Zengels vs. The Fuzz

My sister would kill me if she knew I was writing this, but it's a great story.

The year was 1999. The event, my brother's wedding in Lewisburg, PA, about an hour from Penn State's main campus. For anyone unfamiliar with that area let me tell you, for miles and miles all you see is corn. A LOT of corn. Like every 40 minutes you'd see something OTHER than corn.

Gretchen and I rode back to NJ together after the festivities, her smoking Marlboros and speeding down the highway; far away from her younger brother's wedding. At the time I didn't understand why she was so upset that he was getting married before her, and frankly, I found it amusing. Fast forward to 2008 when I was 28 and watching my younger cousin get married before me and I understood. Something about the linear progression of time and how you feel dizzy when someone passes you.

But I digress. As Gretchen and I sped past an endless blur of green fields, we heard a siren and knew we had been nabbed.

Gretchen coached me and said, "Heidi....start crying." My forehead all crinkled, my eyes wide, I asked what she meant. With a crooked smile she said, "Start crying! It's our only way out of this....GO! START! Really lay it on thick!"

The problem is that I'm not a natural-born crier. I go months without crying. Finally realizing the drought, I'll force myself to watch Steel Magnolias or Beaches, just to flush out my tear ducts. So crying on demand is a talent that I don't possess.

So instead I giggled, which was contagious and before you knew it, the two of us were laughing our asses off as a state trooper knocked on my window.

As he retreated back to his car with Gretchen's license and registration, she said, "You know why we're getting a ticket? Because we're not pretty enough." Then in a dramatic fake sob, she whined, "WE'RE NOT PRETTYYYYYY ENOUGHHHHHHHHH...." I lost it, any composure I had was gone and I was back to hysterical laughter.

She swore me to secrecy and I promised I would file it in the back of the "Don't Tell Mom and Dad" folder.

There was something in that moment, maybe it was that yet another wedding had happened and it wasn't hers, that we had been caught speeding, but there wasn't the normal sense of resignation. It was a sense of, "This can't get any worse! So screw it!" It was a moment that will always make me laugh, because yeah, there are times when you think it can't get any worse and it does. And sometimes all you can do is laugh.

If I had to pay money for life lessons, I know how much that one would cost, $150. Or at least that's how much the state trooper thought it was worth.