A British friend of mine exchanged to the United States for his senior year of university. He was studying botany at the time, but now he is the pastor of a church. I remember that he always kept Venus flytraps in his room.
One day during his senior year, he asked me if I would be willing to drive him to Mexico, along with three of his British friends (two girls and one guy). None of them owned a car, and none of them knew Spanish. So I said yes, piled them all into my small Toyota, and off we went for the weekend. We all lived in Texas, and our destination was Laredo, a town on the border of Mexico, since I absolutely refuse to drive a car in Mexico. If you have white skin, the police sometimes throw you in jail for no reason, because (of course) white people are rich and should be able to bribe the authorities.
It took all day to drive from Denton, Texas, to Laredo, Mexico. I was driving on a long and lonely road in the middle of the night, with an occasional dry tumbleweed blowing across the flat, dark highway. There was nothing to see to the right, and nothing to the left. The road was a straight line, seemingly forever. I saw no speed limit sign, so I assumed it was 65. I stayed exactly at 65 because I wanted to make it to the border as soon as possible.
Suddenly a car appeared out of nowhere and started to tailgate me. The car was pushing me forward because he was right on my bumper, and I didn’t want him to hit my car. I wished that he would just pass me, since there was no way for me to get over without driving onto dirt. He followed me for a long time.
Lights started flashing. It was a police car! He pulled me over and clocked me at 70mph. My heart was pounding because I had never gotten a ticket before. I paid attention to every word he said. I tried to explain to him that he had pushed me forward, that he had forced me to go faster.
“The speed limit is 55mph.” He rattled off a memorized speech. “You have the right to speak to a judge.”
“Isn’t the judge in bed right now? What you’re saying doesn’t even make sense,” I stammered, not trying to be funny, but knowing that something unfair had just happened.
He slapped a ticket into my hand and walked away.
We spent the night in a scummy motel with a neon sign that buzzed. It stormed that night.
The next morning, we walked across the border and spent the day walking around and going into shops. I translated for my friends and made sure they each got their passports stamped. I’ve never been to Mexico since.
