BUSTED!!

My poor baby. Only seventeen. And already heading down the wrong path in life. Busted by the man. Taken down by the fuzz.

Let me explain.

She has her driver's license, if you recall. In the past few months, she's been given the opportunity to demonstrate that she is a responsible driver, and she has proven it. So she gets the car on occasion, usually to run errands for her parents, or to take herself to someplace I would have needed to drive her to anyway.

Last night, for instance. She drove herself and two friends to the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo. She's a highland dancer, and has performed in the Tattoo for years. This is the week of the Tattoo, so she's been out every evening dancing for an appreciative public. Tattoo goes pretty late, around eleven p.m., so I was sitting at home at midnight waiting to hear the door open.

It does.

"Hello", says I.

"DID THE POLICE CALL YOU?" I hear. Hmm. Not the usual casual hello I get, nor even the perfunctory grunt that a teenager occasionally uses as communication when it's too much trouble to form words.

I turn around. There she is. But her two friends are with her. Strange. Usually she drives them home, and is back home before her midnight curfew (imposed on new drivers by the government of Nova Scotia).

"Police? No... why?"

"BECAUSE I GOT PULLED OVER!!", she says, and not particularly calmly at that. She's holding in her hands her driver's license, as well as our vehicle registration and insurance card.

"YOUR STUPID STICKER'S EXPIRED OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT!!" she says. And gives me a red piece of paper. It's a "traffic offense report".

She's all teared up. Not in a "boo hoo" way, but in a "too much emotional stress" kind of way.

Now, I'm sure that the wrong thing to do at this point, probably, is to laugh.

Unfortunately, I do anyway. I laugh. The child, however, fails to find the humour in the situation. She's still a little... um... not sure if "manic" is the word... let's just say, "a little distressed."

Apparently she got stopped at a 'spot check' the RCMP had set up. They saw that the car's inspection sticker had expired, so they did the whole "license and registration, please" thing to her. She and her friends, all highland dancers by the way, give me the story in typical teen girl fashion, but I more or less get the point anyway.

So the poor child pays the price for her dad's inability to remember to check when the safety inspection sticker expires. Well, she didn't actually pay any *price*, she got off with a warning. Which I thanked her for. I told her that I'm lucky that she was a poor helpless teenage girl, which was probably what resulted in the warning. Me, I would have got a ticket, I bet.

But hey, it's a good learning experience for her. (oops, I laughed out loud while I was typing that)

Now she knows, no matter how well things are going...

... you always need to watch out for the MAN.





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Note to teen daughter: By the way, honey, I got the Motor Vehicle Inspection done this morning, so you can take yourself and the girls to Tattoo again tonight. They won't pull you over this time. Wink.