I got a speeding ticket, and  I’m offended.  Not about actually getting a ticket because I pretty much deserved it.  I’m offended by the actual ticket.

I was making my way through the town of McRae, Georgia, which is on Georgia’s “High-Tech Information Corridor,” a boring piece of highway that stretches for 60 miles with absolutely no cell phone service.  A girl can get bored with no one to talk to, so I was listening to Jimmy Buffett sing Love and Luck – “With a little love and luck you will get by . . .” – and looked up to see blue lights in my rear view mirror.

According to the polite but plump young officer, I was going “sempty-figh in a fitty-figh.”  Never mind that I was following a pickup truck with rural Georgia tags that must have been going “etty in a fitty-figh.”  He had a Georgia tag, and mine was from Florida.

Laverne, my eight-pound dachshund, started barking the second I pulled over.  And that prompted my three-legged Australian Shepherd, Pancho, who believes that his job is to herd dachshunds, to pick her up by her collar.  And that prompted her to begin snarling and baring her teeth, which made him do the same.  My car sounded like Michael Vick’s backyard when the officer approached it.

The officer peered into the back of my SUV and obviously decided the scene did not merit dog-fighting charges.

No such luck with the speeding ticket, though.

Did I mention that I deserved a ticket?  I was speeding.  My father has been telling me for years that I deserve a ticket, ever since the time he followed me from Destin, Florida, to Atlanta and couldn’t catch his breath for a whole week.

In fact, I once left Atlanta for St. Augustine a good 90 minutes after my friend Fran, a government employee who obeys all the rules.  In my defense, Fran stopped for lunch and a potty break, while I opted for an apple and a NASA astronaut diaper.  But I still caught up to her on I-10 about 20 miles west of Jacksonville.  So yes, I deserved a ticket.  But, still, I didn’t deserve the way the officer wrote it.

I’d also like to point out that I’ve gotten out of a ticket or two in my day.  I’m not saying it had anything to do with my demeanor or my appearance.  I’ve never cried when an officer approached my car.  And I’ve never offered to introduce a policeman to Mboob.  I’m just saying officers have taken pity on me before and waved me on with a smiling but stern suggestion that I slow down.  But on this particular day, still in a state of disbelief at having to have a biopsy on my shitty right titty, I rolled out of bed, threw the dogs in the car, and took off.  In other words, the Georgia humidity had my hair looking like Medusa herself had given me a blowout.  And seeing those blue lights made me start sweating like a whore in church.  So the young officer was not inclined to let me off with a warning.

But still.  The way he wrote the ticket was just plain offensive.

He took my license and went back to his vehicle and wrote it out.  He brought it back to me, and I signed it, and went on my way.  It wasn’t until I attempted to pay the ticket by logging onto EZCOURTPAY.COM  and entering the ticket number and my birthdate in the space indicating “offender’s birthdate” that I noticed what he’d written.

According to the officer, my hair color was “brown.”

Brown, my ass.  I paid a small fortune for this blonde.  More than the stupid ticket cost, actually.

The judge is a woman.  I’m wondering if I showed up in court with my three dachshunds, the three-legged Australian shepherd, a copy of my suspicious mammogram, and the latest receipt from getting my hair done maybe she would take pity on me.

Or maybe I could just slow down.