UP CLOSE & PERSONAL WITH THE NAPERVILLE PD

(FYI - this is a long but pretty entertaining story.)
So we recently drove to Naperville for a nice and relaxing family visit. We left Alton a little later than normal and rolled in to town at about 12:45 am. I was sleeping in the backseat at the time (to be available to entertain the wee one as needed) and I'm woken up by flashing lights as Brad is in the process of being pulled over. Now let me just state that Brad is the most conscientious driver in the known universe. He puts driving instructors to shame. Somehow grandmas pass him on a regular basis and give him the finger for driving the speed limit. So needless to say it seemed impossible that he had done something illegal while driving. I wasn't nervous about him being pulled over, and I figured it had to be some warning about a random stupid law because the cop was bored. YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Anyway. So the cop gets out and struts to our car with major tude and asks to see Brad's license and insurance. He gave him the license but we were having a hard time locating our insurance cards. While we were frantically looking the cop starts asking where we are from and why we have a Utah drivers license. Brad explains he's a student and just hasn't had time to get it changed to Illinois. The cop tells us he pulled us over because there was no registered drivers license associated with our car. He told us to keep looking for our insurance cards and he goes back to his car.

So we wait for a good 10 or 15 minutes - which is a long time when you are being pulled over. And we are thinking "oh he's going to give us a warning for not having changed our drivers licenses to Illinois." No biggie - at this point we are totally relaxed and just waiting for him to get on with it so we can get to Brad's parents house and go to bed. Then all of a sudden we see another cop car pull up and a lady police officer gets out and says Brad's name from across the parking lot. Turns out Brad knows this girl from middle school and high school. They catch up for a few minutes and then she lets us know that our licenses are considered suspended because the law in Illinois is that you apparently have 90 days to get is switched. Honestly we had no idea. In fact I'll admit that I got a speeding ticket a full year after we moved to Illinois and the police officer knowing I'd moved a year ago mentioned that I should get it switched "at some point" which I took as a friendly suggestion - not A LAW. Anyway. So this lovely female officer that just happened to be a) on duty, b) not busy with anything else, c) listening to radio chatter of the other officers, d) remembered Brad, and e) compassionate enough --- well she totally came to our rescue. Because if she hadn't that officer was in the process of arresting Brad. Yes. This police officer was going to arrest Brad and leave his wife and 3 month old baby in an empty parking lot at 1 AM for not switching his Utah drivers license to Illinois. CLASSY. I know Illinois is broke and needs our $30 but come on. Plus how bored was that cop that he was just sitting there typing in every license plate that came within his view? Now I'm all for obeying the law, but in this situation no one was truly in any danger and we were completely ignorant to the fact that we were even breaking a law to begin with.

In the end he begrudgingly let us go with a warning for having an obstructed windshield (another law we were unaware of - you can't have a GPS or any sort of oil change sticker in the front windshield). But if Brad had been a jerk in high school to our female friend on the force this would have been an entirely different story with a few more capitalizations. As we drove off I was legitimately shaking with anxiety. We were sitting there thinking we were about to get a warning when Brad was actually about to be arrested! Is there a cooler way to say I almost peed my pants? I don't know what would have happened if he'd ACTUALLY been arrested.

Brad's parents just happen to have the original copy of his birth certificate so we went the next morning and he got his drivers license switched to Illinois. It was SUPER fun. Finley spit up 3 gallons of her breakfast and I had one wipe on hand to "clean" her up. The bathroom was tiny with no changing station (THAT should be against the law) and it was the one time I didn't have a change of clothes for her. So Brad's mom and I wiped her down as best we could and she hung out in her diaper nakey as a jay bird in the Naperville DMV for a good 30 minutes. Ah memories.

So thanks goes to the Naperville Police department - you gave us a great story to tell on our blog because really you can't make this stuff up.


(The pictures of Finley are just for funsies. Turns out police frown on picture taking during an almost arrest.)