Aselin

As I listen to my eldest child opine about her future driving opportunities, I chuckle. She has all these plans for the glamorous vehicle she's going to receive. As if a teenager should receive an award for aging up. I often remind her that she's not living on the set of the Price Is Right.

My first car was an El Camino pick up truck. The starter had long worn out so you didn't need the key, you could start it with a butter knife. It had a cage on the back so we could haul sheep in it. And, if that wasn't memorable enough, it was BRIGHT yellow. Who paints their car BRIGHT yellow? Well, a parent who wants everyone in a small town to be able to narc on their teenage kid's bad driving habits.


There was no driving this car and claiming it "Wasn't me." I'm sure it was the other bright yellow El Camino-with-the-cage-on-the-back in town.

I remember getting pulled over the first time. Unjustly accused of rolling through a stop sign, Officer Davis, one of two officers in our Mayberryesque town, strode up to my window. Leaning down to talk to me, he said, "Now Aselin, who taught you to drive?"

Sheepishly I thought, "Well, your brother the town driver's ed teacher." But I was smarter than that and just tried to look innocent. It worked and I got off with a stern lecture and the required promises to be a model driver from there on out.

Despite what one would think, I've had fairly good luck with the law in my life and considered all the times I've been let off as a huge blessing and a tribute to my ability to look innocent. This morning I was reading an article about a police officer in Utah when something jolted me:

If Deputy Greathouse Fox pulled you over but didn't give you a ticket, that may not have been a good thing.
Before she started work as a deputy, "She said she wouldn't give tickets to ugly people because it would be their only break
in life,"

Oh crap. All these years I've thought it was my winning smile, demure charm and some sort of X factor I possessed which made enforcement officers take pity on me. I snickered at my friends who racked up tickets like they were collecting autographs. I gave unsolicited advice to fellow teens on how to evade capture. In my own mind, I was a cape-wearing, police-evading, teen superhero.

Turns out I was probably just ugly.