Why I no longer speed, and how I got married . . .

I almost never speed. There is something humiliating about being pulled over that I just can't stand. My natural reaction to being stopped by a cop is to get angry and act belligerently. Of course, this makes the situation worse, so I suck up my pride and act contrite. The process of stuffing my ego down into my stomach is supremely painful for me, so I just don't speed. It isn't worth it. It's not about the fine, it's about the pride.

Let me tell you how I became this way. When I was still single, I was interested in this girl. I took her out a couple of times, but she wasn't giving me any signals. She was nice, pleasant, when I asked her out she said yes, but no signals. At the time I was still shy and afraid of rejection, and in need of signals in order to make moves in progressing the relationship.

So, after a few dates, I became frustrated and insecure and began to wonder if there was any potential there or not. I was really interested in this girl, which made things worse. Had I been willing to walk away, it would have been easy to make a move and accept rejection if rejection was the response.

I noticed that this girl was really friendly with my roommate and I began to wonder if she was interested in him. In retrospect, it was probably that she liked me, and my roommate was safe, so she was buddying up with him, in order to have more in common with me. (I don't mean that she didn't like my roommate, they were friends, but I don't think she was interested in him in that way.) But, at the time, I was jealous of their relative ease and decided to back off a little.

This is where we get to the part about speeding. There was a ward activity (this girl was in my ward) where we all went down to Moab. I drove a lifted Toyota Tacoma at the time. I thought that truck was pretty cool. I drove it down to Moab, planning on doing a little 4 wheeling and showing it off. (In this, I was dissappointed.) I had a friend from high school who was in the ward with me on the drive.

I had gotten my first speeding ticket a few weeks earlier. A motorcycle cop (who was not on his bike at the time) saw me speeding and furiously waved me to pull over as he ran after me. Being afraid of the consequences if I didn't stop, I complied. (Today I might just keep driving and if he caught me pretend I didn't see him in the rearview.) Being pulled over by a cop on foot is humiliating. So I got a ticket. It was a good one, too. I think it was like 13 over the limit.

So, on my way down to Moab we went through Price. Those of you who have been through Price understand that most of the revenue in Price comes from out of town speeders. I got pulled over as we entered the city limits because I didn't slow down fast enough. I was probably about 15 over the limit again. He ticketed me for that, ticketed me for not having a front license plate (lame!), and ticketed me for driving with an expired registration. This added up quickly. I was at $450 or something for all that.

So, I was pretty upset, but trying to let it go and focus on the fun of the Moab trip. No sooner had I left the Price jurisdiction and entered the next one, but I get pulled over again (this time I had slowed to 9 over the limit.) So I get a second speeding ticket, expired registration ticket, etc. (He did me a favor and let the front license plate thing go.) My tickets at this point are adding up to about $800-$1,000. So far, so fun. I am really upset the rest of the drive to Moab.

We finally get to Moab after it got dark. We took a turn off the road to follow a dirt road just for kicks. As we get to the end of this dirt road, it dead ends and I need to turn around. As I am trying to turn around, I back off the edge of a cliff and my truck is high centered, perched on rock. Three of my four 33" mudders lifted completely off the ground. We weren't going anywhere.

The next day it took us about 3 hours of jacking up the truck and building a rock driveway to get it back onto the dirt road. When we finally did, the truck ran, but it had crushed some of the fluid lines, dented the bottom of the truck, and bent the drive train. When I accelerated it would make a lovely grinding noise. I did get it back to SL safely, where I promptly turned it into my insurance company.

Anyway, so the trip started out GRRREAT!. During the trip this girl tried to talk to me, but I gave her the cold shoulder. I was in a foul mood and I was convinced she was interested in my roommate and was just being nice to me. She later asked me what my deal was and explained that she was interested in me, but by then I had moved on and there was another girl in the picture that I ended up dating for a while. The problem was that I was really interested in this one that got away and I was always wondering what things would have been like had I not imagined myself out of the deal.

So, after I had some time to reflect, I vowed to myself that if I was ever interested in someone who didn't respond again, I would pursue her until I got a clear message yeah or nay. The next serious relationship I had was with Traci, my wife, and wouldn't you know, Traci gave few and conflicting signals in the beginning of our courtship. But, because of my experience, I would not back down without a fight. Turned out to be a really good lesson.

And that is how I got married and why I don't speed.