Is there a problem, officer?

This one time, I was bored of college so I decided to go live with my *Pawpaw for a semester because the food was a lot better at his house. The food is a lot better at any Louisiana house, to tell you the truth. Not that the BYU Cougareat didn't have its moments, but usually I just wandered through the bookstore and grabbed a bag of chips and a soda and pretended I was walking off the calories by eating them on the way to class.

After that semester was up (which involved me getting a huge room to myself, working part time, spending hours and hours reading books from the library and spending the rest of the time watching my pawpaw cook and then eating it so I don't really know why I went back to school, ever), my dad came to drive me back home to California and then send me back to school.

So we packed up my little Dodge Shadow and hit the highway, and somewhere on a Texas interstate, I woke from a sleep in the back seat to find my dad pulling over to the side of the road while cop lights bathed the car interior with a friendly red glow that said, "Gotcha, sucka."

"Melanie," my dad said. "I'll need you interpet."

He didn't. See, my dad was deaf. Actually captial D, Deaf. Any audiogram would show him as stone deaf. But his speech never gave him away. You'd only catch on if you saw his hearing aids. He had magical lip reading powers. He could function just fine in a conversation with anyone without an intepreter.

In fact, his deafness only seemed to manifest itself when he was about to get in trouble. Too bad my mom was deaf too or he could have pulled that on her more often.

So he did not need me to interpret, most definitely not from the back seat, and mind you, I was the WORST intepreter EVER. I have improved over the years to "pretty crappy."

But he reached up, turned his hearing aids off, and waited for the officer to come to the window. Then he made me sign everything the cop said into the rearview mirror. Then he would answer the cop, sounding confused. Then we would repeat. Then the cop wandered back to his cop car. Then he came back and said, "Tell your dad--" and when I started interpreting he said, "You don't have to sign this until I leave. Just tell your dad to slow down."

The dude didn't write the ticket becuase he didn't feel like waiting for the interpreting to catch up! And he walked off.

And my dad kept his vaguely confused expression in place until the cop was in his car. Then he switched his hearing aids back on, pulled back on to the highway, and smiled.

"I love being deaf," he said.

I think I said a swear.

*Pawpaw is what anyone in Louisiana calls their grandfather, because "grandpa" sounds weird, whatever you guys may think.

Oh, and Emily Lesher won the giveaway! You can read the post below for the details.