A First Lesson on Driving

I was coming home on Rt. 60 the other day, traveling in a 45 mile per hour zone. Somehow, my child has discovered a need for speed very early in life, and kept asking me to go faster. This is the conversation that followed her request:

"I can't go any faster, baby. I'll get pulled over by the police."
"Why will they pull you over?" She inquired.
"Well...there's only a certain speed you're allowed to drive, and it's the policeman's job to make sure mommy doesn't go any faster." I think I'm keeping it on her level-not real sure.
"Will he be mad because you didn't mind him?" (At least she didn't say "why?" again!)
"Yes! He will! And he'll give me a ticket, which means I have to pay some money because I got in trouble. Kind of like grownup time out." (What she can't understand is that grownups would LOVE to have a traditional time out. What? You want me to sit in a room alone and not talk or be talked to for one minute per year of my age?? GLADLY. Can I get that in writing?)

I continued on down the road after that, satisfied in thinking that she understood my explanation pretty well. We talked some more and sang a couple of songs. She was pretty quiet as we pulled into our neighborhood. I checked the mirror to see if she was looking sleepy, but she sat in obvious contemplation.

"Whatcha doin, babe?" I asked her.
"Do the policemans have strings?" She asked, obviously still stuck on our previous conversation. I tried to approach this, but I honestly couldn't figure out what to do with it.
"Um...what?" Very intellectual, I know.
"Strings," she repeated, because it was clearly more obvious than I was aware. "To pull your car with."

At this point, I caught up with her thinking and laughed my face off. I'm so awesome at explaining adult life to a toddler. Yes, that's me, the master of child development. Just as my head was about to swell out of the sunroof with the greatness of my awesome parenting, I realize that my darling two-and-a-half, but-I'll-be-three-in-April year old now thinks that police officers lasso your car with a string and "pull you over" when they need to ticket you. Boy howdy.