Maybe it's time to dump the Vic

Fuckin' cops freak me out.

I was leaving my neighborhood, driving my crown vic, to return to work after my lunch break and stopped at a stop sign, waited for traffic to clear, then turned right. An unmarked cop car turned onto my street from the main road, and as I drove up the road I saw him turn around in a driveway and come back the way he came. I ducked into the McDonalds parking lot on the corner and hung out there for a couple minutes, then pulled out again. I kept an eye on my rearview mirror, and the same car, or at least an identical one, was on the road a thousand or so feet behind me. While he was still a good distance back, I pulled into a gas station and sat in the parking lot for a couple more minutes. I didn't see him again after that and made it to my destination unmolested.

Interestingly enough, another Vic identical to mine drove past him up the main road, only this one had a big handicapped parking tag in the dash. So the cop probably dismissed the geezer and decided to go after me, the guy under 60 driving a Crown Victoria.

Was he after me? I don't know. Maybe he was, but lost interest when he saw the colorful stickers on the Vic's rear end and decided it wasn't a cop impersonator. It sucks that I can't drive this very respectable, gentlemanly vehicle without the constant fear that some trigger-happy Barney is going to blow a fuse in his primitive brain whenever he sees a guy who can't yet join AARP driving a Vic. At the time I was wearing a conservative suit, white shirt, and necktie; what about that stirred his suspicion? Or did I pick the wrong day to break out the gray fedora? I'm getting pretty damned tired of always looking over my shoulder for the po-po. It's gotten to where I insist that when my wife & I go out at night, we take her SUV.

It looks like I have only a few options here. The most expensive is to buy another car and attempt to cut my loss by selling the Vic. I'm apprehensive about putting it up for sale to the public, since the kind of folk who are interested in old cop cars are largely an unsavory sort, and I don't know if I'd like them coming to my neighborhood and test-driving it. I could use it as a trade-in at a dealership, but one usually loses out on that deal. Plus I don't really care for dealerships. Another option is to keep driving it, but put more decals and civilian shit on it in hopes that a cop will ignore it. I might go so far as to make a fake handicapped placard to display while driving and get some big geezer sunglasses. One more option is to replace the Vic's trademark eggcrate grille with an aftermarket piece that resembles a Mercury or Lincoln, and maybe even swap in a Grand Marquis rear fascia & taillights. Ugh, I don't know. I love that car for its no-nonsense, heavy-duty reliability, but it's getting to be too stressful just trying to make it to my office without John Law on my ass.