Stupid Tigers. They could have let me get a good night's sleep before my court date tomorrow morning.

Fine, I'll tell you the whole story. In May, I was driving with Kim to a Waterfire. We were on the east side of Providence. City streets, on a main road with lights/stop signs, but not at every intersection. All of a sudden, rollers. Kim and I immediately start wondering what I'd done to get pulled over. I thought back a half a minute. I do remember NOT slowing down when some fuckwad decided to cross mid-street while absent-mindedly (Is there any other way? This shit has to end.) talking on his phone. If anyone should be getting stopped by a cop, it's this guy. Anyway, the pig finally comes up to my car. And he stares at me. Like I've just branded his grandmother's ass with a hot iron. He's actually got me thinking I may have committed a horrible crime. Had I tied Aunt Edna's dog to the bumper and forgotten about him?

The guy's still staring. I finally just said "hi." He asks Question 1 of the Pig Handbook: Do you know why I pulled you over? I looked at Kim as if to imply the two of us were both wondering that ourselves, before turning back and telling him I honestly didn't know. He says, "that four-way stop back there?" I tell him that I was unaware that I went through it, that I didn't know how I could have. I wasn't a dick about it or anything, I was kind of putting my hands up to let him know that I certainly wasn't intending to do anything wrong. But he says I went through it. He asks if I knew the sign was there. I tell him I take this road all the time and don't see how I wouldn't stop at a stop sign. He finally goes back to his car and tells me to wait.

Then a funny thing happened. While all these other cars are slowly going by, each driver staring at me since I'm the pulled-over asshole on display, an older ex-hippie type guy in a jeep almost comes to a stop and starts talking to me.

"The stop sign," he asks.

"Huh?"

"Did he get you for going through that stop sign?"

"Yeah."

Guy says, "he's been doin' that all day!"

At that moment, the cop happens to be walking back to my car, and buts in to the conversation: "Where's your seat belt?!," he asks the guy, who then drives away. So now we're thinking that's proof right there that this isn't about us, but that this asshole cop has decided he's gonna pull over whoever the fuck he wants, stare them down to make them think they must have done something wrong, and give them a ticket. Which he then gives me. $85. He tells me to plead not guilty and that the judge should throw it out provided I haven't had a ticket in a while. At this point it was almost like he realized that he pulled over someone who's completely innocent, wearing a seat belt, familiar with the area, and therefore shouldn't be getting a ticket. He'll just have me go fight the ticket, while meeting his quota (or getting his rocks off, or having his nice power trip--I don't know why he was pulling people over who didn't break any rules).

So I thought back to make sure I hadn't gone through that damn sign. I remember seeing two pedestrians approaching the crosswalk from the left, thinking I'd have to let them go, but they turned. And I thought about how there's a building on the right blocking that side street, so even if there wasn't a stop sign, I'd be almost stopping there anyway, as not to risk someone flying out of there and crashing into me. I even went back the next day and noticed there are actually TWO stop signs, one on each side of the street. There's no way I didn't stop at that intersection. But I still don't know where that cop came from. Maybe he was behind that building, and didn't see my car emerge until after I'd stopped, making it appear as if I blew through it? I don't know.

So in late June, I went in for my plea. Got to the clerk's office and saw a big fucking Yankees newspaper fold-out taped to the window, and pictures of A-Rod in the office. As if I wasn't pissed enough. I go into the courtroom, and wait a long time. I got there on time. The judge? Not so much. He finally gets there and tells us that all we'll be doing is entering a plea, and that any trial will take place later. He says that if we meet the "good driver" standards, we can plead guilty, the ticket will be thrown out, and we go home for good (after paying a $35 court fee, woohoo!). To meet the standard, you have to have not had a ticket in 3 years. Damn, I thought, I know I had one somewhere around October 2008, a few months shy of 3 years earlier. So I figure if by chance he says I do meet the standard, I'll reluctantly plead guilty just to have it thrown out and get the hell out of there, and if I don't, well, good, I get to have a trial against that crooked cop.

So after waiting for about 50 other people to go before me (everyone goes up before the judge to plead one by one, forced to do it in front of dozens of others), and struggling to hear everything the judge was saying since he refused to speak on mic, I finally hear my name called.

I approach the bench. Judgie Boy says "Jere...citation...May 20-something...you meet the good driver standards...no tickets in 3 years...guilty plea means we'll throw the tick out...how do you plead?"

"Guilty," I say, despite, again, being innocent.

"Bla bla bla, ticket thrown out, step to your left...."

