Ordinary Things – When Did We All Start Hopping?

It Used To Be Please, Just Step Out of the Car”

September 6, 2026

For coffee this morning I am sharing a pet peeve that has been picking at me lately.

Nothing serious. Nothing that is going to keep me awake at night. But it does irk me.

SUV with open doors parked on a suburban street at dusk — ***“Come on, hop out of the car…I just want you to hop for me”***

It is this hopping thing.

Somewhere along the way, people began asking other grown adults to hop everywhere.

I notice it especially in police videos. It has leaked over into television comercials. And, I have heard waitresses refer to it, when seating people at restaurants. But, I mainly hear it those police videos.

An officer stops a vehicle, walks up to the driver and eventually says something like:

“Go ahead and hop out of the vehicle for me.”

Hop?

Have you ever actually seen a grown adult hop out of a car?

Outside of Easter, a sack race, or perhaps New Year’s Eve after somebody has had far too much to drink, I cannot remember seeing many adults hopping anywhere.

Yet law enforcement officers across the country now seem determined to get us hopping.

“Hop out for me.”

“Hop over here.”

“Hop in the back seat.”

Maybe that explains why some people in those YouTube videos refuse to get out of the car. Perhaps the instruction simply does not register.

Imagine a grown man appearing at your front door and saying:

“Sir, would you hop out onto the lawn for me?”

Would you?

I would probably stand there wondering exactly what kind of hop he had in mind.

Eventually, in some of these police videos, after several requests for the driver to “hop out,” patience disappears, a window gets broken, and the person is physically removed from the vehicle.

At that point, strangely enough, nobody is hopping.

Well, except perhaps the officers, who suddenly seem to be hopping around one another trying to get the person handcuffed.

Then comes the next instruction.

“Go ahead and hop into the back seat.”

Think about that for a moment.

The person is now handcuffed, standing beside a police car, possibly having just been dragged out of another automobile, and someone is asking them to hop into the back seat of a car driven by a complete stranger.

That requires considerably more coordination than I possess.

But the hopping is not finished.

Eventually they arrive at what officials may call a detention facility, processing center, correctional intake facility, or any number of impressive names.

Let us save some time.

It is jail.

The officers open the patrol-car door and what do you suppose comes next?

“Come on and hop out for me.”

Another hop.

Before the experience is finished, the poor person may have been asked to hop out, hop over, hop in, hop back out, and possibly hop onto a bench.

When exactly did hop become the standard instruction for grown adults?

What happened to:

“Please step out of the vehicle.”

“Step to the rear of the car.”

“Come back here and speak with me.”

Those instructions sound perfectly reasonable. More importantly, I know exactly what they mean.

There is another reason I think words matter.

Sometimes an officer is asking someone to step out of a vehicle because doing so may actually prevent a situation from becoming worse. A conversation beside the vehicle might clear something up. It might reveal information the driver needs to know. It might even keep that person from making another mistake that results in an additional charge.