Headlights.

My first car was a 1972 Dodge Colt wagon, that was so rusted out my friends nicknamed it “Cancer”.  It had other issues, like the time I went 6 months without a starter motor.  Good thing both home and school were on a hill, so I could compression start it.  But it did limit the places I could go without bringing several friends to push it.

But this story has to do with the headlights. It must have been my junior year, late one weekend when we were just cruising around in the car (just like on “That 70’s Show).  It was well past dark when my headlights decided to just go out on me.  Pfft, they’re gone.

Now, any thinking person would have gone home, parked the car and spent the next day figuring out what went wrong.  But I was 17, with my friends, having a great time, and that just wasn’t an option.  So we just kept driving around.

Until a cop pulled me over for driving without my headlights. 

“I’m sorry sir, they just barely went out, and we’ve got to drive the girls back to their house, and then I’m going straight home.  Promise.”

The cop said OK (it was the 70’s), and told me not to drive the car any more than absolutely necessary.

After another hour or two of cruising around, during which time we actually did drop the girls off, we run into the same cop.

“Yes, sir, I know sir.  See, we went to drop the girls off and then hung out at their house for the last couple of hours, and we were just now heading back to my house.”

“Ok, go straight home.  Drive careful and get those lights fixed right away.”

“Yes, sir, no problem, sir.”

Another undetermined number of hours cruising around and we run into the same cop again. He walks up to the car, I roll down the window, shrug my shoulders and say:

“Sorry, I don’t even have an excuse this time.”

“That’s OK, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

And then he wrote me out a ticket.