Arrested Development

Due to some sort of construction project at the courthouse (which has yet to alleviate the disgusting, moldy water leak hole in my ceiling), parking in the actual courthouse parking lot is next to impossible if you don’t camp out for a spot the night before.  Thankfully, parking in the entire downtown area is free and relatively easy to find.

I got to work early (!) this morning, but still had to park across the street from the courthouse.   Even though I work for the judiciary, I often have little regard for the law, particularly stupid laws.  Because I didn’t feel like walking the rest of the way down the block to the crosswalk, I just waited for traffic to clear and jaywalked my happy ass across the street.

There was one car approaching, but I had plenty of time to get across the street.  But as it got closer, I saw it was a cop.  “No one gets in trouble for jaywalking,” I thought.  Well, no one except for me.

The cop car began flashing its sirens and honked the horn at me.  “Fuck me,” I thought.  “I’m about to get a massive ticket and lecture for jaywalking, and my judges will certainly leave me to my devices on this one.”  While I am fond of both of them and know they have my best interests in mind, I am relatively sure that neither of them would take to kindly to me pulling the whole, “Do you know who I work for?” line.  A previous clerk tried that and he is now in jail for DUI and assault on a police officer.

As I was preparing a (very poor) excuse for why I didn’t use the crosswalk, the cop car slowed down and rolled down its window.   As I was stammering out a “G-g-g-ood morning, officer,” I realized that the cop was none other than one of the bailiffs from my floor, just trying to fuck with my head and give me a good scare.

When he told me he wished he’d turned on the siren, I informed him that he would have received my dry cleaning bill after I’d gone home to change my pants.

I can safely say, so far, there’s yet to be a boring day at the office.