Double Flee A

I went to court today because I love being late for school and honestly, where else can you pay fourteen bucks to park for two hours? I persuaded the court to see things my way and got out of a traffic ticket. Tempting as it was to convivially ask if they validate, I was satisfied that the ticket the big fat cop wrote me magically goes away, and not to the evil insurance company.

If you want to see (why would you) a good cross-section of the down and out in a setting where no physical harm is likely, hit a courtroom sometime. There are usually courtrooms attached to jails where the really good cases are. Murder, assault, domestic abuse, etc. Grab a thing of popcorn and check out the prisoners, who are sometimes behind glass, and their poor-imitation-Stevie-Nicks-trashy girlfriends out in the audience/congregation/whatever. In case you need to appreciate what you've got, it's easy to see these guys don't have much going for them. I guess they do have the hope of being released, and that has to count for something.

When I was in jail there was a guy who had been in there two weeks longer than he was supposed to be. He was a long way from home, didn't speak any English, and just had to sit there till they let him out. He couldn't do anything about it at all. He always thought he was going to get jumped so he carried sharpened pencils around in his fists. There was one bilingual Mexican guy --too apathetic for any good use to his countryman-- who told us his situation. Think of the lazy mouse who's Speedy Gonzales's friend. That mouse, to a whisker, was this bilingual guy.

There's comedy all the time in jail if you know where to look, like when the other guys in the cell tried to speak to the non-English speaking guy directly. They would raise their voices and say the English words slowly and loudly, as if that would make him understand. Not once did it occur to any of them how stupid and futile that was. Jail is exactly like that. When you see the guys in the orange suits, this scenario is a good example of their daily lives. Eventually one of the more outspoken meth dealers had a "hey, c'mere and check this out" meeting with a guard about it. Hilariously, the slight Mexican was freed later that same day. It was the only time anyone was released at a time other than seven a.m.

posted by dale @ 1:38 PM