They have my Fingerprints beacsue the DMV guy messed up. Welome to Ameruka.

For the last couple of weeks I kept calling the courthouse between the hours of 12:30 and 3 pm and I kept getting the brush off that my Citation had not been processed yet. I called on Monday and they said it had been processed and that I MUST come in by the 14th- like Wednesday. Too bad for me that I have two grants due, two classes to teach and a flight to a conference between Monday afternoon and Wednesday!

Anyway, I got up really early and was at the court house by 7 am this morning when it opened. By about 8:15 I had mug shots, fingerprints the whole bit and then was sent directly to the court room. By the time things got started at 9, there had to have been 500 people in the court room all waiting to be processed through. All the benches were full and even the back and sides were packed with standing people. I waited until about 10 am on the hardest benches you could possibly imagine. They were punishment enough!

I think today was translator day as there was a VAST majority of spanish speakers in there and none spoke English too well. I could hear the translator working hard on the other side of the room.

My Lawyer -great man to do this on such short notice- zipped over from attending court in another county and found me in the crowd. He took my paperwork and two drivers licenses, went and had a chat with the DA and clerks and about 20 minutes later I was out of there. Charges dropped.

He is filing the paperwork petition the court to have it all expunged from my record this afternoon and that will take 2-3 months to get processed.

He also thinks I should complain to the uppers at Vanderbilt Police and thinks the guy shouldn't have bothered giving me a ticket. The whole thing was a waste of my time and the court's time. Maybe next week when I get back from the conference I'll go over and speak to the supervisor.

All in all: two trips to the court house and one to the DMV, a lot of wasted time, 150$ for the Lawyer, mug shots, humiliation, a few tears, a lot of stress, a bevy of Chicken hugs and several large bowls of ice cream.