I’ve never been cited for violating traffic rules. Ever. I don’t know if it’s because I somehow look innocent (riiiight), or that I’m a girl, or that I’ve never really broken too many road rules, but I’ve never gotten a traffic ticket. Heck, I drive for a living, and I have still squeaked by. I’ve been pulled over a few times, but still no citations, and last night made me think that my winning streak was over.

I was getting out of work yesterday and figured I should make plans for the evening. I called my friend Ben.

“Let’s see Benjamin Button,” I suggested. We agreed, and I was headed to Littleton for the evening. I wasn’t going to go to my co-worker’s party, nor did I feel like drinking, and plans to see a movie seemed far more cut-and-dry than any other potential plans.

Or, so it seemed at the time.

I pulled out of the parking lot another half-hour later after getting held up at work. On the highway, I slid into fourth gear without a issue, bumping into fifth when the flashing lights triumphantly blazed across my rear view mirror. I figured the extra step on the gas was going to cost me a point or two and a good wad of cash. I calmly took out my license and registration and rolled down the wrong window.I’m notorious for setting myself up for minor troubles on the road. Just ask my friend Efrem, who was the passenger in the car when we ran out of gas on the side of an onramp in Seattle. This was nothing in comparison, but I was sure I was finally going to get my first traffic ticket.

Officer Wilson, as his card would later identify him, knocked on the other window and shone his bright light into my car. “Miss,” he said politely. “Did you know you have a headlight out?”

I was absolutely relieved. “Oh, crap,” I said. “I knew it had faded a bit, but I didn’t realize it was out already. I had wondered if I really was speeding considering all those crazy drivers out there.”

“You were going 70 in a 65, and I don’t have a problem with that, so was everyone else.” Officer Wilson took my license and registration. He looked around the front end of my car. “Yep, it’s out,” he shouted, then came back around to the passenger side. He quickly ran my info while I made a few calls.

My father suggested I run to a Wal-Mart, pick up a bulb, and get my friend to help me. Ben suggested going to Checker, but I figured he would help either way. “You know I’m all over headlights like a hungry baby on a… headlight,” he had said over Twitter. That one made me laugh. Whatever works, I thought to myself. It’ll get fixed somehow.

I went without getting pulled over again. I figured I’d been lucky — no ticket, just a verbal warning, and I was getting it fixed as soon as possible. When I reached Ben’s, I quickly ate my leftover quesadilla, chatted with Ben and his grandfather, and changed into something other than my awful work drab. “All set?” Ben asked, probably wondering how a girl could take that long just to get set for a movie. “All set,” I said. “Checker first?”

“Yep. I don’t know where a Wal-Mart is,” he said. For one, I knew he wasn’t fond of Wal-Mart, but I thought it was our best bet. I was fine with going to Checker since I didn’t really know the area well. Ben is a good navigator in unfamiliar places; I don’t usually trust most people with doing that, especially since I lose my sense of direction at suggestions of “right” and “left” as opposed to “north” and “south,” but Ben more often than not has his shit together when it comes to where we happen to venture on any given occasion. We were going to find that Checker, then hit up a Barnes & Nobles, a Borders, and then the movie.

As luck would have it, Checker wasn’t open. Neither of the two we saw had any sign of life. Both book stores were, though, and I picked up the Best-Of CD by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. “If we don’t find a Wal-Mart,” I suggested, “We’ll just head to the movie and figure it out from there.”

We didn’t find that Wal-Mart, which we later found we just didn’t see in passing. We parked the car, got some cash, bought our tickets, and looked for ways to kill time before the movie started.

“What game do you want to play?” Ben asked as we walked into the theater’s arcade. “Something driving,” I said. He went to make tokens from the quarters the boy at the register gave us. When the token machine didn’t work, security directed us to management. While the manager apologitically reclaimed our quarters, I killed more time waiting for a milkshake. We missed surprisingly few previews after what seemed like an eternity to make a lousy milkshake (that would later make me sick to my stomach), and to top it off, I was completely grossed out by the grody hands on the girl making the milkshake. But I’d made it that far into the evening having slid by; I wasn’t going to let anything ruin the movie, which I’d heard was fantastic.

The movie was indeed fantastic, and Ben and I had great conversation leaving the theater. We ended up going to the Denver Diner, and our waitress punctuated each visit to our table with her favorite stories of working there.

“This place is a bubble,” she kept saying. “Crazy things happen, but things turn out okay.”

After the huge plate of nachos we split, we left as generous a tip we could manage and I drank the last of the coffee. I had Ben direct me out of the parking lot.

“Turn right,” he said. I had seen no indication of this being the wrong way, but as soon as we had turned, we both realized that we were definitely on a one-way — headed in the wrong direction.

“Oh, shit,” I said. “If there was a cop back there, I’m going to kill you.”

I knew as soon as those words slipped out of my mouth that I was prophecising our fate. Again, those bright red and blue lights flashed across my rear view mirror, and I was consumed with nervous, I-told-you-so laughter.

“This is your fault,” I said to him. Ben was apologizing profusely. He said the word “fucktard” once or twice in reference to himself.

“I hope I don’t get a breathalyzed or something,” I said. “Even though we weren’t drinking, it would just be embarrassing.” Ben was doing his best to calm me down, but the nervous laughter just kept coming.

The officer came up to the window and I handed him my license and registration. I looked over my shoulder and saw a second cop standing on the other side of the car. My heart rate jumped.

“The reason I pulled you over is that you were going the wrong way,” he said. I pointed at Ben. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I told her to turn right.” The officer seemed to accept that pretty easily. He could see that we hadn’t been drinking, but we were both nervous as we answered the officer’s questions. I explained that we had been to “like, six” Checkers, and that I’d been pulled over earlier. I even showed him Officer Wilson’s card, and he understood when we told him that nothing was open and we really couldn’t fix the headlight at that hour on New Years Day. He took a while as he ran my info, and I was sure he was going to give me a ticket. It was then that I noticed the second cop driving away, so we knew that the situation would cause minimal trouble, even if he was going to issue me a ticket.

“He’s writing a ticket,” I said as the minutes stretched on. “I can’t afford this ticket right now. It goes on my record–”

“Not if you contest it,” Ben said. He had mentioned a few minutes earlier that we could go snap pictures of how it was difficult to tell that the street was a one-way. “Eh,” I muttered. “Still…”

When the officer came back, he handed me a written warning. Ben and I were extremely grateful.

“You saved his butt, you know,” I said to the officer as he walked back to his car. Ben had been extremely apologetic, and I was feeling bad about the whole situation. The officer laughed. Ben didn’t.

“Oh my god,” I said as we pulled out onto Speer. “I can’t believe he didn’t give us a ticket.”

As it turns out, karma was done with thrashing me for my burnt-out headlight, and between Denver, Littleton, and Boulder, I didn’t get pulled over again. I made it home safely, with nothing more severe than the written warning sitting in my glove compartment. Lesson learned? Yeah, I hope so. But more than that, it was a hell of a night.

No apologies for the bad two-minute photoshop

For Ben’s notably better description of the night, check out his blog post.