The Actual Arrest

December 2023, Richardson, TX

I had just left the bar that Friday evening,  only 2 miles from home. I was stopped at a red light when a song I really like came on and I blasted the volume, which was normal for me. I was not having a great day and music has a way of making me feel better.

It was unusually hot day on this day, almost 80 degrees. I was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. In December! For a girl who grew up in the Midwest, this was awesome.

After work, I had a happy hour date who took me to a bar that had waitresses dressed in skimpy little outfits. I mean this place made Hooters look like a church. So I had one drink with him while anxiously waiting til he finished his so I could get the heck out of there. It was only about 5:30pm when we got done and I didn’t want to go home so I went to my local bar that I frequented sometimes. I had two drinks there, tequila and water, the same I had with my crappy date.

So around 7:30pm, after having a few laughs with the some of the regulars, I decided that unless I wanted to leave my car in the parking lot, I should stop drinking and head home. So I paid my tab and left.

When that light turned green, with the music blasting, I was kind of in the zone and just floored it. Only a few seconds later I saw the flashing lights, turned the volume down and heard the sirens. Shit. What the heck did I do? Going 60 mph on what I thought was a 50 zone, but it was 45.

I pulled over in a parking lot right away and rolled my window. The officer asked if I had been drinking. He smelled alcohol on my breath. Damn tequila. I didn’t want to lie and said yes, “ I had 3 drinks over the past 3 hours”.  I know myself, that’s not a lot for me. But I hadn’t eaten since lunch, which was around 1pm. That didn’t help.

He asked me to step out of the vehicle and had me do a couple of sobriety tests. I walked the line, one foot over the other. Then he had me follow a pen in his hand. I thought I had done pretty well on both. He even told me I did ok. But he said something in my eyes made him suspect I was over the limit.

He asked if I wanted to do a breathalyzer or a blood test. I opted for a blood test. I figured I just left the bar and surely I’d blow past the legal .08 limit. What I didn’t know was that I would be arrested, under the suspicion alone. So he put handcuffs on me and had me sit in the back of his police car. I felt like such a criminal.

I cooperated at every step and didn’t get mad at him at all. It was my fault. No one elses. I just wish he had given me a warning or something, since I’ve never been in trouble with the law. I even teared up and got emotional and told him I was having a lousy day and that my date sucked. He tried to sympathize, even told me he understands as he himself is divorced.

We rode to the hospital where we waited over an hour as it was a busy night. The officer was a regular guy, he was kind. We chatted about random stuff - sports, covid, being new to Texas. I had just moved to Dallas 6 months prior and he moved from NYC couple of years ago. I was hoping maybe after he got to know me, he’d let me go. He didn’t. It was probably too late at that point. He did take the cuffs off me. By the end of it all, my blood was drawn and we went to the local Richardson jail. This was not county jail, but at the time, it made no difference to me. I was put in a holding cell. In jail. Freezing my ass off.