Is it me or have the cops been a bit overkill lately on our local roadways? I travel around quite a bit and usually go decades without a ticket but lately they're all over the place ticketing all the locals just trying to make a living. Now I know they need our dollars to support the municipal troll under the bridge, but I just got a ticket for not using my left blinker (being in the left hand turning lane at a light is usually a good heads up to the other drivers that you are turning left). C'mon!! God forbid, there's actually a bank robbery because they'll be too busy giving some poor handicapped person a ticket for having an air freshener hanging from their rear view mirror. "Sir, put your hands up on the wheel where I can see them!" "What did I do, officer?" "You have a Miami Dolphins air freshener tampering with your ability to see the road clearly, and it's not the Yankees which should be a violation right there."

I just got done going to court for a speeding ticket. Lesson here: stay out of Montgomery. The whole village is 30mph except one little itsy bitsy block that is sneakily 20 mph — just one block — then back to 30mph all around. So, of course, the fuzz likes to sit on this one block waiting for good unsuspecting people to make their ticket quota and squeeze every last dime out of us. We are then forced to live off of peanut butter and hot dogs for the next month. I was one of those unfortunate people that got snagged on this ridiculous block and now my children are having nightmares from it. I was "speeding" at a wild whopping, nail-biting 28 mph. They're both crying like they've been stabbed. "Are you going to jail, Mommy?" "Please, Mr. Policeman don't take my mommy away and put her in that prison we see on the highway when we go to the Danbury mall." So now my children are scarred for life thinking I'm going to the big house and the cop is asking me where I'm going now.

Why is it they always gotta ask where you've come from and where you're going and why you're speeding. Even if you have the most valid reason in the world it really doesn't matter. Case in point: four years ago when I was nine-months pregnant with my son and was traveling on Interstate 84 when I started not feeling so well. I only had another 20 miles to go, I was in a desolate part of the highway, I didn't own a cell phone and suddenly I think I'm in labor. (I know everyone just cringed not because I was in labor but at the horror of not owning a cell phone). I start speeding up because I didn't want to be stuck on the side of the road popping out my little boo and not able to call for help. So I get pulled over by deputy dog and without even letting me say a word he starts yelling at me about how fast I was going and where's the fire and yadda yadda as I'm doing my Lamaze breathing. After seeing all those cop shows where people try to explain themselves and they wind up in a choke hold in the back of the squad car, I decided to just let him rant, take my ticket and go. I assumed when I explained myself to the judge he'd understand. Nope. Holding my infant in the loaded court room he grilled me. "If you were in labor why didn't you ask the officer for assistance?" "He was mean and yelling, I couldn't get a word in edge-wise between hyperventilating and explaining the inner workings of the birth process and losing my mucous plug was not on the agenda at the time." "A what plug?" "Listen, I haven't had a ticket in 10 years, so I'm not a habitual law breaker and obviously not a felon, I was in fact in labor because I'm standing here with my screaming newborn so if there was ever a valid reason to speed to one's location this would be it so could you dismiss the case?" He slapped me with a $300 fine which I had to pay IN CASH, right there and was told if I sped through NY again in the next three years he'd take my license away for good. Can you believe that?! There's a reason why they have that blind statue of justice in the front of all the courthouses.

I gotta watch my back now. Writing about the "law" doesn't tend you get you a warm pat on the back....unless they're putting you in handcuffs for writing a humor column about them that they didn't think was all that funny ha ha. Watch, I'll get a ticket for jay walking to the deli for lunch this week. You know, if it weren't for a hardened criminal such as myself taking all the police attention, rampant amounts of heroin wouldn't make it to their destinations and the dealers would all be out of business.