Judge Not, Lest Ye...

A couple of days ago, I had to go over to the next city to make a court appearance for the "Obstructing Sidewalk" ticket I'd gotten awhile back. It's quite a ways from my usual stomping grounds, and so was a logistical burden. Especially since you have to be at the courthouse at 7am or so, since such a long line queues up to get searched, go in to stand in another long line that snakes and doublebacks on itself waiting for shots at the clerks' windows, etc.

I managed to night over in the area and got to the courthouse a bit on the late side. So I had to come back for the court session starting at 2pm, instead of the morning one. This meant I'd not only miss the usual breakfast local to me, but also lunch.

In addition to this ticket, there turned out to... well, "another matter" on their computer. Seems that several years ago, when I got my first and only traffic moving violation (passed some cars by riding my motorcycle on the shoulder of the hiway), I'd been dealing with a lot of change and a move and had forgotten the whole thing. So I'd also gotten a Failure To Appear charge against me and, apparently, never got the mails about all this. So that had eventually become a bench warrant for arrest. And a suspension of driver's license. Yuk.

I was among the last to be called to appear before the judge. I was ready to plea "not guilty" to the sidewalk obstructing thing, because according to what the civic code actually says, I think it's clear I shouldn't have been cited. So when I voiced my plea to the judge, he advised me that the court clerk would schedule another date for a trial on that.

Then he said: "And there's another matter." Gulp. After having sat in his court and watched how he meted out his justice to quite a few others, as well as having read the single-sheet instructions that had been passed out to us, I realized a couple of things about that "other matter" and what I was probably facing: possibly being jailed or having to at least post a bail (which I didn't have) and/or pay fines up to maybe about $800 - $1,000 or so. Plus, until I managed to somehow clear all that up, I'd still have stuff on my driving record and still would have to get another driver license.

But then he went on to tell me that the actual files for these matters had somehow... been destroyed. So it was ALL simply "dismissed"! Wow. All gone. No problem.

Sometimes things work out better than we'd even dare imagine.