Still Waiting (Part two)

I'm still waiting for my background check to come back. And getting more nervous by the hour. Yesterday I told you about part one about my mystery arrest. Here's the next part of the story. And, yes, this is a true story. In fact, my daughter and I talked about it this morning..."That was such a crazy thing, Mom!" she said. And it was.

If you missed part one, though, just click here first.

...


The kids were silent.

I asked them again. “Where did you get bail money? You didn’t call Grandma, did you? Did you call Mexico?”

They all started talking at once to explain that they had called Steve and he was totally freaked out and that they didn’t know what to tell him. He told them where his ATM card was hidden but they said that even with Steve’s ATM card AND mine, they couldn’t get enough cash out to post bail.

“So how did you do it? How did you get enough money then? You didn’t tell Grandma did you?”

My son smiled smugly. “Of course we didn’t tell Grandma! I asked my girlfriends parents to borrow some extra money to bail you out!”

Gulp!

They all started asking me what was going on and kidding me about having a ‘secret life’. I just kept saying, “I have no idea what happened. I have absolutely no idea what happened.”

I don’t know if they believed me, but it was the truth.

I was relieved to see no evidence of a party being held during my incarceration. The kids went off to bed almost right away since it was quite late on Sunday night by this time.

My eyes were almost swollen shut from crying so much and it wouldn’t have taken too much effort to just go bed myself as well, but I still needed to call my future husband and try to explain what was happening.

Gulp!


I called and woke up the future Mr. Jenny. He had a million questions but I just kept explaining that I had no idea whatsoever what was going on. “How can you not know?” he kept asking, “Didn’t you ask at the jail? Or the arresting officer? Didn’t you get any paperwork? How can you not know what’s going on?”

“Of course I asked! I asked everyone! They just all said that it was a criminal warrant sworn out and I would get all the information in court! And I don’t have the faintest idea why this is happening?”

I hung up, annoyed.

It was a sleepless night.

And I dressed for work and my mid-morning court date with dread.

At that time I was employed as the Human Resource manager for a large company. The company had a strict policy that anyone in management had to adhere to the highest moral and ethical standards.

I felt pretty sure on my drive in that getting arrested didn’t fit either of these criteria.

My boss was a straight-laced high up muckety-muck kind of guy from the giant corporate banking world. I was a little afraid of him, but I immediately headed into his office after dropping my purse on my desk.


“Ummm…” I said hesitatantly from his open doorway. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

He motioned me into his office and looked carefully at me with a concerned expression on his face. “You don’t look so hot…are you sick? You should go home.”

“Ummmm…” I hesitated again. “I just wanted to tell you that something happened yesterday and I kinda feel like I should tell you about it because…well…ummm…”

He looked even more puzzled .

I continued. “Well…ummm…it’s just that I got arrested yesterday and have to go to something called an arraignment at ten o’clock and…”

My boss interrupted me. “Wait! Hold up here. YOU got arrested? YOU? This is a joke, right?”

“No joke,” I said, “I got pulled over and I had this warrant and…”

To my dismay I started to cry.

“I just wanted to tell you…in case you need to…you know…fire me…cuz I know your policies about management and … ummm… I’m just really sorry…”

He got up out of his fancy/schmancy executive leather chair and came around the vast expanse of his desk. “It’s okay. Look. It’s okay. It must be a mistake. Did they give you paperwork?”

He followed me to my office and looked over the few pages I had in my possession. He, too, was puzzled over the criminal warrant. “Can’t you think of anything this might be? Could this have to do with your ex-husband? Did you fail to show up for a court date or…?”

None of his ideas rang a bell with me. At all. I continued to be puzzled and frigthened.

Finally my boss said, “Look, I’ll go with you. This has to be a mistake…there is no way that YOU would ever get arrested.”

Geez, Louise. Did the guy think I was Nancy Nun or something? I mean…I’ve had my share of wild and crazy times and…

Okay. Geez. Who am I kidding? I’m rarely wild and even though I might seem somewhat crazy, I’m really not. I swear and that time when I was young was…

Oh.

Oops.

Never mind.

Forget I said that.

What was I writing about here?

Ummm…. ummmm…

Oh. Yeah. Arraignment.

I gently refused my bosses very kind offer to attend my mystery arraignment and attempted to work for an hour or so before I faced my fate.

The minutes and second ticked by in that curious slow frenzy that happens when you are waiting for something you dread. I felt seriously sick to my stomach.

Both my boss and the future Mr. Jenny had told me that at an arraignment the judge would read the charges against me and tell me what would happen next. My fear was much greater than my curiousity, though, so it was with much dread that I got to court early.

An angry looking woman was sitting at a desk by the door. I went up to her and showed her my papers. She glanced at them, glared at me and said, “Sign in,” she said kurtly. I did.

Then I just stood there.

“Have a seat in the waiting room. When they open those doors…” she pointed one gnawed up, bony fingernail toward a set of ominous looking, closed double doors, “…go inside, sit down and wait for them to call your name.”

She gave a huffy sigh.

I made a hasty retreat into the crowded waiting room. I looked around and most of the people sitting on the hard plastic chairs were kinda/sorta scary. Okay. Actually, they were all kinda/sorta scary. I overheard a lot of them talking to their lawyers.

“Good God!” I thought to myself in a panic. “Should I have gotten a lawyer? What would I have told a lawyer anyway? I need representation for something that I got arrested for but I’m not sure what the something is but apparently it is criminal and my kids had to put up bail to get me out of the ‘slammer’.” Yeah. Ummm. No. I hadn’t thought of calling a lawyer at all before that exact moment.

I went outside for a second and gulped some of the cigarette smoke laden air. I swear to you, there must have been a thousand cigarette butts overflowing the ash tray stand thing, and two dozen people puffing like chimneys in need of a good cleaning.


I went back inside and just as I did a big, scary, mean looking guy came and opened up the double doors. Everyone in the waiting room streamed in. I followed them. And sat in the back. As far in the back as possible.

We all did the ‘stand for the judge’ thing and then a harried looking, little balding man started calling names from a giant pile of folders.

After the little balding man read the name he would hand the file to the hostile looking judge. The judge seemed to be about my age…his round face was divided by a thin-lipped scowl and reading glasses that perched halfway down his bulbous nose.

The judge adjusted his reading glasses, leafed through the copious amounts of papers in each file, and then looked up to glare at the individual in front of the judge desk thing. Then he would ask a few questions which the lawyer would answer. After a few moments discussion, the judge would utter some harsh statement like, “Remanded to custody” or other scary stuff. The criminal person would shuffle over to another desk beside the judge and do something else over there with their lawyer.

Yikes!

This went on for a long time. Balding guy reads name, hands big, fat folder to the mean looking judge. Judge would adjust his reading glasses, glare and declare some sentence or another. Sometimes the lawyer and the judge would talk.

I could really hear what was being said because I was sitting in the very last row and I was kinda/sorta distracted by my overwhelming need to throw up.

Plus, I had to pee.

But just when I was debating whether or not to creep out of the courtroom to find a bathroom, the little balding man called my name.

Gulp.

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.

I was gulping down panic along with tears.

I walked down the long, long aisle to stand in front of the giant judge desk thing.


Looking at the floor I could see the balding little guy hand my folder over.

GULP!

To be continued.