driving with shoes on, had brushed my teeth and was wearing clean underwear. What else could it be?

I rolled the window down as he approached the car and he says "Are you Lynn?" Unbelievable! The name police!

He had run our plates as standard practice because our car is a kind that has made the top ten list of "most likely to be stolen" and discovered that though I was legally driving my car, I was doing so with a license that expired almost a year ago!

I ended up with a citation that will be rescinded when I show up with my renewed license,and the officer let me drive home (since Dick was hopped up on oxycodone) after discussing his relatives and our friends the Abbotts and what a good driver I must be to have been driving all this year with an expired license.

Since that fateful day, I have gotten my license renewed and have to say that the new picture is much better than the old one.

Also, I am positive that I did not get a license renewal form in the mail. I am on top of that kind of stuff. My advice to all of you, my friends, is check your license expiration date. I'm not at all sure that the DMV is holding up their end of things. And, if you have to renew, you need to show a birth certificate or passport and something with your social security number on it.