HOLY ORDERS
ON NUNS AND CAR CHASES
THE DINNER conversation the other night turned to car chases. Not sure how, but we ended up chewing over the fate of someone who copped a monster fine recently for hammering down a city arterial at an impressive velocity. You can get the mental picture: we’re talking an upper middle class lady in her 50s, driving something upmarket and in stock standard condition.
No race cans hanging out the back, fat wheels, stripes, or baseball caps worn backward. None of that. Just soft rock on the stereo and a mental note to remember to grab some milk on the way home.
The cops eventually caught her and that’s when the real trouble started. Their dispute wasn’t so much over the speed – which was considerable – but the car chase. Now I did once have a cop admit to me that he loved car chases, but these days that attitude is frowned upon. Shame, really – always good to see someone happy in their work.
Anyway, back to our friend. She vehemently denied it was a pursuit, since she had no idea they were after her. Ah, tricky that. Does it take two to do the proverbial tango in this situation? Anyway, they dropped the chase charges and went for a speed fine that looked like the national debt.
It did make we wonder just how often this happens – someone’s off with the pixies, thundering down the road at a rate of knots, while a whole bunch of people in uniform are getting hot and bothered over it. Then this vague memory hit home of reading at least one nun car chase some years ago. Could I have imagined that? Yeah, but nup.
Just to prove it, I did a quick online search for nuns involved in car chases and got a strike. It was the headline writer’s dream: “Police arrest nun after a car chase”. Published in 1994, the New York Times report went on to say: “Sister Gloria Petri says she was on a mission of mercy for her injured dog when she refused to stop for the police during a 10-mile car chase.
“A state police cruiser and a Catskill village police car converged on Sister Gloria’s van after she was finally stopped on Route 23 in Catskill, 30 miles south of Albany, on Saturday.
“The nun said the trooper and the police officer approached her with guns drawn, forced her to put her hands against the van and then lie on the ground.
“‘A little f lying nun was treated like Al Capone,’ Sister Gloria, 28, a member of the Tridentine order of Roman Catholic nuns, said on Monday. ‘I think it was police mania at its best.’
“She said she was speeding because her dog was injured in a fight with a neighbor’s dog and the veterinarian’s office was about to close.
“Sister Gloria, of Cairo, pleaded guilty on Saturday in Cairo town court to two counts of speeding at 85 miles an hour in a 55mph zone and one count of reckless driving. Town Justice Donald Orr fined her $225.”
Of course they left out the really important information, such as what was she driving and wouldn’t it go any faster? And I wonder if high-performance driving is part of the ab initio training? Any former nuns out there who’d like to chip in on this?