Caught Phone Handed

Yesterday I was driving up to one of my school campus projects and I received a phone call from one of the maintenance personnel that works for the school district. He wanted to tell me about how he had solved the problem of the dead lights in the bathrooms at the high school where we did work this summer. I didn’t really care to hear his accomplishment as it’s really just his job to deal with those types of problems, that’s what he gets paid for. So as I was sitting there at a red light listening to him ramble on and on about how they traced down the problem and found the frayed wire and blah, blah, blah, I hear this “Be careful” shouted outside my window. Figuring it wasn’t for me I just ignored it. I heard it again, “BE CAREFUL” wondering who was shouting I started to look around and when I turned to my left I see a guy sitting in his car with a Sheriff’s patch on the side of his sleeve. He looks at me points to the fact that I have my phone by my ear and smiles. “Oh my gosh!!” is what I mouth next with probably a look of panic and disbelief. I quickly look around wondering what I should do? Do I hang up on this guy whose story I wasn’t listening to anyway but still works for my client? Tell him to hold on and throw the phone down so I no longer have it in my hands? Throw the phone out the window? I make an embarrassed chuckle to myself and look back over at the cop. He says, “Don’t worry about it, just be careful” I soon realized that he was in his personal vehicle and probably didn’t want to deal with writing a ticket. After all it’s illegal to be talking on your cell phone in CA while driving unless it’s a hands free device (I think). The fact that I still have license plates from AZ probably helped but it could have been a ticket for sure had the guy really wanted to enforce the law. I drove off with my phone still in hand and quickly ended the call. Lesson learned if you’re going to talk on your cell phone make sure you’re not sitting next to a cop, which would be bad. I guess I better go buy a hands device for my phone. I hear if you strap a big rubber band to your head and slide the phone underneath that counts as ‘hands free’. Maybe I’ll just use a sweat band.