Police Gathering

I am pretty exhausted tonight after taking dinner to Matt and the pharmacists at the hospital, then fighting massive crowds at the mall just to get a few last things for Christmas. I'm done except for Brennan, who can't seem to figure out ANYTHING (besides a car) that he wants for Christmas.

Since my creative juices will soon give way to useless rambling, I will tell this story. Matt let me drive the new car today because he knew I would have shopping and errands to do, plus I could get it ready for skiing tomorrow. While I was picking up the orders for the pharmacists at Chipotle, I noticed a few police cars parked outside the restaurant. When I had paid for everything and left Chipotle, there were three policemen gathered in front of the Highlander. Here is the conversation that followed:

Officer: "Maam, is this your car?"

Me: "Yes, is there a problem."

Officer: "What kind of gas mileage does it get?"

Me(baffled): "17 in the city, 23 on the highway."

Officer #2: "Is this the Rav4?"

Me: "No, sir. It's a Highlander."

Officer #3: "Oh yeah, it's the one that's built on the Camry chasis."

Me: "Actually, it's the Avalon now."

Officer: (Eyes wide) "So it's bigger than the old ones?"

Me. "Yes, I suppose so."

Officer: "This just might be my next car when my Camry dies."

Me: "Your Camry will never die. Trust me."



So they were just discussing the car when I got out there, but I figured that with my luck and new cars, they would be writing me up a ticket or something! This was the first casual and fun conversation with a policeman that I have had in a long time. I told Matt this story and he said he would have been freaked out if he had seen that many cops around the car. I took it as a compliment if they liked it that much, even covered in dirt and road chemicals as it was at that point. (I ran it through the car wash tonight because I am told by many people that the mag chlorite they put down out here really can do damage to a car.) I hope we made a good choice of car...after all, it seems to catch the attention of policemen, which is not ALWAYS a good thing!