I’m sorry, I can’t hear you, my shoes are too tight.

Yesterday I got pulled over. No, I was not speeding.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned the gendarmes at the roundabouts. I’ve gone past these groups of officers at the roundabouts and wondered what they were pulling people over for. Obviously if you are entering a traffic circle you can’t be going to fast, so what? Well, I suppose they can see if you’re wearing your seatbelt or not, or maybe they pull you over if you’re on your cell phone.

Being on your cell phone while driving is strictly against the law in France and using a hands free device is left up to the cops. So you may or may not be stopped and ticketed for using one, depending on how the cop feels about things on any given day.

Anyway, yesterday while going to the grocery store I came halfway around a circle to find a cop standing in the middle of the road waving me over to the side; me and the next four cars through the circle. So here was my chance to find out. I wasn’t speeding and I was wearing my seat belt (no really, I was), it wasn’t dark so he couldn’t be pulling me over cause I had a light out or anything.

(You are legally required by law in France to carry a spare light bulb for all of your vehicle lights, so if they notice one out they will pull you over to make you change it, and woa be to you if you don’t have a spare. They sell kits designed for each model at all the auto parts stores and hypermarkets.)

The nice man came over to my window and asked to see my papers. For some reason that I don’t understand, smartass Missy momentarily took over my mouth and blurted, ‘ça veut dire quoi?’. Which means, ‘what does that mean?’ or ‘what is that supposed to mean?’. I was just trying to ask ‘which papers’ or ‘what specifically do you need to see’. I didn’t mean to be snotty, it was just the first phrase that came to mind. Isn’t the nervous brain a funny thing? Luckily he didn’t seem to notice.

He asked for my carte gris, my certificate d’assurance and my permis de conduire or rather, license, registration and proof of insurance. That’s what they were checking for, pulling people over at random to check that all of their paperwork was in order.

Picture driving through your town when on any given day at any possible intersection there is a police van parked and 6 cops are standing in the middle of the road and pointing to cars and waving them over to the curb; a legal fishing expedition. Can you picture it?