Trouble on the Double!

I swear, sometimes my son can find trouble no matter what he does, where he goes. It just seems to follow him around -kind of like the "Pig Pen" character in Peanuts, ya know. He just seems to have a cloud around him that says "Here I am and I'm a troublemaker!" Even when he's not!

Now I'm not saying he is as sweet and innocent as the prettiest, purest white snowfall, cause no, he's not. But what happened to him tonight makes me wonder if maybe I might need to contact some attorney somewhere out west -like maybe personal injury lawyers Tucson or some such agency like that.

The company he is employed by sent him out to Texas -to the panhandle region and he is supposed to be there for the next 3-6 weeks or so, working. I put him on a bus to that are early Friday morning last week and today, he and the guys he works with began working in that region of Texas.

Tonight, after they returned to their motel rooms, he decided to walk to some little fairly nearby convenience store to get a pack of smokes, a loaf of bread and peanut butter and jelly so he can make himself some sandwiches for when he goes to work.

Well, as he was walking along towards the store, he got stopped by the police and even was frisked -for doing nothing but walking!

And, to add insult to injury, they even ran a report on him and here is where things get really weird too!

Seems this report showed that he had been arrested and convicted for supposedly being under the influence of a controlled substance -meaning drugs.

And, the report according to the police in Texas says that his driver's license -in its entirety has been revoked too.

Now, what really happened was that he was arrested -yes, a year ago in March for a DUI -driving under the influence, but nothing about drug usage at all. And the only thing that was revoked was his CDL license but not his regular driver's license!

The cop told him that it was a good thing he was walking though and not driving a vehicle because his license -according to this report or the cop's interpretation of it anyway -was that his entire license had been revoked, suspended.

Then, this report also contained information about my son and his lovely Volkswagon Bug -a Baja Bug that he has and that he restored himself. When he lived in Arizona and Nevada and initially completed this vehicle, it was registered in Nevada and was perfectly legal there.

When he moved back to PA though, it was a whole different story and a local town cop in a neighboring community stopped him one day simply for driving the Bug. Actually of the charges that cop tried to put against him, the only one that was legitimate was that he had been living in PA longer than the time allowed before you have to re-register a vehicle here. That cop even had a charge against him for defacing an inspection sticker because when he rebuilt the car, he had put a new windshield in it and he had purchased the windshield at some junk yard in Nevada or Arizona and it had had a sticker on the window for some kind of inspection or some such in Texas and he apparently hadn't got all the sticker removed from the windshield.

Anyway, that happened back around 2000 or 2001 and Favorite Son had to spend good money -close to $1,000 for attorney fees and then fines too, particularly to get exhonerated on the defacing an inspection sticker charge -which was totally bogus! Anyone else around here would never have been touched for this kind of junk.

And here he was now tonight -way out in loverly Texas -and the cops telling him his license is suspended and him trying to tell them that no, it was just his CDL portion that was suspended and them pretty much telling him not to even think about arguing his point with them cause they knew from this report that this is the truth, yadda yadda.

Then, when they did turn him loose, the last thing to cop told him was "If you're gonna buy drugs down here, don't do it in this town!"

And, as he said to me when he called home tonight, "How the heck do I show them that they are wrong about this report, anyway? And what if that is really what it says on his report too? How do I get that corrected anyway?"

And I have no clue how to answer that question either, would you?

I know he did get the DUI -for drinking and driving and that his BAC was .09 and the limit is .08. I know too that his regular license was not suspended, just the CDL. And I know too, that the attorney showed the courts that the only charge that was legitimate with his VW Bug, was the one about it not being properly registered in the state of PA! And, that the rest of the stuff on that case were all bogus charges.

Things like this do really make it look like he is a total bad ass, which he is NOT! And if a potential employer says they want a complete background check on him before they will consider whether or not to hire him, how the heck does one get their record corrected to show the legitimate charges against a person and not things that are fabricated in the reports that apparently are available to police, coast-to-coast, anyway?

I never gave a thought to that something like this had the potential to happen to the kid!

Now what?