Above the Law

When my brother cut his wrist cleaning the glass hamster tank my mother called for a police escort and drove 90 miles an hour to Rye Hospital. I was holding up my brother's arm in the back seat of the brown Ford station wagon. The Police were behind us.

On normal days my mother drove through red lights and across double yellow lines justifying all of these maneuvers."If you honk, it's okay!" I was terrified to be her captive passenger. Unlike most 16 year olds I declined to learn to drive for another decade having been witness to all of these episodes.

She was even given a ticket for not pulling over when the police were chasing someone. She joked about how she was going to go to court to contest the ticket. As if she was above the law. It was her world and even the police just lived in it.