Secret Motive?

My little girl has the most interesting mind I've ever encountered. Never does she cease to amaze me with her introspection, her analysis, her wit. This morning was no exception.

You see, Chi was with me on April 16 when I had a terrible accident courtesy of a fickle Fire SUV playing with his lights and an overly cautious SUV that decided stopping in the middle of an intersection was a safer "move from the path of the emergency vehicle" than was continuing through the light at the speed of travel and clearing the turn path the vehicle would travel through. I was cited, because I could not stop in time to avoid said SUV (and the emergency vehicle never even moved from its spot, nor did it keep its lights on, nor did it leave the scene of the accident it caused to respond to the non-emergency it was supposedly going to when it turned the lights on, then off, then on again, then off for good). Chi was in the accident. She saw Mommy get in an ambulance. She got to ride with the policeman to meet me at the hospital. She saw Mommy get her "golden ticket." And she was in court with wide, scared eyes when I was told to plead guilty to my alleged infractions.

Chi has seen enough Law and Order, The Closer, and other such dramas in her 5 years of sharing my room with me to know that guilty means jail. And she freaked.

So apparently, the trauma of the experience is fresh.

In addition to harboring fears of another potential accident, Chi is worried about speeding tickets. I mean really... a girl gets one ticket in her sports car while going down a hill (taking Chi to school), without even so much as a tap on the gas, and suddenly I'm speed racer?

This morning our conversation went like this:

Chi: 25 on the white sign.
MommyR: Speed limit? Am I going too fast?
C: Yes. Good thing no police are around, we'd have to go to court. And maybe jail.
M: To jail?
C: I don't want to be separated from my mommy. You're my best one.
M: [silent]
C:In jail there's no privacy.
M: Really?
C: No. No door on the bathroom. Only a door so you don't escape. A big spikey one, maybe.
And they might not even feed us. Sometimes they just don't like them to live if they've done something really bad.
M: Wow.
C: You know in jail you have to wear certain clothes. Like orange shirts. Your favorite color.
M: So maybe I should want to go for the shirt?
C: No, please don't. Please don't start to speed. You'd have to stay in there 100 days!

I swear I need to invest in a car recorder or I'll surely have an accident trying to capture her words accurately as I sit waiting for a light to change. And, more importantly, I'll have to reassure my little one that her mama is a safe and conscientious driver again, because right now she doesn't buy it.