New cop in town

I looked behind me and saw the red flashing lights. I sat back in my seat disgusted, I was being pulled over. When I was completely stopped, the police officer stepped out of his squad car and slowly made his way to my car. 

He wore shiny Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses and motioned for me to lower my window. The officer towered over me and asked for my license and registration. I had been paying close attention to the speedometer, so I knew I wasn’t speeding. “What’s wrong officer,” I asked. 

He repeated his command: “License and registration.”

Throwing the book at me

I pulled out my license and then my registration from the glove compartment, handed both to the officer and he went back to his car. I was frustrated. It was the middle of nowhere. Why had he stopped me?

When he came back, I was going to demand an answer. The officer beat me to it. Before I could speak, he handed me the license and registration and in his other hand, he handed me a ticket. 

“I’m with the Tri-State Grammar Police sir,” he said. “In the past week, you misspelled two words and used ‘effect” when you meant to use ‘affect.’ You missed two commas, put a period where you should have used a semicolon, and completely butchered the ellipsis.”

Straight to jail

For the longest time, he looked down at me with a smug look that questioned how I could have been so dense. Finally, he told me that ordinarily he would take me in custody for such blatant errors, but he was letting me off with a fine. 

“Damn, you guys are tough,” I said. “What do you do if I make a math error. Send me directly to the gallows.”

He glared back and said that there was nothing preventing him from ripping up the ticket and taking me straight to jail, and back to seventh grade English. I mumbled thanks under my breath, that I didn’t need to go back to diagramming sentences, I had barely survived the first time, and that the fine was enough.

He glared back at me for a minute or two and then walked back to his squad car. 

Damn Grammar Police, they’ll catch you every time!