Minutiae

Putting aside politics and literary aspirations and my usual garbage for a moment, I'd like to recount something that happened to me last week.

I was out bowling with some friends. Anyone who knows me would say that I'm a lightweight when it comes to drinking, and even that would be exaggerating my alcohol-drinking abilities. I never liked the taste and I dislike the feeling of being tipsy/drunk, so I never made it a habit. Thus, I was the only one not drinking that night in the bowling alley.
Skipping past a ton of shenanigans, I was driving home at around 1:45 AM, absolutely exhausted from having been up since 7 AM. I'm not falling asleep at the wheel though, thanks to a good assortment of Bruce Springsteen on the radio. The night was foggy, exceedingly so; it was difficult to see around 100 feet in any direction. Regardless, as I knew the road I was on quite well, I kept up my usual pace of around 65. A red light approaches in front of me, so I stop. As soon as it's green, the red-blue glare of police lights shines in my rear-view mirror.
Of course, I pull over. The short, bald cop who looks like Mark Strong's genetically inferior brother asks for my license and all that good stuff. He shines his flashlight in my back seat, where I have a Chinese rice paddy hat, a George Bush mask, and a blue plastic bag from when I bought some clothes from the thrift shop. The light lingers on my backseat, and I sense that he wants nothing more than to see what's in the bag.
The first thing the cop asks me when he gets back to my car is not "where have you been tonight" or "do you know how fast you were going," but "how much have you had to drink tonight?" I, of course, tell him the honest answer of none. Zip. Zero. Zilch. He asks me to step out of the car. I do.
"Follow my pen with your eyes," he says. I do. It's not hard, though being absolutely sodden tired probably makes me look more ghoulish than I realize.
"Lean your head back, close your eyes," he then says, and I do. I realize that this position is just a bit too comfortable and that I might actually fall backwards just from the sheer amount of tired that's weighing down my brain. I'm only a minute or two away from home. Let me go.
"How much have you smoked today?"
My mind goes blank for a second. Smoked? I've never smoked anything in my entire life, except for maybe some steaks when I wasn't a vegetarian. I reply with the truth.
"When was the last time you smoked?"
 If I had actually been high, I probably would have started freaking out. I vehemently deny smoking anything, either that day or in my entire life. It's hard to be honest with someone when they believe you are absolutely lying to save your skin.
"Your car smells of weed and alcohol."
I know my car smells a bit. The floor carpets and kind of dirty, but weed? Seriously? Has this guy ever smelled either weed and/or alcohol before? I've never smoked in my life, but even I can tell the difference between weed and damp floor carpets.
I then said something stupid. Very stupid. While his partner was sniffing through my window, I suggested he search my car. I very ardently stated that he should, considering he would find nothing. It didn't strike me, in my positively knackered state, until the day after that I had seen the same cop cars a few miles back. They pulled other people over as well. They were likely filling their ticket quotas, and I basically invited them to probe around my car and possibly plant evidence. Granted, that thought is tinged with paranoia, but the fact that they were accusing me of being high and smelling of weed when I very clearly didn't wasn't something that registered to me immediately. Maybe I was high on bowling ball fumes, who knows.
There was a brief standoff where tiny Mark Strong and I stood, essentially just staring at each other. He eventually went to his car to confer with his partner, and I ended up getting an $85 speeding ticket for going fast through a construction zone (never mind the fact that it was foggy and pretty hard to see any speed signs).
The whole incident left a bitter taste in my mouth because I know that not all cops are bad. Not all of them try to reach quotas, not all beat protesters; a few years ago, when I was playing baseball with my friends, a cop car stopped at the field and one of the officers asked if he could take some swings. He then bludgeoned the pitcher with the bat upon striking out. (Joke, obviously)
It's still worrying that there are those who take the term 'upholding the law' to a ludicrous standard, or even simply believe themselves to 'be the law.'
It's easy to say that 'power corrupts,' but the real question is, how much does it take? And why does it have to?