You got nothing on me cop… a tale of greek traffic madness (Part 1)

As I was daydreaming the other day, I realised that it would be cool, once in a while, to use some sort of real life experience as a more direct starting point for another fun blog entry. It is always amusing to exaggerate on the reality of an actual life event and make it transcend from a miniscule fact in the finite soap opera of one’s life to a whole new level of existence using imagination and self parody as means of expression. Ok, ok, so I got a bit extra philosophical about a simple life moment (giving no doubt a bit of a mini-stroke to a couple of my readers with this sudden excessive display of multisyllabic words and implied intellectuality, heh) but it was a good way to show that I can write down other words except from ‘wacky’ and ‘madness’ (hmmm… what a wacky sentence full of madness… oh crap I just did it again didn’t I… lol).

This is where this story truly starts, fasten your seatbelts to avoid getting any unnecessary traffic tickets (heck a blog has to make some profit so don’t say I didn’t warn you…) and let the madness of my narration officially begin:

A couple of months ago I was driving with my dad, going to a place by the seaside called Rahes in central Greece. To get there faster, from the place of my permanent residence Lamia , we took the highway road instead of some other local route. Half way towards our destination, a traffic warden stopped us to check if our car documentation was ok.

As soon as the traffic cop waved us to stop, some of my money had already flown out of the window from the upcoming fine... I just didnt know it yet:)

As soon as I immobilized the vehicle, I turned to my dad to ask him if the documentation of the car was ok (I am an on/off driver of this car, since I am not around most of the time, thus I had been left in the dark on such technicalities before, what an irresponsible fool I am, lol). The following short piece of dialogue ensued among father and son (DP senior and DP jr so to speak, ha,ha,ha,):

DP: Oh crap, what the hell does this loser want? Of all the cars in the world he had to stop ours… So dad am I missing something on the paperwork front?

Dad: Well everything is pretty much in order except from the KTEO technical control thingy…(Every couple of years or thereabout, vehicles in Greece go through some technical control procedure that takes place in certified service centres. “KTEO” is the abbreviated name of these centres and the process itself).

DP: When were we supposed to do this anyway?

Dad: I think we still got time, it hasn’t been that long since we bought the car…has it?

DP: This is at least a four year old car …. Oh man we are screwed….

Where is KIT when you need him/it? The copper would have just blown a fuse or something if my car was like that:) God I loved this show as a kid, I am grinning just by watching this trailer, LOL!

The cop approached and asked us to get out of the vehicle and present him with our licence and registration (man those clichés are so last century I hate them…lol). Like sheep to the slaughter, we complied to his request while praying to every god imaginable (including Bruce Campbell, LOOL) that the KTEO control thing would pass under his radar. Yeah, right… So, the traffic cop asked for our license and registration (so far so good… ), for the car’s insurance papers (still going strong as law abiding as Wyatt Erp without the moustache and excess gun slinging to boot…) and then the KTEO technical control verification papers (bullseye at last!!! Rocky Balboa would have been proud of such a killer blow… lol). In situations like these, at least in Greece, it is an unwritten rule among public offenders(think ‘the code’ of Pirates in the Jack Sparrow movies and you get the picture…) to try to talk their way out of a situation by pleading not guilty using every conceivable or inconceivable argument in the book. Being the man of action that I am (ha,ha,ha,ha ,sorry , I couldnt resist, this is just ridiculous to even think about… ha,ha,ha) I thought of taking down the cop in a blaze of gunplay but logic prevailed (damn… not again… those social inhibitions of mine need to go ASAP…).

Hmm, always aim for the chest hair... better keep that in mind next time I have some trouble with the law:) Either that or just aim for "the crown family jewels" for a bonafide touchdown (as in US football...)! Too bad I am as law abiding as they come... bummer:)

Therefore, it was up to DP senior to fight the good fight and try to make the cop all sympathetic and puppy eyed towards us. My dad started spitting some incoherent BS about how ‘he was going to do the KTEO thing eventually’ and that ‘this is a relatively new car so he wasn’t aware it needed a certified mechanical check’. I guess those kind of arguments could have worked on a ‘sanity challenged’ individual such as myself (give DP senior an Oscar I say, if Gwyneth Paltrow was awarded one, anyone can get one really, lol). However, the cop was so “impressed” with my dad’s versatility as an actor that he proceeded to award him with the prize of ‘removing the number plates from the car’ and ‘giving a traffic check for the offense’.

Well at least he spared us the full cavity search treatment routine... LOL! I guess that was a small victory of sorts for the DP family under the circumstances ha,ha,ha,ha!

Then, this hybrid of Chuck Norris on crack and Steven Seagal with severe constipation (where did THIS analogy come from is anyone’s guess… ha,ha,ha) started explaining what had to be done to get the plates back. As he was talking, my dad had a vacant look in his eyes like a zombie in a George S. Romero flick, probably thinking to bite the policeman’s head off. Personally, I was thinking to revert to “King Leonidas in 300” theatrical tactics and kick the copper’s ass into a bottomless pit shouting at him “THIS IS SPARTA!!!”. However, my ever invisible biceps would ruin the coolness of the moment, so I hesitated to revert to such extreme measures of photogenic violence(too bad the moment is gone now...if only...oh no point in having second thoughts about it now I guess... lol) . As soon as the "Judge Dredd wannabe" stopped talking, both DPs woke up from this trance of excess envisioning of unfulfilled public violence and went back to the now ‘plateless’ car. My dad was swearing like there is no tomorrow, while I was trying to be the voice of reason of ‘the merry couple of offenders’ and plan our coordinated attack to the greek traffic service with only one thing in mind… We were either going to take our bloody number plates back or we were going to die trying!!! (Don’t you just love those macho ultimatums… ha,ha,ha).

To be continued (and concluded) in Part 2…