Do You Know Why I Pulled You Over?


She’s three blocks from her house when the blue and red lights begin illuminating the car’s interior. She peers at the rear view mirror in horror as the police officer signals her to pull over.

Not now, she thinks to herself. Not tonight.

Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t mind being interrogated by enforcers of the law, but she had consumed four vodka tonics throughout the evening, and she’s pretty sure she’s at or just over the legal blood-alcohol limit. She reaches for the gum and hopes for the best.

The cop seemingly appears out of nowhere and forcefully knocks on her window. She’s startled at first, but then she calmly rolls it down and attempts her best Eddie Haskell impersonation.

“Is there a problem, officer?” she asks, faking a warm smile.

“Yes,” he says, unamused. “Ma’am, do you know why I pulled you over?”

“I’m assuming the author of this story needs a premise and he can’t really think of a good one,” she says.

“Yeah,” he agrees as he sighs and relaxes his demeanor. “That’s gotta be it. You weren’t even swerving. I never would have pulled you over if I wasn’t in this story.”

“I haven’t seen a writer attempt something so trite in a long time,” she says with a laugh.
The cop nods. “That’s why I’m an officer of the law and not a writer,” he says. “At least by being a cop, I’m taking bad guys off the street and making the world a safer place. What does a writer even do?”

“I don’t know — other than sitting around and staring at a computer all day. That’s no way to live. Besides, you’d have to be pretty full of yourself to think that you can write any better than the millions of struggling writers already out there. The fiction market is totally saturated.”

The woman character (who I don’t even bother to name or identify in any real way) and the police officer shake their heads, clearly out of pity for all the losers sitting in their houses right now, writing their lives away. Sometimes fictional characters can be real jerks.

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