don’t touch the solid stripe…or little kids?

i have my share of cop friends…

…and i have my share of criminal friends. typically they all get together a few days ago, put aside their differences, and eat mexican food with this white boy on a black holiday – although for the last several years we’ve been “cop-free” in more than one sense of the word. were we this year? no telling – this bit is being written in may.

way to ruin the magic, huh? let’s move on.

what’s funny is even my most reckless of felonious friends still have certain laws they won’t break, no matter what. “don’t touch kids”, for example. not that there’s a law written that way verbatim, but you know what i’m getting at – and none of my friends break that one. that makes sense. that’s some sick shit. you know what’s more amusing to me, though? the stupid laws they still refuse to break even though…well…they’re kind of stupid. the solid stripe comes to mind.

you know the one – it’s in the middle of the road.

i’ll have friends that will be barreling down the road, going over a hundred in a sixty-five, while buzzed, come up behind some slow-going car and slow down to forty-five and wait to pass just ’cause the stripe is solid so it’s a no passing zone. like that reckless driving/DWI ticket gets infinitely worse because you also passed in a no passing zone.

and i’ve found i can be guilty of this as well.

buzzing off half a dozen (or more) dollar sangritas from san marcos, i’m leaving martindale, and wanting to open the car up…but i patiently wait for the stripe to go dotted before i blaze around the septuagenarian in her buick le sabre and disappear into the horizon. why did this one stick with us from driver’s ed? the “don’t drink and drive” didn’t, and the “obey the posted speed limit” one didn’t. hell, even the basic “keep both hands at ’10’ and ‘2’…” didn’t. but the solid stripe thing? we treat that like it’s the eleventh commandment.

now don’t get me wrong – i know that sometimes, like on hills or curves, it’s there for our own protection. that i get. i’m not gonna risk my life just to get home a few minutes earlier – especially when i full well know there’s no pussy waiting for me here. but the ones that are just there to be there (leaving martindale, for example, which is dead level and bone straight) makes no sense to me. so fuck this – my pledge between now and NEXT juneteenth is to ignore that little stripe when i need to – let’s see how many tickets i rack up!

but i still won’t touch kids…that’s just fucked up.