Brake Light, Smrake Light.

Diane's car has a brake light out; has for some time now. I noticed it once months ago while following her home and started to replace it then, but found it was a bigger job than I wanted to get into at the time. Anyway, out of site out of mind, I promptly forgot about it. In October I drove it on a business trip. My boss was behind me at one point at sent me an email from her Blackberry to tell me that I had a brake light out. I thanked her and again promptly forgot about it. I figured she told me because she knew me, or maybe because in the city she's from people actually regularly check those things and make sure they are all working. Living in the south, I've grown up seeing rust buckets that shouldn't be allowed on the street everyday. I see headlights out, brake lights out, sometimes all three brake lights out. I remember once telling a girl I work with that one of her brake lights was out, and a year later it was still out. I've grown up seeing it as a fact of life that people don't fix their lights, and I've never complained as long as not all three were out. This morning on the way to work, driving Diane's car, I was stopped at a light and heard a tapping on my window. My first thought when I saw this guy was that he was about to ask me for money, or for a ride somewhere. But no, he tells me that I have a brake light out, then gets back in his truck. Then I see a brake light out on the car in front of me. My next thought is, who does that? Who gets out of their car at a stop light and tells the person in front of them that they have a brake light out. Especially in a state where defective lights are as common as Earnhardt Jr. stickers and the number 3 with angel wings in the back window.

I have since found out from co-workers that you can get a ticket for having a light out, and that I should be thankful that the scary man knocked on my window to tell me it was out. However, if that's the case, I find it hard to believe that cops have trouble making their ticket quota's here.