18 means you're an adult, whether or not you act (or think) like one

So court wasn't so bad. Different. But better than I expected. In Utah you get a ticket, and you either pay it or go to defensive driving school. End of story. (and believe me, I had more than a few encounters with traffic cops) Here you have to go tell a judge your intentions. I got to choose to go to school. I thought that avenue might be closed to me, (because I procrastinated so long before the court hearing. They made it seem like if I wanted to do the school thing, I had to do it before I went to court. ) but I still have 2 months. (the fact that I've been living in this state a decade and am just now learning some of this stuff, says a lot about how much my driving has improved since my teenage years.)

It was a little intimidating, and I had time to ponder whether or not I would have watched my speed better, or been more careful, had I had to go and answer to a judge every time I saw those blue and red lights.

I have to make a clarification on the last post. It has been 16 years, and the details are fuzzy, but as I thought about it, $2500 seemed awfully high to me. And then I remembered that it was actually only $1000, but the judge suspended $750, and I only had to pay $250- Unless I got arrested in the next year, then I'd have to serve the 30 days in jail and pay the rest of the fine) which to a poor almost-college student might as well have been 2500. I made $5 an hour.

Well now that I brought it up, I guess I should share the story of my idiocy.

The summer between my senior year of high school and my first year of college I worked at a music store. (I believe I've mentioned this once or twice?) It was fun. I made a lot of friends. We'd hang out after work, and do stuff together regularly. Most of my friends were older than me, except one girl. She was only 17. (I was 18) We were all planning on going dancing, but you had to be 18 to get in, and that left Emily out. I felt bad about it.

I mentioned my dilemma to another friend, and she offered up the sage advice to get her a fake ID. She said it was easy. You go to the DMV, tell them you lost yours, fill out a new application, bring proof of ID- like a birth certificate and SSN card (no pictures) and they take her picture.

Sounds genius, no?

I actually told my mom my plans for the day before I left the house.

It all went pretty smoothly until they took her picture. Unbeknown to me, the DMV was farther along technologically than most places in 1994. They took her picture, compared it to the picture of me in their system, saw me standing next to her, and we were arrested on the spot.

We weren't handcuffed and hauled off in a police car or anything, just taken into a back room and read our rights, and fingerprinted, and Emily had to call her mom (she was a minor). The actual charges were "Fraud- falsifying government documents".

When I got home my mom casually asked "So, did you get arrested?"

So that's my big brush with the law. I learned a couple things that day-

If you're going to college and have a scholarship- don't do anything stupid like getting arrested. If I would have had to go to jail, I would have totally messed everything up.

And maybe, just maybe, my mom knew more than I gave her credit for back then. She didn't try to talk me out of anything, but she probably knew I wouldn't listen.

Also if you're going to do something really stupid, do it all BEFORE you are 18. Afterwards it follows you FOREVER.