And Yet Another Fine Mess

I'm sitting at the courthouse again. Waiting. I have number 60 and they're on number 18.

Among the things I was supposed to do, one was to attend a MADD Victim Impact Panel. Going through some papers on Sunday, I realized I had a deadline for that. A deadline that passed about six weeks ago. And there are big letters underneath the deadline saying A WARRANT WILL BE ISSUED FOR MY ARREST if I miss the deadline. So I did what comes naturally. I panicked.

No, really. I literally went to the window to see whether or not a peace officer was walking up the front steps to arrest me. What if they came to take me away while my kids were home? Their dad was out of town. Oh my god, would the arresting officer give me time to call someone to get them? Or would they be taken by child protective services? Surely their dad would then decide enough was enough and demand full custody of them? Would I lose my job because I was in jail? I'm sure I would, and then I would lose my house.

I pretty much had myself in a homeless shelter in forty seconds flat.

Then it occurred to me that outstanding arrest warrants might be online. And they are! I tried every possible permutation of my name and came up empty. So I probably wasn't going to be rousted out of bed in the middle of the night and hauled to the pokey.

I then proceeded with self-flagellation. How utterly and completely stupid could I be?

I had some optimism that I could take care of the problem over the phone. But the telephone number for the courthouse is just an unending loop. You can't talk to an actual human being. My only option was to come down to the courthouse. Not the downtown courthouse that's near my office and easy to get to--no, the east county courthouse. The one that takes two hours by bus and trolley to get to.

So this presents the problem of either taking a cab, which I couldn't really afford at the moment, or asking someone to drive me. I couldn't really ask my parents. They've been through so much about this already, and I am so embarrassed that I screwed this up that I don't even want to tell them. Which brings me to asking a friend, and we've already discussed how much I hate to do that. But I really don't want to go to jail. So I swallow my pride and text an innocent--my friend Paula, bless her--who cheerfully drove me and was fun company to boot.

They're on number 21 now.

Bunch of guys sitting near me, waiting also. They're trading stories of the junkies they witnessed coming off of their respective drugs in their respective holding cells. The stories are gross. But they're laughing about their warrants. They're not all freaked out. Woman and her mother on the other side of me. Mother keeps calling the daughter "Baby"; daughter appears to be about 35.

Oh, we're moving now. We've jumped to 39.

From what I've gathered, the guys next to me have collective charges of possession, grand theft auto, driving under the influence, and public intoxication. The best part, though, is that they keep complaining about how slow the clerk is--"Ugh, this is your tax dollars at work." Never mind that we're all convicted criminals. Or convicted misdemeanants.

The crowd gets a little rowdy as the clerk calls the numbers, yelling "Bingo!" and "What'd I win?" The clerk gets testy and tells us to quiet down.

We're on number 49 now.

The bench we're all sitting on is slatted and uncomfortable. It's an unpleasant reminder of the bench in the holding cell.

60! Wait, yes, that's me. I walk up and smile, quietly tell the clerk that I've missed my MADD class, and I'm really sorry, but is there any way she can give me an extension? She starts punching in numbers into the computer, and asks "Is this your first extension?" My first? People do this? All the time? It's this easy? Not even a court appearance? I yes ma'am her, and she goes to get my file.

And like that, there's a thirty-day extension, all filled out on official paper and I am not going back to jail. Which is a relief.