It was one of those moments where all things in the universe
align and you feel a complete lack of control. The only thing you can do when that happens is resist as little as possible and hope that it all turns out alright. Thankfully, this time it did.
I was riding home in the van with Anthony, after dropping Jasper off at the airport. Anthony is on parole and could go to jail for a year and a half for driving at any time, let alone past curfew - and I don't know how to drive.
As we near a tollbooth, Anthony tells me about a dream that he had last night. In the dream, he and I are smoking cigarettes as we go through a toll, and he's approached by cops who tell him it's illegal to smoke at a tollbooth, and ask for his ID. In real life, he shouts at me out of the blue to "Get this away from me!!!" I have no idea what he's talking about, but after a second or two he kicks a water bottle out from under the brake. Too late; we're in an EZPass lane, and we have to switch to the cash one.
Anthony beats his hands against the steering wheel, swears, and shouts as he attempts to make the complicated merge into the next lane. But before we get very far, two police officers, who've watched the whole thing, approach the van and stand at our windows. One cop asks for Anthony's driver's license. He "left his wallet at home." There is hesitation on the cop's part. There is another casual platitude from the driver's seat.
Like I said, it turned out alright, but it very easily could've gone the other way, especially with a rookie cop who didn't look like he could grow a beard. Our reality could have undergone a seismic shift in a moment, but it didn't.
I like to think that one of the reasons it didn't is that the cop took us for father and son, and didn't want to embarrass the father.