Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
The need for speed
Picture it:
I’m catching the Red Eye from Portland back to San Francisco International, which means I have to be up at 4:30 to make my flight. Night before my trip, I’m in bed by 10, but the hours tick away as I lie awake, fretting about my now-history Portland interview. It’s 10:30. Six hours of sleep? I can function on six hours —
It’s 2:30. Yeah, I can function on two hours of sleep. Not well, but I can function.
Every half hour, something roars by the window. It’s the most massive street cleaner I’ve ever seen, the mega-Zamboni of street sweepers, and I find myself wondering why it has to clean the same street again and again.
Nice thing about the Red Eye, it gets its tail into the air on time, and before I know it I’m picking up my Toyota from long term parking. I couldn’t sleep on the plane, still too distracted over Portland.
All I can think about is getting home. Fast.
The cops worked as a team, one guy with the radar gun, the other positioned down the road a ways to nail me as I got off the Golden Gate Bridge. But I was only doing 71!
In a 45 zone.
26 miles over the speed limit meant a mandatory court appearance. I can’t begin to explain the anxiety I felt leading up to this day. I told Karen it’s a Jewish thing. It’s the Kafka in me. Mind you, I like cops. I like judges, too. I don’t like courtrooms.
I kept imagining that something would go horribly wrong and I’d end up in jail. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had this fear that something like that would happen. It’s not even a fear of wrongful accusation, necessarily; in these nightmares, I am guilty of whatever it is that sent me up the river. Just as I was guilty of speed-demoning across the Golden Gate. Somehow, rather than receiving a fine, I was going to end today in an orange jumpsuit.
To avoid having this thing eat up my whole day, I arrived at the courthouse at 7:15 and sat on the stairs in front of a door that wouldn’t even open until 7:30. The purpose of getting in at 7:30? That way, I could be first in line for another door that didn’t open until 8. That door led to a woman who would put my name on a list, hopefully near the top, with the ultimate goal being my speedy exit from the House of Justice.
Folks in line were feisty. At least three times, someone walked up to the door to check the posted information, only to get shouted down by one or more people in line. One exchange in particular I thought would come to blows:
A: Hey, Boss, there’s a line.
B: Who said that?
A: That would be me.
B: You have some reason for talking to ME?
A: Yeah, man, you jumped the line. That’s reason enough.
The office opened at 8 and we filed in one at a time to put in our names. We were all given the same instructions, from what I could tell: come back at 10. We came back at 10 and gathered by the courtroom door. This one dude, looked like a cross between Efrem Zimbalist and Don Barzini, strutted around in his Italian suit* and spoke ten decibels louder than anyone else in the crowd. Three layers of Man Tan, diamond stud in one ear lobe. He was important and he wanted everyone to know it. I harbored an aching desire to see him mouth off to the judge and get slapped with contempt. That’s what would happen on TV, right?
They let us into the courtroom promptly at 10, whereupon we sat on our guilty asses for another 15 minutes before the judge came in. He talked for another ten minutes, explaining things, and then they called us up five at a time. In the first group of five was a name like Jose Luis Cruz Hoffman. I’m not kidding. By now I’m so strung out I’m wondering my brain somehow edited out my first name, or maybe the judge had skipped it, so I waved my hand and asked to hear the name again. Jose Luis Cruz Hoffman. And now I’m thinking the clerk played some kind of joke on me, she futzed with my name, and now I’ll be here all day waiting for my 30 seconds before the judge.
There was a young Hispanic guy in the first group of five, taking his lumps for two separate violations, the oldest of which was from 10 months ago. By the time all the various penalties had been slapped on, he owed the court $2700. We were supposed to keep our mouths shut, but the buzz shook the house. I started wondering if they’d put this poor bastard up there first to terrify the rest of us. And isn’t that the point of a mandatory court appearance, after all — to create some memorable fright which would hopefully get you to change your ways? Either that or it’s all about raising money.
My name got called in the second group of five. If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that you don’t smart-mouth people in authority. I had my nice clothes on (going to work that afternoon, after all), dress pants, dress shirt and a tie, and I said “Your Honor” and “please” and “thank you,” so the judge was a sweetie. He’s allowing me to do the traffic school thingie. Oh, that and a $533 fine.
Afterwards, I drove off into the noon sun, thinking how nice it was that I could use cruise control to force myself into a legal velocity.
D.
*Oh, who knows what it was. I know it wasn’t no cheap-assed suit. To me, any suit that isn’t cheap-assed must be Italian.
Ouch on the speeding fine. That’s a hefty price to pay but it’s good you get traffic school. I can relate to your anxiety about appearing before a judge in court. When I was dating my husband he was once stopped for something minor. The cop ran his name through the system and came up with a bunch of violations from Northern California based on his name and birthdate. We had to drive from Southern California to San Jose to clear his name because the violations weren’t his. When he went before the judge he wasn’t sure what to say. His only options were guilty or not guilty. A plea of not guilty would have gone to jury only it wasn’t his violation so he stood there for a moment trying to figure out what to say while the judge became very irritated with the delay in his response. Nervously he tried to explain his situation and after a tense moment and threats from the judge he finally listened to him and excused his case. I was so worried that it was going to carry over into something bigger and ugglier and I think my husband was too. Because of his common name, my husband has had several encounters of this sort in the traffic courts. It always makes me uncomfortable because they can do whatever they like once you’re in there.
He needs to change his name 🙂 But, yeah, there’s not much room for explanation in those proceedings. That was one of my nightmares: sputtering “but but but but” while the judge loses his temper with me.
Glad your man cleared his good name!
Even not so common names can lead to problems. My dad, whose name is shared with a number of people of another color, officiates at track meets. He applied to officiate at the Big Kahuna of track – the Olympics in Atlanta. So the system ran his name through a security check and bounced my dad! (Hmmm, all of his speeding tickets showed up!) As someone with some inside knowledge into government security databases, I suggested he follow up and provide some additional biographic details to make it clear that he was the law-abiding old guy and not the gansta in the ‘hood that the machine spit out. He did and was exonerated. He still didn’t get selected for Atlanta, however.
BTW, traffic school can be OK. I’ve been to a number of them. These days, I’m the one that people pass – and, no, I’m not driving slow in the fast lane!
Hope your situation resolves soon, so you can go back to a more normal life!
Hmmm, just realized that the above might be a bit rascist, which I didn’t intend. Need to think about that. Need to proofread things too.
Apologies!
I’ve met your dad, and he is a gangsta. A gangsta with a pocket protector 🙂
I got caught in a speed trap – something like doing 40 in a 35 zone -so I went to traffic school to clear my record. Actually, I really learned a lot at traffic school that I did not know or had forgotten.