So I finally met my first cowboy...

...unfortunately, he was about to throw my cousin in jail. Seriously.

The day started off innocently enough - we had breakfast at IHOP (FYI - Golden Griddle's Eggs Benedict, is so much better) and I got my grande cafe mocha at the local Starbucks from a barista who made me feel ever-so-special by making a point of writing my name on my coffe sleeve so that when my drink was ready, she'd call out my name (she DID spell my name incorrectly but you can't win it all...).

We were on the road en route to San Antonio, music blaring and me trying to defend my registering for a chance to purchase Spice Girl reunion tickets 12 times online (HEY, don't judge!) when a state trooper pulled up behind us, with lights flashing.

At first we didn't realize it was for us but when we finally clued in, we pulled across three lanes onto a small area inbetween the highway and the entrance to the highway.

At this point, I was crapping in my pants. When I looked at the state trooper through the rearview mirror, my anxiety only increased. He looked scary. He was decked out in his uniform, complete with his khaki cowboy hat and black terminator-like glasses.

While I was crapping in my pants in the car, my cousin was crapping in his pants in between the rental car and the state trooper car. My cousin exhibited the "Oh,shit, oh shit, oh shit" vibe through his body language the entire time the state trooper was talking with him - his head was down, he was shifting his weight from side to side, his hands were in his pocket - I felt so bad.

But THEN it was my turn. The state trooper stop talking to my cousin and started to walk over to talk with ME. (@#$%&*$!!!) Now my dad and law enforcement officers are probably the only two categories of people I will never be a smart ass with - everybody else is more or less fair game if they say or do something funny and/or stupid. So try and picture me sitting all meek and timid at the side of a highway with a state trooper. Eeep.

The state trooper starting asking where we were going, why we were going 90 miles (approx. 145km) an hour in a 70 mile (approx. 120km) area. Like a law abiding citizen, I answered as honestly as I could ("I don't know officer, we were just talking...") and then he proceeded to tell me that because the US and Canada do not have a reciprocity agreement, he would have to throw my cousin in jail to ensure that he paid the fine. AND that because it was a weekend, my cousin wouldn't be able to see a judge until Monday so he would essentially be in jail the entire weekend. My response to this piece of information: "Oh, uh, okay officer." I really didn't know what else to say. I was concentrating on figuring out what to tell my cousin's mother. ("Ya, hey auntie, good news, Wern's job is going well in Dallas. Bad news tough - he's in jail in a town outside Waco.")

So anyway, the state trooper was trying to clearly suss out if we were lying or not because he kept going in between us. He wanted to know where we were from, when we were leaving texas, etc. , etc. I think eventually he felt bad for us cause we were answering his questions as questions, like we weren't sure if the our answers were correct. (State Trooper: "And how long have you known him?". Candace: "uh, my entire life sir?"). He finally wound up asking my cousin to come to his car and wrote him a ticket and told him that typically people would get 10 days to pay the ticket but because he was outside of town he would get 30 days. However, if he failed to pay the ticket, he would have a warrant out for his arrest in the state of Texas. Needless to say, my cousin is paying the fine on Monday.

The sad part of this entire saga was that a mere 45 prior to getting pulled over, we were discussing speeding and how we've never been pulled over by a cop. Yah, isn't that a kick in the pants.