I have had three (kind of) run-ins with Justice Antonin Scalia, none of which he knows about or would remember.
The third of these was decades ago, when I was on the Beltway traveling to see friends. A large BMW passed me and I noticed that the license plate read “SCALIA.” That’s gotta be Tony, I thought and I sped up to catch it. Whoever was driving the thing must’ve seen me coming, because suddenly the Beemer sped up to about 90. And now it was a race, which only made me even more determined to catch him. I gunned my car and gave chase. We kept playing follow-me/catch-up until eventually the Beemer got caught in traffic and I could pull alongside it to peer within.
The driver shot me a look and in my recollection he seemed a bit scared. Which is how I know it wasn’t Antonin Scalia – even federal district court judges carry emergency “panic buttons” (I would learn that later; I didn’t know that when I was still young enough to start chasing Beemers that might be carrying Supreme Court justices) with which to summon federal marshals, but this guy was panicked by a kid in an old Chevy convertible chasing after him.
Still . . . the driver actually looked at lot like Tony, just a younger version. He turned and stared at me and I thought it must be his son, but I don’t even know if Scalia has a son. Maybe the streets of DC are just filled with a lot of short, heavy-set Italians named Scalia.
