Aw, man. I hate the airport. It always leaves me feeling sad and lonesome, no matter what or why. It�s the place you go where someone�s leaving you or you're leaving someone or somewhere. I get to feeling that tug in the middle at airports, the tug of worry and homesickness and longing. Jeff�s gone to Texas. He�ll be back tomorrow or Saturday depending on how long it takes him to drive a big grapple truck home. Airports remind me of the wide world and how easy it�d be for someone to get lost in it. Don�t get lost, Jeff.

I left work early yesterday when Jeff showed up saying he was flying out this morning (lord, his flight was at 6:15�which meant getting up at 3 in the morning. My eyes feel like they got toothpicks propping them open but it�s just all the coffee). The school here was having their annual all-the-dorms-are-empty-but-we-still-got-all-this-stuff tag sale. Fifty cents for everything. We got two big garbage bags full of clothes for about $15�there were some nice things. I got a pair of fancy running shoes. Fifty cents! After that we had to drive all over the place running errands. On the way back toward home (actually, on the way to the DMV�but I�ll get to that in a minute), Jeff was speeding and we got pulled over and by GOD that cop was such a dickface motherfucking cocksucker. I�ve never seen anything like it. Jeff says they always treat him like that. He was just plain mean and he said he was going to get a dog out there to search the truck (I guess we looked like drug addicts or something) but the funny thing? He let Jeff go with just a warning and Jeff was going about 20 miles over the speed limit, which means an automatic court date here in this fine state. I bet it was because Jeff asked him if he�d got him on radar and the idiot said yes I do, DO YOU WANT TO SEE IT (all threatening and assholey) and Jeff said, very politely, yes I do. But then he never did show him�he just went away with Jeff�s license like they do and then came back and gave Jeff a hard time and then let him go. What a dick. But now I know the trick! Ask if he got it on radar! That�s fucking awesome.

It�s funny though, seeing how Jeff was treated�Jeff even said that guy wasn�t as bad as half the cops he�s run into. I�ve run into my fair share but they�ve always treated me pretty all right�mostly acting like they my daddy or some shit. I hate to think how those fuckers treat folks who don�t speak English well or who�s skin is the wrong color. That asshole yesterday said, �I don�t care what you do when you get back to Randolph county, but if I catch you again in Davidson county, you�ll be sorry.� What the hell? Man, you put that uniform on and it�s power tripping in every direction. He doesn�t give a shit about the law. I�m so damned na�ve sometimes. Got me thinking about that Stanford Prison experiment. I saw the video about this a few years ago and all the news of the world has got me thinking about it a lot lately.

So yep, then I had to go to the DMV to renew my license. The woman there, however, was just about one of the nicest people I�ve ever met. She was reading a book about growing and propagating wildflowers in North Carolina. She also got to tell me the lovely news that my license has been suspended since July 2001. Did you read that? FOR THREE YEARS. Holy smokes, man. It�s something to do with one of my tickets and I never got the notice because they sent it to an old address and blah blah blah. It turned out all right, I just had to pay to get it reinstated and that was the end of that. Weird though. She said, �you must have been driving very well for the past three years because I hate to think what might have happened to you if you�d been pulled over.� Which, if you�ll remember, did happen, in North Carolina, not a year and a half ago. I even had to go to court. Nobody said a damned thing to me about a suspended license. Well. I�m reformed. No more speeding for this one.

Of course they searched Jeff at the airport. I stayed to make sure he got through security all right because I knew that out of everyone, Jeff'd be the one they searched. I hated to watch (stop rolling your eyes out there, you readers) and I have to fight that impulse to just march up to the security folks (or the police fucker yesterday) and say TREAT HIM RIGHT. It's the guardian bear in me. Treat him right all you in the wide world, treat him right and send him home safe.