The Prepared Automobile
My son, several years ago, spent a semester in Europe. When he got home, unbeknownst to him, I had renewed the license plates on his car and placed the stickers and paperwork—-including his current proof in insurance—-in the glove box.
But I forgot to tell him to grab those stickers, scrub the grime off the plates, and adhere the new stickers before driving off on his first jaunt stateside. And so he just figured that the cop who stopped him that night for expired plates was justified in giving him that enormous traffic ticket.
“But everything you needed was right there in the glove box,” I said.
“I dug around in there and I couldn’t find a thing,” he answered.
How many times have you had the same thing happen? Your hands are sweating profusely because of the flashing lights and (quite possibly) the siren and the police officer has asked to see your papers. You reach over to the glove box, open it, and out falls everything including the kitchen sink——but no papers that look like anything he’d want to see unless you count someone’s report card from the third grade and an old church bulletin.
Here’s the best idea I’ve heard maybe ever, and it comes to me via my baby sister: Purchase a $1 zippered pencil case from Walmart. The kind that come in lots of colors and are made of canvas or whatever—-in other words, not plastic and not clear like a Ziploc bag, as that might get more easily confused with other similar contents in your glove box. Into the pencil case put your current proof of insurance, the automobile’s registration papers, and maybe copies of the drivers license you keep in your wallet (in case you manage to leave home without it….).
Even with a bad case of nerves, any driver could easily fumble around and pull out the pencil case, delivering into the officer’s hand only the documents that are relevant—-and every one of them, at that.
I’ve always had basic emergency kits (albeit modest ones) for the cars, but THIS is the “emergency” we’re most likely to have. A simple answer, finally, and one that works for virtually everyone!
