This weekend I got pulled over for speeding, having an expired registration and broken window, and lacking an inspection sticker entirely. Or rather I was pulled over for one of those, and the officer on the scene noticed the other three while spreading my legs with his billy club, as it were.

(I didn’t know a broken window was a ticketable offense, unless maybe the window was really seriously broken so you couldn’t even see anything except a beautiful spiderweb of refracting light, certainly not the subtle, almost elegant U-shape that decorates my windshield.)

(And I got to wondering if there was double jeopardy in driving violations. Like, I kept driving for another 300 miles after receiving the ticket, but my car was still as illegal as it ever was, so what’s stopping some other flatfoot in some other state from giving me another ticket for the expired registration, aside from the cargo hook I am openly brandishing?)

As I walked past the receptionist this morning I remembered how, on my first day, I asked her name, and then, soon after, I asked the name of the guy who set up my email, and I was all hot-to-trot on asking people’s names because I never do and I never remember and I never call people by their names and have to resort to the inevitable “tough guy” or “mama” or “turkey.”

I was hot-to-trot because the night before my first day on the job I was thinking how I should try a new personality at this new job, one that isn’t closed off and bitter. That this was the total clean-slate situation and maybe I could just decide to be friendly and outgoing and maybe even boisterous and gregarious and all-around charismatically irreverent. Basically, ask people’s names and then call them by that name.

But that didn’t fly. And as proof, I’m going to write something here instead of shouting it throughout the office with uncontrolled violence, which is what I’d prefer: “Just because you say something really loud doesn’t automatically make it funny so shut up and stop throwing that miniature football around and go back to being the Executive Vice President or whichever euphemism you use to make you feel better about being a short, talentless PowerPoint monkey because SOME of us are trying to think of clever ways to say ‘Click here!’ and really push the envelope of advertising, OK? The end!”