Last week, I criticized Pope Francis and got a passel of new ultra traditionalist followers. This week, I wrote about rape culture and have garnered a ton of new follows from, like, women’s studies academics. Next week: sad surprises all around!
But seriously, hello to all my new readers. I’m very glad you’re here, and I’m grateful for the shares. But if you’re going to stick around, you should know that I am a deeply silly person. And so I have elected to tell the story of how my speeding ticket was dismissed this week. But I’m going to tell it the stupid way.
This past summer, I was driving home from a concert in Worcester with my two oldest kids and their friend. At first we were all
and then it got pretty, pretty late, but even on the way home we were still
but it was kind of a long ride and eventually I was just
But I powered through. We’re halfway home and one kid really has to pee, so we stop at the only gas station on that lonely, lonely strip of road. I pull up, she hops out. Nope, it’s closed. She hops in, away we go.
Then:
Dammit.
Now, I know this town fairly well, and there are a good many honest, upstanding police officers in that area. But this was not one of them. Like this:
except with a badge and a gun. So he decides I was speeding, and also had a headlight out, and also a license plate light out. Real reason he stopped me: I was driving a black SUV around midnight with out-of-state plates, and had popped in and out of a deserted gas station for no apparent reason. He obviously figures:
Which, okay, fine, a reasonable guess. But after we chat and he runs my plates and all, and finds out I have a clean record just like I said I did, and we showed him the ticket stubs from the goony concert we were at, he still comes back with a big ol’ ticket for $105, and lectures me about how it could have been much higher, but he was giving me a break.
Fine. Whatever. I just want to get home. I actually got stopped a second time on the way home but whatever! I’m not on trial here! Not today, anyway.
So we finally made it home, and the next day, I started getting mad. What do I have to pay a stupid fine for? I’m respectable. I pay taxes. I mow my lawn, not like some slob. Plus I didn’t have $105. So I contested the ticket, and got a court date.
Fast forward a month, and now, well, I am on trial. I show up at the court house forty minutes away looking fresh and fine and alert
I go through security and hand over the dangerous arsenal secreted in my purse, including a Schick razor, a pair of tweezers for my goaty goaty face, and a fork
and sit down on the world’s greatest travesty disguised as a bench, to wait my turn. Waiting with me are:
a guy who, in retrospect, should not have knocked the phone out of her hand but when he heard about the prostitution it was the last straw;
a mom and a boy who was both in school and working, your honor, and had simply misunderstood the parameters of losing one’s license;
a man who wasn’t actually masturbating in front of that lady, as she thought, but only had poison ivy all in his pants
No, I am not.
And also a woman who, with her daughter, had lost her job as a waitress in the diner, was exceedingly proud of having wiped her ass with her unemployment check, and then apparently wiled away the lonely hours going back to said diner and giving her former employers the unemployment check treatment, on three different occasions, and also virtually on social media, which led them to take out a restraining order on her because THEY’RE ALL CORRUPT.
And the whole time, she had a bunch of theories about the judicial system which she voices loudly and repeatedly and they can be summed up thusly:
along with a bit of this:
plus a little of this
and just a soupcon of this, for some reason
and everything she said, her daughter said, too.
And the whole time the judge was just all:
Never heard him raise his voice or even sound impatient, even while the insane bullshit was flowing like
He just keeps like
At this point I stop being nervous, because I have heard enough to realize that the worst possible thing that could happen to me that day was that I would have to pay $105; and compared to the prospects of everyone else in that room, that was actually
So what happened was, finally they called my name, I go in, they read the terrible report that Office Dipshit has written up using his left elbow. My speed was estimated, not clocked; the officer didn’t even write his name down, and he certainly didn’t show up.
And, let’s face it, I’m a white lady.
and so the judge is like
And that was that!
At this point, you only have two questions left. One, was I, in fact, speeding? Well …
So there.
And two, did I get my fork back?
Friends, I did.
It’s in my purse as we speak. With my faith in humanity restored
I can once more give a fork. We can all give a fork!
Blog post adjourned.