Last week, I went to the "big city" (I live in a small town; 2500 pop.) to do some shopping. Most of the time, I dress out of the butch side of my wardrobe; women's clothes but the effect is androgynous. That allows people to see me the way they want to. I'm always surprised when they look at me and address me as a woman, but it does happen and when it does my voice doesn't shake their perception.

When I go shopping, I dress femininely beyond a shadow of a doubt. That includes light make up -- less is more, you know. That consists of darkening my eyebrows (they've gone to salt & pepper) mascara and lipstick. Fortunately, when I renewed my driver's license last, I was wearing make up.

I generally drive the highway at five over the limit and rarely ever catch up to someone and often have folks come up behind me. On this occasion a small red car caught up to me at a high rate of speed.. I wasn't surprised when he passed me. We went around a curve with me following and we caught up to a white pickup. The red car passed the pickup and I determined that the pickup was going at least five MPH slower than I wanted to. The straightaway was pretty long so I too passed the pickup. I thought it was pretty reasonable to assume that the red car would continue on at the same speed as he was going when he caught up to me.

Not so. He pulled in about three or four car lengths ahead of the pick up and paced him. There was oncoming traffic and by the time I got far enough ahead of the pickup to pull back into the right lane, I had to break pretty sharply to match the speed of the red car.

I don't know where the cop was, but he turned up behind the pickup, red lights flashing. Buy that time the red car had pulled away and was around a curve ahead of me. I began looking for a place to pull over that would be big enough for me and the pickup. I never imagined the cop was after me. The pickup kept his slow place and they (he and the cop) dropped out of sight in the next set of curves.

But shortly, the cop was behind me, lights still flashing. This time I didn't need a big spot to pull over and soon found one. I expected the cop to pass me but he pulled in behind me.

I got my license out of my purse and rolled the window down. I waited with my hands on the wheel in plain view.

The cop told me that he had stopped me because of the pass. He thought I had braked because of the oncoming traffic and that they too had put on the breaks. I explained about the red car and the need to match my speed to his when I pulled into the right lane and told him that I hadn't observed the oncoming car slowing down; I did allow that my attention was focused on getting back into the right lane so I couldn't say for sure that they didn't.

He took my license back to his car and ran me. I have a spotless driving record further back than they can check, He came back and we discussed how dangerous that particular stretch of road is. Another car went flying buy, hardly pulling over enough to miss the cop and he yelled for them to slow down. He told me he had a pin in his right leg from being hit by an idiot like that one. I mentioned that I thought the "Pull Over" law that requires drivers on multi-lane highways to use the left lane when passing emergency vehicles with their lights flashing and to slow down on two lane highways, was one of the best traffic laws they'd ever passed.

The cop looked at my license, looked at me and then back at the license. Obviously checking that the picture matched my face. He then gave me my license back (no citation) and admonished me to watch the passes.