My traffic court date came up and I went last night to take care of it. This was one of the tickets I wrote about in No Stupid Children a while back, the ticket I got when I pulled in the railroad station exit instead of the entrance on a visit to the Wise Man. I decided to dispute this ticket because the court was 40 minutes away as opposed to the one I got the following week which was an hour away and over a bridge to boot. We have to choose our battles in life and I like mine nearby.
I loaded the court address into my GPS which can be programmed with a male or female voice. You can also choose American or British and since Husband didn’t like being told where to turn by a guy no matter what the accent, we chose the British female voice and we named her Olivia. She’s good company if a bit dense in that she pronounces some street names whimsically. If you’re coming up on Quimby St. NE, Olivia will announce “Quimby Saint Ne” and sometimes I drive right by my destination because I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about.
Don’t tell anyone but I also keep the old GPS in a duffel bag in the trunk like some secret the Sopranos need to throw in the river because I can’t get the new one to detour without taking me back on the jammed highway I just got off of. So if I need to take the streets I pull over and haul out the old turkey and fire it up and Husband would find this so amusing because even with two navigation devices I’m still late. Well, maybe amusing is a reach.
Speaking of late, traffic court started very promptly at a half hour after the time posted with the usual innocents lined up to tell their story and show their photos proving how the law made a mistake. One guy asked the judge if he could show him evidentiary pictures and the judge sighed and said bring ’em on and the guy opened his backpack and took out a digital camera and started leaning over the bench to scroll through the stored pictures expecting His Honor to peer into a three inch screen as he ambled past his pet photos and the judge said, “I don’t think so. Step back.”
A much older woman kept answering her cell phone despite all the signs saying that wasn’t allowed and finally the court officer walked over and told her firmly to turn it off. The woman said it wasn’t her fault, she didn’t know how to turn it off. Or on. She never did either, she just talked on it. The court officer turned it off for her and when the judge got to her case he looked up and said he’d have to schedule her with another judge and she nodded her head in agreement. So either he was done with her ringing phone or she was someone his mother played Mah Jong with and it was a conflict.
On the opposite side of the room was a young woman with one of those hollow coughs that sound really alarming. It was so bad that the judge actually interrupted himself twice to ask if she needed some water. Or an iron lung. Another woman leaving the court offered her a lozenge just like you see on the commercials. The cougher kept acting surprised at all the attention and saying she was fine, like in the alternate universe where she lives it’s normal to sound like you’re choking on a squirrel. I knew I hadn’t seen the last of her, just like I know the really wild little kid at the airport gate is going to have the seat right behind me. And in the SpongeBob backpack he’s toting around are fourteen spare feet and they’re all going to hit the back of my seat on a rotating basis while his mother downs her weight in plastic glasses of chardonnay.
So it took two hours but my ticket got pleaded down to a parking violation and I had to pay $125 but escaped the points on my license so I considered it a win. The court was flexible about payment and allowed a week’s grace if I needed it but I said I had it with me so I got directed over to the cashier’s conga line of detainees who were snaked around the courtroom waiting to buy their way out. But I wasn’t the last on line for long. Ricola?
Daughter’s Featured Fotos take us out of the courtroom and into the music festival spirit at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival held in Hillsdale, NY at Dodd’s Farm.
the workshop stage
random festival behavior. i think i’ll stand on my car now
dodd’s farm self-portrait. can you spy daughter?
it isn’t a festival without a storm