It happened.
After nearly nineteen years of driving violation free I was pulled over last Sunday for driving over the speed limit. I was not driving recklessly, in fact, I was driving in the middle of a group of cars on a four lane street lined with houses and businesses. I never saw the police car – I was actually stopped at a light when his lights came on, and I couldn’t have told you how fast I was going (although he did). I knew I wasn’t going any faster than the cars around me, but when I pulled away from the stop and consciously drove at the thirty mile an hour speed I knew that I was certainly not driving that slowly.
It wasn’t the end of the world. I suppose I was due (or overdue). I’ve had a good run, no accidents of my causing, no traffic violations of any kind. But I’m not always the most conscious of my speed – watching the actions of others around me more than my speedometer. Needless to say, I’ve been watching it a bit more this week.
I’ve been needing to slow down in a few other areas as well – to take on a few less projects, and pay a bit more attention to those already in process. Doing this isn’t always the easiest to follow through on – especially with two kids who need to eat and sleep and be taken to basketball games and Daisy Scouts. But the other night, E and I stayed up late and I worked on this laptop, on the model and the projects and the drawings I’ve been trying to complete. She watched me work for an hour and thoroughly enjoyed it. We dreamed big, and translated those dreams to quick three-dimensional reality and within twenty minutes of watching she was already pointing out omissions and errors in the model. I think I could probably give her another hour of instruction and her own laptop and she’d be designing cities of her own. Children are amazing, and can understand and enjoy things that we might not even think of exposing them to until we slow down a bit and let them in.