It Is All About Who You Know

friday night my younger brother, chad, calls me on the phone to thank me for knowing a guy named jeff in high school. jeff was a grade below me and we knew who each other were and shared common friends, but the two of us never became friends. i always considered him to be a good guy and i guess he felt the same about me. evidently i have enough credibility with jeff to get my brother off the hook for driving his new mustang gt 93 mph in a 70 mph zone. it turns out that jeff is an officer out in the lubbock area and pulled my brother over for speeding. while checking out chad's information he ask him if he had a brother, and chad said yes, jason. they talked for a moment and jeff told chad that he was going to let him go with a verbal warning because is my brother!

i think that was very nice of jeff and i do appreciate him doing that for my brother, but i'm not sure if this really helped my brother out in the long run. getting off the hook then just meant that he would get caught some other time, and guess what. that other time was two days later. chad called me today to look up the price of a radar detector on the internet. after i tell him the price of the radar detector he proceeds to tell me that he got a speeding ticket 20 miles away from home. 70 mph in a 55 mph zone. you would think that he would be drive a bit slower for now on, but instead he goes out and buys a device to help him detect our law enforcers attempting to catch him in the act.

i'm not knocking my brother speeding. i do it all the time. i am knocking his choice of speeds to drive. you can find me driving 75 mph in 60 mph zones up and down 35E or I635 most weekends, but i know i'm allowed to. how do i know? well, i've passed many police cars while driving this speed and all they do is watch me go by. there are several areas of dfw i won't drive 15 mph over the posted limit much less 20-25 mph over because i know i'd be toast. what i'm saying is i still drive within the unspoken limits, but my brother blatantly drives his 300 hp beast at speeds that will get him a ticket. the ticket he received this past weekend was his one freebie. he will pay $130 and take defensive driving to keep it from affecting his insurance premium, but the next one won't be so kind. i don't know all of the officers out there and his radar detector won't always save him.