Saturday night..... at the police station?

I watch a lot of crime TV. Investigation Discovery, while it may scare the crap out of me, is one of the channels on which you can most often find my TV lingering.

However, due to my interest in forensics and crime solving, I have a lovely little paranoia package. One of my fears is being followed in the car. And, lucky me, on Saturday night, my then-irrational fear became a little less all in my head, and a little more on I-91.

Anthony, his brother Chris, and I went to Red Robin last night for a bangin' dinner sure to push me up a jean size. It was dee-lish, and we left in food comas. We were in my car but Anthony was driving. Before heading back to our town, we had to drop Chris off at his house in a neighboring town a couple exits before ours. As we were nearing the exit ramp, Chris & Anthony broke my hypnotic concentration on my phone with comments about how the driver behind us had his high beams on and was tailgating. I turned to look, and the white Ford Windstar behind us was literally feet from my rear bumper. And we were flying at 70. In a 65. In the right lane. So, tell me why he couldn't either pass us, or ease off the gas a tad bit?

We got off the exit, and he came off too. Nothing unusual there (aside from the fact that he was dancing and clapping in the driver's seat). Maybe it was just his exit. But when he continued to follow closely, Chris told Anthony to pull over and let him whiz on by.  However, when he did that, the guy behind us pulled over too. Again, even though it was a little out of the ordinary, this wasn't anything all that alarming. I just figured he was drunk. Chris decided to call the police just in case. He figured if he was drunk, then they should be called, and if he wasn't and was just nuts, they should be called too.

While he was on the phone with the police (who told us to drive to the police station), we ended up at a red light with two lanes. We were in the left lane three cars back from the light, and he was behind us. The right lane had only one car in it, so it was pretty open. The creepiest part was when the the guy in van moved into the right lane, and pulled up right next to the car. Leaving a huge gap in between him and the front car. So, clearly this was intentional. According to Anthony and Chris (I wussed out and didn't look at him), he just stared into the the car at us and was smiling. When the light finally turned green after what seemed like forever, we took off, and as expected, he hopped back into our lane and followed. At this point I was kind of freaked out. My teeth were chattering and I was just hoping the guy wasn't a nutcase and like, writing down my license plate number or something (not that he could have really done anything with it). I've heard of cases of road rage where one person has a gun or something, so, I think we were all sufficiently freaked out by this odd behavior.

When we finally got to the police station, the van kept going. I expected to see cop cars whiz out after it, but didn't. When we were in the station talking to a cop, they said they pulled over a white van, but that it wasn't a Ford Windstar. So, who knows. If it was the guy, (because, really, how many white mini vans do you think were driving in that area at 11pm?) I'm sure he was appropriately startled by the cops. If not, well, let's just hope he was bored and drunk, and not an actual crazy person.

Yeeesh. To say I was a little creeped out would be an understatement. I actually had to sit down at the police station because my legs started shaking and I didn't want the cop to think I was on drugs or something haha. Even as people reporting something, cops still freak me out.

Obviously it could have been worse, but I definitely hope that was the guy that was following us that they pulled over. Even if they didn't get in trouble, just so that they know that it's not okay to do that kind of thing. I'm just glad I wasn't driving. Definitely wouldn't have been as composed if I were behind the wheel, I don't think.

Yeeps!

Have you ever had any encounters like this? What happened?

Happy Monday! (Ew. Who says that?)