As a child, any infraction I may have committed that my parents found out about would inevitably lead to a 2-hour biblically focused conversation with my mother.

Needless to say, because of that childhood experience (repeated numerous times growing up), the adult incarnation of myself tends to by default follow the rules and do my best to not break the law.

The topic of today’s prompt actually involves unknowingly or unintentionally breaking the law, and I have definitely done that on a few occasions.

Growing up in northern Iowa as a teenager, one of the big rites of passage (the equivalent I’d say of driving a Lexus as an adult) was to own a moped, which were just becoming mainstream across the country.

I begged and begged my parents to let me buy one, saving up my allowance and asking to use savings to finance my purchase. My dad was dead set against it, as he felt I was too young to be using a motorized vehicle on the roadways. I countered his argument by noting how I rode my bicycle on the roadways all the time and had never run into anyone or been struck by a car. Oh, the teenage drama!

In the end, my parents acquiesced to my request and one warm Saturday morning, we all piled into our Buick Riviera and drove the 17-20 miles to a nearby town to pick up my shiny new moped from the Honda dealership.

Being that my dad wasn’t a huge fan of the purchase, he decided to “punish” my choice by making me drive it all the way back home. That was such a HUGE punishment – being forced to drive my bright yellow Honda Express back home all that way!

I’d had the moped for about a week or two when late one evening I was craving a Mountain Dew and made the decision to jump on my motorized bike and run down to the grocery store just a handful of blocks away.

Now, this was shortly after laws had been passed that required sidewalks to no longer have solid curbs everywhere, but instead have handicap ramps built into the cement for wheelchairs to maneuver properly around.

Naturally, I buzzed on down main street and steered my new vehicle right up the handicap ramp to the pop machine around the corner from the main doors, popping two quarters into the slot and hitting the Mountain Dew button, hearing the clunk-clunk-clunk of the can dropping down to the opening for me to take it out.

It was during the can dropping sequence that a police officer rolled up next to the curb and turned on his flashers, bathing my face is a combination of red and blue light.

Turns out it’s illegal to have a motorized vehicle on the sidewalk in my hometown back in the day. The officer explained this to me and issued me a citation for breaking the law (obviously unintentionally!)

Normally you’d pay a fine for the offense and it would be a done deal – oh, but not with my parents! They decided this would be a great opportunity to teach me a valuable life lesson. (Honestly, I think my father was still not thrilled he got overruled on the moped purchase by my mom).

What did they do? They made me actually appear in court to face the charge (the courthouse was two blocks from our home). When my case was called, I stood up and approached the place where I was told to stand.

In the midst of the process (my trial!), the judge inquired about why I thought it was acceptable to drive the moped onto the sidewalk. I sheepishly replied, “I didn’t know!”, to which he hammered his gavel and looked me angrily in the eyes and said, “when you’re in court, young man, you’ll address me as your Honor”, and then continued on about how ignorance of the law is no excuse.

In the end, he scared the hell out of me, and I left the courtroom to pay the fine, pushing my way through the courthouse doors to freedom “on the outside”.

Honestly, looking back, I believe my father was good friends with that specific judge and basically set me up once I had unintentionally broken the law. Being a parent I guess sometimes calls for the application of tough love and calling in favors from friends in authority.

Because of that incident so long ago, I’ve done my best to respect authority and follow the laws. Other than a few speeding tickets over a 30-40 year span of time, that’s about all you’d find on my record…that and the moped trial!

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

When have you unintentionally broken the law? How did it happen and what did you do? Share with us with a comment below!

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