Breaking the law ....

I like to think of myself as a very principled, law-abiding, moral person. I've never shoplifted, used illegal drugs, or driven when I was intoxicated. When I see a huge line of people waiting for the same thing that I am, I simply step to the end of the line instead of trying to devise ways to jump ahead of the people who made the effort to get there before me. All in all, I think I'm a good person ....

Why, then, are there other rules or laws that I break without a second thought. Let's take speeding as an example. On the back-road highways that I take to and from my parents' house, the posted speed limit is 55 mph for most stretches of road that lie outside of towns. When I first got my license, I drove almost right at the speed limit. Now, however, I usually drive at about 5 mph over the posted speed limit in populated areas, and closer to 10 mph over the speed limit on those back-roads. How can this be justifiable? It's a law, isn't it? Technically if I get caught, I could be punished, couldn't I?

Perhaps the ease at which I break the speeding laws is a condition of my personality and sense of logic. Even though speed limits have been set with safety in mind, I guess I don't see too much danger in exceeding them slightly in populated areas and a bit more in wide-open areas. Another factor that plays into this is that even going as fast as I do, there's always somebody who blows by me, sometimes going as much as 20 mph faster than I am. I know that two wrongs don' t make a right, but a 1 hour 40 minute car trip sounds more appealing than a 2 hour car trip, especially when I can justify that I am definitely not going as fast as some other others on the road.

In the end, I know that I am still breaking the law and that one day it will catch up to me (he writes, hoping this post isn't the mother of all jinxes).