Andrés and I made a midnight run to Walgreens to pick up a prescription my parents had dropped off earlier for my mom. On the way out of the parking lot, some guy in an SUV waves his hands and flags me down. Suspicious, I stop and roll down my window (while inconspicuously shifting into first). He tells me he's got a magnetic oil plug for my car and asks if I want to buy it. I say no thanks. He explains that he's go an Evo as well, but it's in the shop getting painted. I nod my approval and drive off.

A minute later, I pull up to a stoplight where a cop has pulled someone over. I joke to Andrés that it'd be funny if I got pulled over, since my license is expired and the renewed license is supposed to be available tomorrow. A knock at the window. The cop asks me to pull in front of his car.

As I hand him my license and registration, I explain that I just sent off my license to get renewed last week. He asks if my exhaust is stock, and I affirm that everything on the car is stock. He looks at me in suspicious disbelief, and asks what we're doing on this road at this time of night. I hold up the bag from Walgreens and explain we were picking up a prescription. He says "Picking up a prescription?" And stares at me for about 15 seconds, during which I try hard (and probably unsuccessfully) to not look guilty. He then asks if I'm "one of those kids who likes to race." I scoff and say no. I meant the scoff to sound like, "That's ridiculous! I wouldn't think of such a thing." But instead it sounded more like, "Are you serious? Of course I'm going to say no, pork rind."

Finally he hands me back my license and registration and says, "It's a bad idea to be here at this hour with this car. There's lots of racing. From now on ask your parents to borrow one of their cars if you need to go out at this hour." I find the comment ludicrous, but he is walking away without giving me a ticket for a driver's license that has been expired for a year, so I say thanks and drive off.

I guess he was just doing his job, and he did cut me some pretty big slack — once he had me there, it was fully within his power to give me a ticket for the expired license. And at least he didn't try to give me a ticket for my stock exhaust or wing, like I've heard has happened to other Evo owners. But it was still kind of a ridiculous encounter.