In my college years, I once took a road trip to west Texas with my roommate. Being a couple of college kids, we also had a baggie of weed stashed in the car. It's a memory that would have faded into nothingness for me, but for the fact that I got pulled over for "speeding" while driving through a very rural county near the town I grew up in. I was, at best, three miles per hour over the limit. I suspected the cop saw a couple of college kids looking like they were driving in from Austin — fair enough! — and thought he could score a marijuana possession bust. This suspicion was confirmed when he barely spoke to us before immediately flinging the car door open and rooting around for drugs.
I managed to distract him with cheerful chatter about my plans to see my mother to underscore that, despite my very Austin-centric appearance, I was but a humble small-town girl from around these parts. Luckily for me, name-dropping my former high school worked. He abandoned the search and sent us on our way without a ticket. But truly, it was just a matter of luck. Just a year before, another roommate of mine had been arrested in the same area for marijuana possession. She grew up in Houston and couldn't appeal to rural chauvinism to escape police clutches.
