Back to my reality

I was going to continue on my ranting path because frankly every day I read something in some newspaper somewhere that makes me want to rage against the man, whoever he might be. Today, I was going to write about how the US State Department does not get to make decisions about the borders of Jerusalem, but sorry, you are all going to have to wait for another day.

My local readers are getting emotionally exhausted from my ranting. (That's what happens when you walk to the corner store... people stop you to tell you what they think!!!)

Instead I am going to write about how at 7:15 this morning as I was driving my kids to school on almost empty streets, a police car pulled up behind me and via megaphone told me in blurry, loud hebrew that I was driving in the wrong lane.

I normally drive my kids to school closer to 8:15 but today Zeve wanted to go very early because his class was leaving on an overnight sleep-away hiking trip and he didn't want to be late. As it turned out, he was probably the first kid at school, which made him anything but late.

Back to the police. I think that it was 7:15 and these guys must have been at the end of their shift and bored to tears. I was driving on a divided street with at least two lanes going in either direction. At some points on this road, there are even three lanes going each way.

This morning, at 7:15, there were two other cars on the road within a 25 foot radius of my car. Not exactly a bumper-to-bumper moment.

Nothing like looking in your rear view mirror and seeing the police bearing down on you with their squad car lights flashing. I knew they were talking to me but my hebrew is barely passable on a normal day and my fuzzy megaphone hebrew is even worse. Plus, I couldn't for the life of me, figure out what I was doing wrong. I wasn't holding my cell phone in my hand (at least not at that moment). I was wearing a seat belt. I wasn't drunkenly swerving.

Fortunately -- or not -- Chaim was in the passenger seat and he has no sense of humour for bored police officers. He doesn't like anyone who criticizes driving that he deems acceptable. (My driving is rarely acceptable to him, but how much trouble can anyone get into on an empty road early in the morning?)

So the police squad car pulls up beside us and the passenger-side police officer gets back on his megaphone telling me to switch to the other lane (even though I knew I had to be in the lane I was in because I was about to make a left turn at the upcoming traffic light). And then both police officers gave us the official police glare.

I would have glared back but Chaim gets antsy when I provoke people in uniforms, which I am prone to doing every now and then. From his perspective, I pick fights and then move out of the way so that he can do battle on my behalf. There may be the odd moment of truth to that statement but if I was a bigger person I would definitely fight more of my own battles.

What could I do? I moved to the right-hand lane..... for three seconds and the self-satisfied police officers sped away. As I mentioned, I had to make a left-hand turn to get my kids to school. What was the point of that exercise? If two parallel lanes going the same direction are both open, what does it matter which one a driver chooses? I really hope someone writes in and explains this to me.

I wanted to go to the police station and complain. Problem is that a) my hebrew is truly bizarre and there are only one or two English-speaking police officers in Ra'anana; b) they are the police and they can taunt anyone they want; and c) they don't care because they are the police and I am not.

The point of all of this is simple: The US State Department has no right to independently determine the fate of Israel. It's not their call. They don't have to live with the consequences of the decisions they make about things that are none of their business and they do not really understand. We never elected you or your government and in case you didn't notice, you live in and work for another country on the other side of the world. If the US State Department wants to interfere in another democratic, western country they should go to Canada or Mexico -- at least there are shared borders and shared concerns. But whatever you State Department types decide, if you want to help, then get to work helping and stop imposing your world view on us.