D. NOT U. I.

I had just eaten a wonderful meal at my dear friend Mark Luebker's restaurant, Stoney River in Deer Park. If you haven't been there, its AWESOME! The steak is delicious, great appetizers, other food, dessert, wine, hell even the butter is better than any other butter you've ever had!

Any way, I enjoyed a glass of wine with my pork chop dinner and thought nothing of it, there was not enough for any speech-altering moments (see previous posts).
As I drove home, south on Rand Road, I might have been distracted by putting my gps back in the glove box and maybe sped a little bit. When I saw the police lights in my rear view mirror, I assumed that he noticed I had my dome light on and was putting a gps in the glove box (not while moving of course) and was pulling me over for being a dumb ass.
So when the officer asked if I knew the speed limit on Rand, before the last light I had to honestly answer that I didn't. I didn't think traffic was light enough to be traveling more than a few mph over so was dumbfounded when he said I was going 47 in a 30. OOPS!
He asked me where I was going, since I live in the city, and I explained that I had just eaten dinner at my friend's restaurant down the street. He asked if I had anything to drink that night and I was honest and said I had a glass of wine but that was a while ago by now (dessert took a long time to eat).
Now, as you can imagine my speech was pretty bad because I was pretty nervous about being pulled over in Palatine.
So when he asked again about drinking I responded that I only had the one drink and I told him that I had a stuttering problem (surprisingly w/o stuttering) and that I wasn't drunk, just stuttering.
(As Jimmy and others later pointed out, if I had been drinking a lot I wouldn't have stuttered, but that's for another post)
But he didn't to hear anything about the stutter or my excuses and started getting very short with me. He first asked me to touch my nose and when that was fine, he pulled out a breathe-alizer and seemed sure that he would bust me.
I said no problem and blew a .025. For those of you that don't know, Illinois' legal limit is .08 so .025 is well below the limit.
The officer saw this number and was now his turn to be dumbfounded. I again explained that I had a speech problem and this time removed my Speech Easy device from my pocket (it wasn't in my ear because I had music playing and the windows down, Mom) and said that I used it to assist with my speech difficulties.
He looked very embarrassed and sort of stumbled for a minute (maybe he needs a Speech Easy) and said he was sorry... and I could go on my way!

Since I told this story last week, people have said I should be angry about it and sue the town for discrimination but lets face facts, I probably was speeding and I'd assume someone not speaking clearly after dinner was drunk too. As we've talked about before, the blocking form of stuttering is less clear. If I'd said that I'd been coming from St-st-st-stoney River instead of SSSSTTTToney River, I might not have been pulled out of the car and still gotten the ticket after all.
So the important lesson from this is...

STUTTERING SAVES TRAFFIC TICKETS!!!!