{"id":2537,"date":"2012-03-06T17:30:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T15:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=2537"},"modified":"2012-03-06T17:31:47","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T15:31:47","slug":"canadian-cop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2012\/03\/canadian-cop\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Cop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\"\"<\/a>\n\t

Toronto's Pearson Airport<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The woman at the rental car agency desk at Toronto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pearson Airport eyed my Israeli driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license suspiciously. She looked at the laminated card, then up at me, then back and forth several times.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to have a problem if a policeman pulls you over,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she finally said, explaining her hesitation. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no English on this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I pointed to my name and birthday in clear English. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she assured me with confidence.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll take my chances,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I replied and, a few minutes later, we were walking to our rented minivan for the week. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Anyway, since when have I ever been stopped by a cop,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I sniggered to myself.<\/p>\n

Imagine, then, my surprise when I was flagged down by an officer just a day later while returning to the very same airport to pick up some late arriving family members who were attending the wedding that had brought us to the Great White North.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your hurry?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the policeman asked. His tone was less aggressive than conversational, in that agreeably polite Canadian way.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re picking up my wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 93-year-old grandmother,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I replied, which was true. She was waiting inside the terminal.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You know you were going 60 in a 30 kilometer zone,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. Courteous, just a simple statement of fact, right? Nevertheless, he took my license. As he held it in his hand, I saw him trying to make out the writing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t in English,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you know \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the rental car clerk\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s premonition had come to fruition. Without fully thinking through the consequences, I pointed out my name and birthday. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thanks,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, almost jovially.<\/p>\n

But rather than giving me my license back and graciously wishing me a good day, he sauntered back to his car. For the first time, I started to worry (while trying not to curse). Would the fine I now imagined as a viable possibility be more than the rental cost of the vehicle? Would I have to appear in Canadian traffic court? Should we have taken the bus?<\/p>\n

Now, if this were in Israel, my polite policeman would have been replaced by a 20-something snarly Israeli girl cop who would have ignored any attempts at charm. She would then sit in her vehicle for a good 30 minutes with no explanation.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happened to me before, just for a random check, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never understood what takes so long. Do they have to run my name by the Interpol database using the same sporadic Internet connectivity that plagues my home computer? Are they just sitting and drinking coffee for fun? Are they actually\u00c2\u00a0ordering\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>coffee?<\/p>\n

The Canadian cop still kept us waiting, but for only half the time (it probably was even less, but time slows down when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re watching your bank account virtually drain). When he walked back to my car, the long rectangular paper in his hand did not bode well.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, my nerves were for naught: the paper was just a warning. Wow \u00e2\u20ac\u201c either Canadians really are nicer, or issuing a ticket to a foreigner with a driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license in a language with squiggly lines, with the added high chance I would skip town without depositing a check (which would undoubtedly have been written with even more squiggles) was simply too much complication.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, I had to circle the airport while Grandma made her way to the curb. As I returned, I drove at the proscribed 30 km\/hour.\u00c2\u00a0Do you have any idea how slow 30 km\/hour really is?<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0And yet, all the other cars I saw were following the rules and crawling along. My thoughts returned to Israel again: no way an Israeli driver would go that slow \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even a ticket would be better than being a\u00c2\u00a0freier<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For the rest of the trip, I stuck to the speed limit. I probably would have gotten another free pass if I were stopped again, but I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t taking any chances \u00e2\u20ac\u201c squiggly Israeli driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license or not.<\/p>\n

The cop was first copped on Israelity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The woman at the rental car agency desk at Toronto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pearson Airport eyed my Israeli driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s license suspiciously. She looked at the laminated card, then up at me, then back and forth several times. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to have a problem if a policeman pulls you over,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she finally said, explaining her hesitation. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no English […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,18],"tags":[23,48,20,101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2541,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions\/2541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}