Well it's finally happened. I've died.

As proof I offer up yesterday. I had to drive to Pontiac Illinois (3hours) to go to traffic court. The front plate on my car went missing and a state trooper apparently decided that I should be stopped for this and given a ticket. Not just any ticket mind you, oh no. This ticket was a “must appear.” That means, I learned, that they take your license and you have to go to the local court house. So in order to make it there by 9am I had to leave at 5AM. I had no idea where the courthouse was so I needed a bit of extra time to find it. Have you been to traffic court? It’s very much like Jerry Springer but oh so real. It only took an hour and a half of actual time in court but yikes! The only other middle class white guy in there was a lawyer. For the most part it was white-trash folks but there were a fair number of immigrants (mostly Mexicans). I was absolutely dumbfounded by the stupidity of some of these folks. I was doing that little mental game; “You are the winner of dumbest person today” but each person just blew the previous contestant away. An example? The young guy who is there for not having his license. All he has to do is show it and the ticket will be waived. The prosecutor asks him for his license to clear it up…..he doesn’t have it on him. Let’s get this right. He gets a ticket for not having the license. He has to go to court to prove one thing, that he has a license. He goes to court and DOESN'T BRING HIS LICENSE? Wow. Well there were many, many more and while some of it was really sad for the most part I was just thrilled to be me when I left. Don’t take that as a snobbish statement. Really just watch Jerry Springer once and you will see. I now know that Dante was right and that was most surely one of the levels of Hell. By the way my fine….$343. I got out easy.

Later,

Sam