{"id":3035,"date":"2011-02-25T14:08:54","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T18:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/?p=3035"},"modified":"2011-02-25T14:08:54","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T18:08:54","slug":"grandmother-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/2011\/02\/25\/grandmother-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandmother Terrorists!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Illinois-not<\/a><\/p>\n

Seeing the babies was wonderful, but the driving part of this whole trip has sucked, to say the least. There has been a kamikaze bird into my windshield, a psycho trucker, a hotel room with wires where the smoke detector belonged and a huge chunk of truck tire in the middle of the road I couldn’t avoid hitting. But the stupidest thing so far was getting pulled over by an Illinois state trooper yesterday.<\/p>\n

It was around mid-day and we were driving on I-80. Traffic was heavy since we were in the Chicago area and we passed a state trooper on the side of the road with another car. He finished with that person and pulled out. Of course that caused everyone to slow down and stay in the slow lane. He came up on the left and slowed down to stay right behind me checking out my truck. Then he pulled up alongside of me, clearly seeing 2 women in the car, then he slowed again and pulled behind me and put on his lights.<\/p>\n

I pulled over, thinking that just possibly there was some damage to my car from the truck tire incident that he noticed while following behind me. He walked up to the back of my SUV and kicked at the back of it. Hmmm…so maybe there was something wrong back there. Then he peeked in the windows before heading over to the passenger side window. My mother rolled down the window and he started asking us questions<\/p>\n

Him: Where are you coming from?<\/p>\n

Me: Nebraska<\/p>\n

Him: Why were you in Nebraska?<\/p>\n

Me: My daughter just had twins. We were visiting (Is that any of his business? Did we just cross the border into another country?)<\/em><\/p>\n

Him: Do you have any explosives devices?<\/p>\n

Me: No (Do we look like terrorists? WTH??)<\/em><\/p>\n

Him: Do you have any weapons in your vehicle?<\/p>\n

Me: No (unless you count my 73 year old mother’s cane!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Him: Do you have any illegal drugs in your vehicle?<\/p>\n

Me: No (OMG! Seriously?)<\/em><\/p>\n

Him: Why didn’t you fly?<\/p>\n

Me: My mother is afraid to fly since 9\/11. (Really? Why didn’t we fly????? Oh wait, we didn’t want to get treated like terrorists, like you’re doing right now!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Him: Would you consent to a search of your vehicle?<\/p>\n

Me: Go ahead (Just keep your hands off our Krispy Kreme donuts!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Then he asked for my license, but barely looked at it before handing it back. He said he pulled me over because I was following too close to the car in front of me. That’s sooo not true. He pulled me over because I’m from New York because every single car he passed before he got to me was just as close. They had all slowed down and pulled over into the right lane because they saw him and if that was truly the case, he wouldn’t have asked me so many ridiculous questions before finally telling me why he pulled me over. Apparently, it’s very suspicious for a grandmother and great-grandmother to drive across America when you have New York plates. Because everyone from New York has explosives, weapons and illegal drugs in their vehicles. It made me so angry to be treated that way and I couldn’t wait to get out of Illinois and not spend one more second there than necessary.<\/p>\n

If that state trooper is any indication of how the rest of Illinois feels about New Yorkers, I’m glad we’re out of there. I’ve never felt so unwelcome in a place in my life. It was as if we had crossed the border into a\u00a0communist\u00a0country and we needed to give an accounting of our actions. I’ve never before felt uncomfortable in my own country. I’ve always been proud to be an American. I have even worked in a police department as a dispatcher and have always felt that the police were there to protect us, but after yesterday, I’m no longer so confident.<\/p>\n

We pulled over for lunch at the next exit and my poor mother was so worried that he was\u00a0still be out there and would pull us over again because we should have been gone from the area, she saved the receipt from lunch so she could show it to him. Are grandmothers and great-grandmothers the new threat to America? Give me a break!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seeing the babies was wonderful, but the driving part of this whole trip has sucked, to say the least. There has been a kamikaze bird into my windshield, a psycho trucker, a hotel room with wires where the smoke detector belonged and a huge chunk…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[730,855,1608,1870],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3ISGQ-MX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bluemonkeybutt.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}