Flashback Friday: The cop who stole my drivers license

Right before I turned 16 Utah passed a law that said you couldn't drive with peers in your car for 6 months after getting your license, unless it was a school event and you had a written note from a parent saying that you had permission. It is for this reason that I remember that the first time I was ever pulled over was exactly 6 months and 2 weeks after my 16th birthday. I guess a more simple way to remember would be to just remember it was the day after Christmas, but you know me, I don't do things the easy way.

So it's 6 months and 2 weeks after my 16th birthday and I had a car-load of friends that I was driving around town to check out what other friends had received for Christmas. I was driving Gray Ray. Gray Ray was my first car and he was a Honda Accord. One of those cool old Accords with the flip up headlights. Well on this fateful night, one of those cool flip up headlights happened to be out. We were all headed to south Provo to check on the last friends loot. We were less than a block from her house when we came upon a group of police officers all leaving one particular house. I had to slow down to go over a particularly deep dip and as I came out of the dip my lone headlight shone directly into one officers car. We all knew right then he was going to pull me over. We were glad it was 6 months and 2 weeks after my birthday so that we weren't going to get in trouble for just being in the car. I told everyone in the car to say we didn't know the headlight was out. As soon as the cop asked me if I knew I had a headlight out I broke and admitted we did. He took my license and registration and went to his car. About 5 minutes later the cop came running up to my window. Because it was December I had rolled my window up. Before I could even roll the window down all the way the cop had thrown all my paperwork and even his pen into my car and yelled, "it's your lucky day" as he jumped in his car and took off at 90 miles an hour with the sirens blaring. As we waited for the shock to wear off we tried to gather the papers up and organize them all. As we went through all the things on our laps we realized my license was nowhere to be found. We got out of the car and looked on our seats and under the car and on the road between where his car had been and where my car was. We went back through the papers. We eventually gave up and just continued our trek to the friends home.
The next day I called the police station. I asked if any cops had brought my license to them. They had a box full of lost licenses but mine wasn't in it. The car in question didn't belong to just one cop. So it was out with a different officer in it. The car was flagged to be cleaned and searched for my license. That search came up with nothing. After checking in with the station every few days for a couple weeks I began to give up on the idea that it would be found. That February my high school choir was going to Disneyland and I needed a drivers license to get on the plane, so I finally went and got a new one. Over time I began to forget about my missing license. I began driving Greta and my brother had Ray. Several months later my brother was driving the car with his friend. When his friend reached under the passenger side chair to get the cd case she felt something else under the chair. My license apparently fell between the chair and the e-brake and sat hidden in my car the whole time.

Sorry Mr. Policeman that I blamed for stealing my license. I shouldn't have been so bitter and I shouldn't have bad-mouthed you under my breath when I had to pay 10 dollars to get a new license.