today's high scores

I try to be a law abiding citizen. I’ve never killed anyone, I pay my taxes, and I don’t steal cable. And even though I get HBO without paying for it, I didn’t give some cable technician money to hook this up. The cable company has apparently failed to realize that they forgot to hit the scramble button on the HBO channel that connects to my television, so this clearly isn’t my fault and, therefore, cannot really be considered ‘stealing’. If they would ever bother to ask me, ‘do you receive free HBO?’, I most probably would tell them, ‘why yes I do, and as a law abiding citizen please disconnect this service from my television set immediately.’ But they have yet to inquire, and until they do I don’t feel compelled to alert them to the situation.

And even though I am chocked full of law abidiness, there are certain laws that I have a hard time forcing myself to obey. Like driving the speed limit…which has remained pretty much the same since the horse and buggy days and is therefore a law that is in dire need of being erased from the books. Riding a horse at 55 miles per hour would surely do great damage to the horse, thus it’s evident that these speed limit laws needed to be enforced many years ago. My car, on the other hand, is quite capable of going that speed without causing any harm to itself. Actually, it does quite well going much faster than that, therefore I see no real reason to toe the line in regards to this law. I view it more as a ‘suggested guideline’ than a non-bendable law.

It’s unfortunate, however, that the police force around here don’t see things the same way I do…which has become increasingly clear by all the police cars with those little radar guns sticking out of the drivers side window that have been littering the highways the past few weeks. In an attempt to appear a model citizen, I slow down whenever I spot one.

Apparently, though, our concerned police force doesn’t feel that their presence is enough of a deterrent, and they have put those large ‘Your Speed Is ____’ radar displays around the city as well. And these things are single handedly ruining my attempts at good citizenship.

Every time I see one of these radar posting displays, I view it less as a reminder to slow down and more of a challenge. Much like those speed pitch machines at the county fair where the goal is to see how fast you can throw, I see these radar displays as a very similar, if not more fun, game…because while I can’t throw very fast, I can certainly drive fast.

And everyday, on that same stretch of highway, I aim to break my record from the day before, flooring the pedal in an effort to achieve some astronomically high score on the little display screen off to the side of the road. I realize that I have a speedometer on my dashboard that will provide the same information, but the feeling of accomplishment and triumph just isn’t the same. Because when I fly past and see that little number start flashing, I know that I’ve just made some type of high score.

I only wish that there was some way to type my initials into the radar display so that all the drivers behind me could see me sitting atop the leader board.