This morning I had traffic court for a ticket I got on base. The ticket was only my second in six years, but since I've been pulled over at least ten times in that same time span and have only recently started getting actual written violations instead of warnings, I consider it evidence that I am finally visibly aging. My demeanor hasn't changed-- I'm always polite to a fault, speaking formally and making liberal use of the word "sir,"-- and my infractions are always pretty minor, relatively speaking. Speeding, mostly, ten miles over the limit max, and this latest, "California rolling" a stop sign. But my days as a cop whisperer are over. Such is life.
Anyway, traffic infractions on a military base are different than those incurred elsewhere. They involve no monetary penalty, but rather points on your license, which, if exceeding a certain total, can result in a revocation of driving privileges on base. As in, "I need a gallon of milk, but shit, I have to walk. For the rest of this year." I understand the need for this-- this place is crawling with little kids, walking sailors, marching units, joggers, dogs. This is no place for Steve McQueenin' it. This is all to say that I showed up this morning at traffic court properly cowed. I rose early (which I would have done anyway, since a certain someone still takes his breakfast at the boob), put on nice I'm-not-crazy, non-pajama clothes, and actually did my hair and make-up and put on high-heeled boots for the first time in months. When I face the law, I want to look good. Then I got a giant coffee at Starbucks and went to sit in line fifteen minutes early.
0730, the ticket said. For the judge, however, sign-in apparently starts at 0815. In those 45 minutes, I got to know my fellow fifteen or so infractees, who were all enlisted men and women and three other spouses. This is to say that everyone else was in uniform except the spouses, and in that category, I was the only one wearing day-time clothes. One had a teeny newborn and looked like I look now, back at home and away from the law-- baggy sweats and T-shirt, fuzzy slippers-- one was done up in Ed Hardy and facial piercings, and the other get her sweatshirt hood up and put her head down on the table and slept through most of the waiting. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was the Molly Ringwald in this Breakfast Club, and not the Ally Sheedy. I should have known something was up.
I'll stop here and say that one of the things about military life that really disturbs me is the class divide between officers and enlisted personnel. I've had it explained to me before, how this is a necessary part of military culture, and that the separation carries over into life off the clock because there needs to be distance between the world of the officer and the world of the enlisted person so that the chain of command is never doubted in the heat of battle. Or something. I imagine it must make sense to those to whom it applies, or at least they must make some show of accepting it as an element of the profession they've chosen, but I am profoundly uncomfortable when that divide leaks over into my sphere, when I'm supposed to understand what someone means when they say to me, "That only applies to enlisted people," or "Well, you've got to understand, she's an enlisted wife." I've come to understand what is implied, yes, but I can't help commenting that none of us spouses gave any kind of oath of service to the military. Our oaths are to individuals, who can be just as flawed as anyone else, no matter what their rank.
So it was embarrassing, I guess, how confused I was when the administrator of the court called me in front of everyone else she'd been barking at and said in a completely different tone of voice that I didn't belong there, that I should call this separate number and make an appointment and she was very sorry for the confusion. Ruh? Partly because I didn't believe her, I stepped just outside the glass doors and dialed, expecting to be told I was exactly where I needed to be and to go get back in line. Instead I got a cool voiced woman in the base XO's office who first inquired how I was doing this morning and then gave me directions to her office a few buildings over.
What followed is perhaps the weirdest slap on the wrist I've ever gotten. I spent about half an hour in a very nice office that reminded me of the one I worked in answering phones for my college dean, only heavily decorated for St. Patrick's Day, having a very enjoyable, engaging chat with the Executive Officer of the base. He rattled off a perfunctory explanation of the points system of traffic tickets, the importance of good driving on base, and how he expected to never see me in there for the same thing again, and then he asked if I had cooperated with the cop who wrote me the ticket. I told him, a little shocked, that of course I had. He took a point off the ticket for that, and explained that sometimes people get a little miffed when someone of lower rank gives them a ticket, which is again something that I guess I should have realized, but still, it shocks me. Rolling a stop sign is rolling a stop sign, right? Speeding is speeding.
That small bit of business evidently aside, we then chatted amiably about base facilities, which I liked, which I didn't, any feedback I might have, where I went to college, what my husband's call sign is and where we're headed next, our son's name-- "Oh, cool! Never heard that one"-- and what I do for a living. That last one is important, because it's where I state explicitly that I'm writing a memoir, that memoirs are by definition nonfiction, and that I've already published a chapter about moving onto base as a separate essay. I even told him the title and where he could find it. All of this is important because he then went on to tell me a sensational tale of woe about an enlisted couple plagued by flagrant infidelity, incompetent shoplifting, and substance abuse, in addition to tasty details about ill-advised neck tattoos and lame attempts at hiding from the law beneath blankets in a closet.
The story in itself is gold, but I won't retell it here because the point I'm making is about this feeling in the pit of my stomach, that even though I really enjoyed talking to this guy-- it was a nice way to spend a Tuesday morning, coffee and a chat-- I can't help but compare it to the experience I would have had if I had only married a different guy. I would have been, according to the XO, "read the riot act" along with the woman in sweats carrying her baby. We both rolled the same stop sign, actually, only one night apart. We are both undoubtedly operating on too little sleep, and she may have rolled the stop like I did for the same reason, which is that I've gotten used to stopping as gently and smoothly as possible to avoid waking a baby, which sometimes means I don't do the full snap to motionlessness and lurch back to motion.
I'm even more uncomfortable about the glimpse into these other people's lives. Sure, they sound like something out of Cohen brothers movie, the one they should be making about the circus lives people start living when they get hooked on meth and let everything else fall to shit, but who am I to get these spicy details from the Man in Charge? Further, who am I as a writer of nonfiction, who has made it a policy over time to declare myself to people from the get-go, just so we're all clear that I am, in fact, paying attention professionally?
Then again, how is this any different from the statement I made starting out, that I'm used to not getting tickets because until now I've been a woman of a certain age with a bright smile who knows how to punch up her Southern accent and obedient expressions of courtesy for law enforcement? Maybe we all expect the rules to bend in our favor every now and then. Maybe we all take advantage of any edge we've got to get around the necessary hassles of life, but it comes down to questions of degree and frequency. I just refuse to believe it's only the lower ranking among us that ever finds himself under blankets in the closet.
