I went to court
And lets just say that it didn't go down quite like I had hoped it would. I leave work in the middle of a busy Friday to troop all the way to the blithe upon the earth Isle of Staten to go to traffic court for those 2 tickets I got in March. Having done the court thing a few times before I kinda knew what to expect, I was hoping that the cop wouldn't show up and I would be exonerated of my misdemeanors against the shitty fine borough of Staten Island (BTW I just realized that I got this crossing out words icon on my blog page so now I could use this as a release for my passive aggressiveness. Bear with me, I may only use this like a thousand or so more times) As they start to call the first case, in comes my accuser with the bravado of a bull fighter entering the ring against a bull who as already been drugged to the point that all he has to do is go in for the kill. He seems to be pretty popular, the judge and clerk knew him by his first name and he likewise. So I knew I was already in trouble. To further exacerbate my feelings of dread, everyone in the courtroom was there to plead there case against him, there was about ten of us in all.
There were five cases heard before mine, all of them were found guilty. This guy was prepared, he was talking about how all of his machines were calibrated correctly. He talked about his patrol route, the weather and road conditions, his lines of sight. In other words I knew I was in for a fight. Everyone's defense was meager at best, hell I was waiting for someone to just use the Eddie Murphy defense and say, "Hey, it wasn't me!" just to see if it could fluster him a bit.
My name gets called and its the moment of truth, I walk up to the bench trying to give the cop my most menacing stare, exuding confidence. Officer whateverthefuckhisnameis does his spiel explaining how he saw me driving and tapping my brakes and that the traffic conditions were moderate so he found that to be strange so he pulled up alongside of me and that I happened to be tailgating a car in front of me on top of that I was yammering away on my cell phone. Now for those of you who know me this is how I drive all the goddamn time so it is nothing new. I will admit that I was talking on my cell at the time so I decided not to fight that. and focus my defense on the tailgating.
I ask the cop what car I was driving and what car I was tailgating and he answered both questions. This cop is good, hell I didn't even know what car I was tailgating. I asked him how fast was I going? He said, "50-55 miles per hour" You can only be tailgating if you are going over 45 another correct answer. Finally I said to him, "Hey are you sure it was me?" WHAM! Guilty, both charges, $220. Thanks for playing!
