Court n' Comedy

Ahhhh yesss, nothing like spending a glorious overcast/dark day going to court. I had one of those chatty cab drivers. When I mentioned court, he went into a long spiel about how we're all slaves in this "land of the free". This info I already knew and have brooded over ad nauseum. His view of things was considerably darker than mine, however... I was praying that he would button it up but he kept pulling the cord and on and on it went...His advice was for me to tell the truth to the judge- as they say in the Guiness ads-brilliant! Made it through court- 2 1/2 hours of mind numbing entertainment so I could answer yes to three questions the judge asked me. She was prim, proper and actually quite attractive but I went with "yes, your honor" rather than "yes, bay-bee". I think I was actually behind the podium for a grand total of 45 seconds. Shall we do the math and get a percentage of that against the 2 plus hours? No, let's not and say we did. Since this was my first time in court for anything (traffic violation) it was a bit different than I envisioned. My time to be there was 9 AM. I would plead guilty at 9:05, pay my fine and be on my merry way. Not so fast grasshoppah! It turned out to be basically a cattle call oriented thing, with a herd of 40 to 5o of us unfortunates filing in. Of course, I get Charlie Manson Jr. aka Aqualung sitting next to me on the bench. He talked to himself and then managed to get into a heated exchange with the DA about his case.

As time droned on, the state prosecutor said he had to be at another courthouse and asked if all of the state cases should be first. Heavy groan...mine was a city one. At least 6 cases were called and the people weren't even in court, then they called one person on the phone! The DA asked the question I'm sure we were all wondering about, why wasn't this person in court? We had been waiting for well over an hour. Then came the longest testimony, this from a hardened criminal charged with criminal trespassing aka walking on railroad tracks! Did I ever say how insane bureaucracy makes me? It was at this point that Charlie Manson Jr. piped up and said so eloquently "Hey Judge, Armstrong here-when am I on?" He then realized that they were still hearing state cases-after the DA reminded him. Ooops, my bad...ha ha! So several of us ended up getting a pre-trail diversion offer and will get our charges dismissed in exhange for possible community service and some fines. Sounded good to me, especially if it had anything to do with me getting out of the gloomy courtroom a minute or two earlier. Just the possibility of having to spend another morning in that courtroom again is incentive enough for me to walk the extreme straight and narrow.

As Rodney Dangerfield (RIP) once said-"It's lonely at the top, especially when there's no one on the bottom!"