Last night, I was stopped at one of those "pop-up" screening points that local law enforcement sets up to look for inebriated drivers. Everyone driving south on Fairfax was herded into two lanes where men who I believe were from the Sheriff's Office give us a quick check for tipsiness.
I've been through these before and they usually go like this: The officer asks me if I've had anything to drink that evening. I say no. He says, "Well, good evening to you, sir" and off I go. It always seemed to me like it would be pretty easy for someone who was a wee bit intoxicated to get through but I figured it had to do some good. I have seen them ask drivers to step out of their cars and submit to a field sobriety test of some kind.
Anyway, last night when I was stopped, it took a few minutes, not because of me but because of the driver in the car ahead of me. That person was engaged in a long discussion with an officer and I couldn't drive onward until they'd completed it. So when another officer came up to talk to me, we had a long discussion of our own. It went roughly like this…
HIM: Sir, thank you for stopping. We just want to ask you if you've had any alcoholic beverages this evening.
ME: No, I haven't had a drop in forty years.
HIM: Fine, fine. Well, as soon as the car ahead of you is done, you can be on your way. Forty years, huh? What made you stop?
ME: Well, to be honest with you, I never stopped because I never started. I've never had an alcoholic drink in my life but I've learned that some people don't believe that. They will, however, believe "I haven't had a drop in forty years."
HIM (good-naturedly:) So…you lied to me!
ME: Oh, no. What I said was absolutely true. I haven't had a drop in forty years. I also haven't had a drop in fifty years. If you want the absolute truth, I'm 63 years old and I haven't had a drop in sixty-three years. Hey, now you answer a question for me. When you stop cars and ask them what you asked me, does anyone ever say, "Yeah, I just had nineteen martinis and a couple of bourbons on the rocks"?
HIM: Not exactly like that but they do sometimes give it away that they've been drinking. If they say "Oh, I only had one glass of wine," that probably means they had more than that. If they're slurring their speech or they're acting too cute, we give them the once-over.
ME: Caught anybody tonight?
HIM: Oh, yeah. About twenty minutes ago…a whole SUV full of teenagers. We just took them away. They were all drunk, including the driver. He tried to play it cool but the others in his vehicle were so obviously plastered that we checked him out. He kept saying, "I'm not drunk. I'm the designated drinker." Not driver…drinker. He was way over the limit. Usually though, we can tell just looking at them and asking what I asked you. I asked you and you gave me a straight answer without hesitation. I knew you were fine.
Then the officer interrogating the driver ahead of me came over to him for a brief consultation. From what I could gather, the problem was not that the driver ahead of me was drunk but that she did not have one of those things called a driver's license. He had not asked her for her license but the sign telling us we had to stop said "Prepare to show license" and she had immediately started explaining to him that she'd accidentally left hers home. I had not been asked for mine and if she hadn't started explaining why she didn't have hers, the officer might never have known.
He had gotten on the radio and run her name and (I suppose) other information and he found out that there was no record of her ever having had a driver's license. He had also run the license plate number of the car she was driving and while it had not been reported as stolen, it was registered to someone else. It was a friend's car, she said, but she couldn't come up with the alleged friend's name.
Since this was obviously going to take a while, they were pulling her car out of the lane so I and others stacked up behind me could press on. Just before I was able to depart, the officer who'd spoken with me said, "See? These things do some good." I guess they do.