The Potty Mouth at the Table by Laurie Notaro Page B

colors in between. Not every color is jumpsuit orange. So when you look at my citation with a clearly disparaging look andsay, “Whoa!” I take issue with that response for a variety of reasons:
    1. Reserve your disdain, sir, for those who actually take the law into their own hands and who were not really speeding but, more accurately, going downhill and submitting to the forces of physics. I didn’t invent physics; I didn’t vote for physics; I don’t even understand physics. I was simply going downhill on a road made by your employer, the city, and I can hardly be held responsible for the grade it deemed appropriate. Apparently they signed off on a perfect physics-fed speed trap that I believe was solely created as a moneymaking venture for the city, like a police-staffed lemonade stand.
    2. Doing 43 miles per hour in a 35-miles-per-hour zone is not breaking the sound barrier, m’ lord. It’s not like I was all gassed up and making my way to Mars in a Prius that in certain moments gets 99 MPG. Ninety-nine miles per gallon sometimes, even if it’s just for a fraction of a second. If that doesn’t demonstrate how seriously I take my responsibility to humanity, including people overseas who I do not understand when they call me to tell me my credit card payment is late, then frankly, I don’t know what does. I had a V6 Camry before I decided to provide a future for children I don’t evenhave, so it’s clear that I traded speed and power for a car that everyone who volunteers for Habitat for Humanity drives, and even some Doctors Who Don’t Have Borders.
    a. I was not drunk. Nor was I cited for that, but I could see the look of speculation that crossed your face when you saw my speed of eight miles above the posted limit. “What sort of madwoman is this ?” it said. Stand down, sir. Stand down.
    I will have you know that for most of the summer, we have had our teenage nephew staying with us, and whenever I got a little too happy at breakfast, lunch, or dinner, all I had to do was toss him the keys and my chances of walking the line dropped dramatically. Sure, sure, it was my plan to wait a week before I drank “magic grape juice” in front of the Mormon side of the family, but happy hour is happy hour and if there’s a three-dollar glass of chilled rosé calling my name on a summer afternoon, you can hardly expect me to ignore that sort of value. Alcohol rarely goes on sale. But I can usually find it when it does.
    b. Yes, it’s true that I did not have my proof of insurance with me at the time of the bust, but that was only because State Farm sends me a letter every other day describing what horrors and lawsuits could befallmy household, and I simply cannot live in a world of fear like that. That is too much stimuli, and I can’t keep worrying about wiping spilled orange juice off my floor every time I leave my house in case a crackhead breaks in, slips in the kitchen, and hurts himself. Or if a hobo sidles into my backyard, goes to take a poop in my vegetable bed, a rusty trellis scrapes his ass, and he needs a tetanus shot.
    Straight into the shredder the anxious State Farm envelopes go, so I can’t keep track of when the new cards come! I had more expired State Farm cards in my wallet than I did receipts from Cinnabon, and that became clear when I scraped a little bit of paint off my car while I was trying to parallel park last week.
    Normally, I am an excellent parallel parker, but there was a man standing next to my car who was watching me intently (yes, I would use the word “staring”—he was staring) and it threw my concentration entirely off until he yelled at me, “Hey! You just hit my car!” which really derailed any sort of focus I had left.
    c. Look at me. Really. Look at me. I was the only one in the entire court, including some of your coworkers, who did not have a neck or facial tattoo, or who wasnot wearing a tank top and flip-flops. I was wearing a full slip and a body shaper, for