Whew. At least I'm done. I sit on a bench and wait. Then I hear the judge say something that sounds like my name. Nah, couldn't be. I'm done. Must be the next guy. He starts talking...and then gives me this signal--with his eyes--to come back up to the mic. Huh? Okay. I go back. It seems that only now has he noticed that ticket I had in 2008 while going through more papers. I wanted to be like "Dude! Too late, I already said guilty!" But I listened as he asked about the ticket. I told him I was living in Rhode Island but still had my Connecticut license at the time. He said that because of that, I did not meet the standard, and how did I plea. Oy. "Not guilty," I said, simultaneously pissed that he fucked up and happy that I'd now get a chance to stick it to that filthy cop.

So that was 2 hours of my life. And in late July, I went back for more: "the trial."

Again, I go to the Yankee office first, and again, the judge is late. I wait. Finally a guy calls me and a bunch of others. We trial people are supposed to be taken care of before the new plea people. So we're taken outside the courtroom door, and stand in a haphazard "line" while a bunch of uniformed cops with big biceps hover nearby. I figure these are the cops who are having trials against us real people. But I don't see "my" cop.

At one point, a woman who came back from the bathroom asks me "where everybody went." Some people went to the bathroom, one guy was in with the inspector, other officials (lawyers?) have taken other people away--so I tell her I don't know. I'm just waiting for somebody to tell me what to do. She's shocked and in her rudest voice asks, "You didn't see where people went?" I'm like What the fuck, I don't know and I don't care. This fucking woman. I feel like the same asshole who put up the fucking Yankee posters also threw this person into the mix just to punish people. She ended up placing the book she'd been reading on her head while she waited. So at least I knew she was just a crazy person. But man was I close to going up to one of those cops and saying I wanted to do a citizen's arrest on her ass, loud enough so she could hear.

Eventually an inspector takes me into a little room. He reviews my paperwork. Asks me about some weird thing, like Did I have some trouble in January '09 or some shit. I say No, and that I switched states so that notation was just to say that I obtained a Rhode Island license at that time. Okay, he says, then basically tells me that since my last ticket was almost three years ago, the judge should let me go because they're usually are nice about that stuff. At this point I'm under the impression I'll go back in, the judge will say I'm fine, I'll plead "guilty," and I'll go home. Looking back, I should have said at this point, Wait, I don't want to do that, I want to have a trial, where's my cop? But the thought of just being done with it is why I agreed to what the inspector said.

I get back into the courtroom, and the judge's butt-boy starts telling me he'll "get me a new trial," and asking when my last ticket was exactly, so that he could make the new trial be closer to 3 years after it. This is going on while the judge is talking to other people ten feet away. I have no chance to really talk to someone and ask them what's going on and tell them what I want. So now apparently I'm agreeing to a new trial date! Then I have to sit there and listen to all these other people make pleas while they type up my paperwork. Oy again.

After watching dozens of people say they did nothing wrong, before watching themselves doing something clearly wrong on a huge video screen, the butt-boy finally says I'm ready to go. Then he tells me I need to get my driving record of May 2008 through October 2008 from Connecticut DMV and bring it with me when I come back! What the fuck?

So let's recap. I've done nothing wrong. I'm now setting up a THIRD court date, and I'm told to do a chore? Fuuuuuck that.

That third date is tomorrow morning. Of course, I never got that bullshit from CT DMV. That's not my job. A fucking court of law wants to know my driving record so they ask me to go get it for them? Plus, now that it's October, and they know my last ticket was October 2008, there's the three years, right? Wasn't that the point of moving the trial to October?

I'm going in there tomorrow, and hoping this guy just looks at the facts again, and lets me off. However, if he doesn't, well hey, I go right back to pleading not guilty, and get a trial against that cop. In fact, I may just do that anyway! They've wasted plenty of my time, it's time I start wasting theirs. And when I go back the fourth time, I'm gonna find out where that cop is, and if he isn't there, I should win, right? I should have won last time when he wasn't there! I feel like they knew he wasn't there, so they covered up for him by saying, "oh don't worry, we'll get this thrown out," only to have the butt-boy have no idea what was going on, thinking I needed a new date, even though I've already pleaded not guilty. After pleading guilty thanks to the judge's screw-up.

So wish me luck, I guess. (This will be the first time I'll remember to bring something with me to do during the inevitable 2-hour wait. So I've got that. Oh, and if I do have to go in a fourth time, I am bringing a Red Sox sticker and slapping it on top of that goddamn Yankee sign. Man, how sweet would it have been to approach that asshole in that office tomorrow morning if the Yanks had been eliminated tonight?! Stupid Tigers.)