My Brush With the Law, continued

My day started yesterday at a most unusual location – the courthouse in downtown Fort Worth. I decided that if I didn’t take care of my speeding ticket right away, it was the kind of thing that could turn around and bite me hard in the ass later on down the road.

So there I was, going through the metal detectors, wearing my snappy black button down shirt with the Region 13 logo on it, as if to say, “Hello, fellow state workers. I am your brother. Please take pity on me.”

Then I just started letting the current of their system carry me along, and I have to say it was quite efficient. Impressive, really. Despite my offense being a mere traffic stop, there’s something about being in a courthouse that just makes me feel guilty of something.

After scanning my ticket and insurance information into the system on a nifty desktop scanner, the woman behind the glass – “Cashier Six” – sent me to the last in a row of little courtrooms. A dour Hindi woman took my paperwork and I sat on a bench in the gallery, watching other people go up to the judge as their names were called.

Then I heard a small, female voice call my name meekly, and I approached the bench in what I thought was a respectful way, even smiling at the bailiff and saying “Good morning” to him.

“Did you call his name?” I heard him mutter to the judge.

“No, I think the prosecutor did,” she answered.

When I realized what I’d done, disrupting the flow of this well-oiled glockenspiel of a courthouse, I was mortified. “I’m SO sorry,” I said, backing away from the judge.

I then went out and found “the prosecutor,” a woman who had walked right past me out the door and into the hallway, expecting me to follow her, just as I had made my way comically to the bench.

She looked about fourteen years old, despite her attempt at lady-lawyer attire, in a crisp white button down shirt and 1930’s-style knee-length skirt. I’d noticed her and a young man (equally youthful –looking, so that I’d assumed they were interns from a local high school or something) working busily at a computer screen and shuffling papers.

Anyway, we eventually figured things out, and I’m happy to say there will not only be no traffic school, but the infraction won’t appear on my record . . . if I can keep from getting a speeding ticket in Fort Worth in the next 90 days. So my day in (traffic) court was a success…