Many of you noticed my column was not in the paper last week.
Well, that’s because I was in traffic court. Okay, sure, I could have written it ahead of time, but … I don’t know how to explain it … the creative juices just don’t flow very well unless it’s an hour before deadline.
So, there I was in the Harris County courtroom, along with about a hundred other poor souls, thinking how that whole day would make a great column.
It all started one day when I was visiting my mom. There is a stretch of road with no stop signs or traffic lights where the traffic automatically speeds up to about 45 or 50 mph. The City of Houston, in their infinite wisdom, has lowered the speed limit in this one stretch to 30 mph. How ironic that if someone actually goes 30 mph, they will get cursed at, honked at, and have angry commuters riding their rear bumpers.
Speed trap? You betcha. The police work in tandem just around a curve in the road so you can’t see them before they see you. As the cars come around, one guy waves offenders onto a side road; a second cop is there writing tickets as fast as he can.
I was one of those ignorant visitors who didn’t notice the speed limit changed from 45 mph to 30 mph, so I was leading the pack. I was only going 40, though, so all the impatient people behind me were already agitated. There was no understanding from the policeman for my situation, however, and I got a big fat ticket. AND I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. I always wear my seatbelt! This was a Murphy’s Law kind of day.
I decided to try to get “deferred adjudication”, which is a fancy way of saying you promise to not speed for a few months, but you have to go to court to get it. Within days, I received solicitations from three different law firms, so I went to their websites and hired the one with the best-looking lawyers.
Well, it turns out everybody else wanted deferred adjudication, too. We were packed in like sardines, and “my” lawyer had a list two pages long of people he was representing. We had been warned to be there at 7:40 a.m. or else they’d issue warrants on us. Stuff like that scares people like me, so you can bet I was there. It turns out it’s really a “hurry up and wait” kind of thing.
They called roll at 8 a.m., then we waited. There were about ten lawyers up there, all scurrying around, flashing papers, making deals. And we waited some more.
The judge came in. They called roll again. Then there was more scurrying around, more papers flying, and more deal-making. And we waited some more.
At some point midway through the morning, my name was called. The voice came from a man-child who looked about 16. He introduced himself as my lawyer and shook my hand. Then he told me to sit back down. And I waited some more.
Policemen started showing up, and more papers started shuffling, some getting put on the judge’s desk, some being transferred to a clerk’s desk. It used to be that the Houston policemen were notorious for not showing up to court, so if you fought a ticket, you automatically won. But the administration docks their pay or something if they miss court now, so they show.
All of us waiting criminals didn’t have a clue which stack our papers were in or what it meant. The mystery of it all had us a little nervous. We were comparing notes about our heinous crimes, wondering if our pubescent internet lawyers really knew what they were doing.
Finally, my child-lawyer called my name and asked me to follow him into a little conference room. There was a pit in my stomach. He looked at me with serious eyes and said, “If you plead guilty to the seatbelt, they’ll drop the speeding ticket.”
This was better than probation! I agreed and wanted to pinch his cheeks, but I refrained. I just smiled, clicked my heals, and drove 30 mph the whole way home.
