"Phil & The Cop" joke

My mother lives outside of Hartford, Connecticut, and one Saturday morning she asked me to drive her to a dental appointment in White Plains, New York. Not because there is a lack of dentists in Connecticut, but because my family is originally from New York and we kept our regular dentist after moving from the state.

However, time was not our ally that morning and we were running late. As with any person who is behind the time, the natural reaction is to step on the gas. So we were zooming down the Merritt Parkway and from the right corner of my eye I noticed a blur on a hill overlooking the road. The blur looked like a grey car with flashing lights on its roof. You get the idea.

About three minutes later, I saw that blur in my rear view mirror. Its lights were flashing and my super-duper hearing could pick up the faint trace of a distant siren. “Ma, we’re going to be pulled over,” I said to my mother.

“Why?” she asked, not aware that I parted company with the speed limit. After I informed her what to expect, my mother suddenly showed a side of her personality that I never saw before: a flair for drama. Having sat up with perfect posture for the trip, my mother slowly began to rock to her right sight and crawl into a half-fetal position. She then rested her head on the window of her passenger-side door and began to look ill.

I pulled the car to the side of the road and parked directly on the thick white line separating the lane from the shoulder from the parkway. This would require the cop to approach us from the passenger side – which he did, first greeting my mother. The cop’s initial view was of this silver-haired lady scrunched up in what appeared to be lethal pain; her eyes looked beyond the officer and searched the clouds above, perhaps in the hope of spotting St. Peter at his Pearly Gates toll station.

“Do you realize how fast you were going?” the cop said to me, trying not to look at my mother. “You were going 78 miles per hour.”

“I am sorry, officer,” I said. “I am taking my mother to a medical appointment in New York.”

My mother then let out a groan not heard since the Prophet Jeremiah saw this visions brought to reality. The cop stepped back slightly, looked down at my mother, and then back at me. “So why didn’t you call for an ambulance?” he asked.

“Because it is not a life-threatening illness,” I said. My mother promptly groaned anew with gusto, as if to contradict my statement. “And I don’t want to take an ambulance out of service for use as a private taxi.”

My mother let off another fatalistic groan and then buried her head in her chest. The cop, obviously not eager to be audience to her perceived demise, quickly did the license-and-registration bit with me. I suspect he didn’t go through the usual procedure of running checks, as he returned almost as quickly as he left. I was given a firm warning and shooed off. In a way, I am surprised I wasn't arrested for attempted matricide.

Once the cop car was out of sight, my mother resumed her perfect posture and smoothed out her hair. She offered a proper motherly scolding of driving too fast.

“Well, the cop should get his facts right,” I complained. “I wasn’t going 78 miles per hour.”

“How fast were you going?” asked my mother.

“I was going 82 miles per hour,” I answered.

We didn’t converse for the remainder of the trip.