I appeared in Traffic Court today. I’d been stopped for going 44 in a 30 zone. I was guilty but, naturally, crestfallen. Despite the careless way I drive (anyone will tell you so), I hadn’t had a moving violation on my record for a long time — 10 years or more.

That’s what I told the officer — minus the part about the habitual carelessness, not to mention a certain insouciance regarding traffic laws in general. She said, “Why don’t you go down and tell that to the judge?” “Would it do any good?” I asked. “You never know,” she replied.

So I suit up — one always wants to look one’s best in court; if you doubt it, watch any random episode of Judge Judy — and find myself before Hearing Examiner Mark Green in Rm. 1145 of the D.C. Municipal Building, Bureau of Adjudication. It’s more like a large office than a courtroom, with the hearing examiner seated behind a desk with a keyboard and screen in front of him. Along each side wall are rows of chairs where we miscreants sit. There are only two of us.

The other is a large and bulky white woman of advancing age. She is very white indeed. Her white hair flies around in unruly fashion. She wears a men’s dress shirt with blue and white stripes, exaggerating the pale effect. She is squeezed into a pair of jeans a size or two too small, and she is a woman who should never wear jeans to begin with. She has on brown suede sneakers that don’t go with anything else. Her head is a mallet. She looks for all the world like a female version of Arnold Dornfeld, my sainted editor at City News Bureau of Chicago a lifetime ago. If she wore muddy work boots and a red-checked flannel shirt, I’d have taken her for Dornie.

On her large bosom rests a large brown wooden cross, the kind you see on nuns in mufti. Given her lack of courtroom style sense, I think, maybe that’s what she is.

Her case is called first. She has been accused of running a stop sign in Northwest D.C. a few blocks from where I was stopped, though on a different day. As she takes her seat at a long wooden table in front of the judge — the only courtroom-like accessory in the room — she slips me a conspiratorial look. I respond with a perfunctory smile and look away, annoyed. I am not her ally.

She pleads not guilty and explains at length, punctuating her testimony with digressions, asides, and inappropriate laughter. She goes on and on, saying too much, laughing when she shouldn’t, looking sidelong toward me for support. But my gaze is now directed purposefully toward Hearing Examiner Green and Officer Santos.

She winds down at last. The hearing examiner taps and taps at his keyboard, for minutes. What in the world is he writing, a novel?

Finally he looks up and asks whether she has anything to add. She looks flustered for the first time, as if she’s been asked an unexpected question by a severe teacher. She flounders a bit, then says no. He taps more. She squirms with discomfort in the silence.

Then she starts to talk. She repeats portions of her story, adding semi-snide commentary. She makes a point about the black SUV in front of her, if you want to see someone who REALLY ran that stop sign. She reminds the hearing examiner how small her car is and how defenseless against SUVs like that big black one. It’s red, she says, not for the first time. A Festiva. 1994.

More taps. She squirms again, then launches into a complaint about how many hours, days actually, it took to schedule this hearing. The hearing examiner looks up inquiringly. “Of course,” she says, “you probably can’t do anything about THAT.”

More taps, more silence, then the ruling is rendered. Hearing Examiner Green recounts the facts, the applicable section of the D.C. Municipal Code, and pronounces his decision: Waive the points but pay the fine. Wow, lady, I think, you lucked out.

I hear a sound and shift focus from the hearing examiner to her. Her shoulders are sagging from their cocky elevation into a slump, and she is sobbing.

“That’s an awful lot of money,” she chokes out.

No one says a word. In the silent room, her sobs are the only sound.

After a minute or two, she regains control enough to ask what’s next. the hearing examiner says she can go to Rm. 1157 and pay the fine.

“Can I use a credit card? That way I won’t have to pay until next month’s Social Security check comes in.”

The hearing examiner doesn’t seem to know. “You can pay on line too,” he says.

“I’m not on line,” she says.

She stands up; collects her giant blue bag with stuff overflowing from it and the blue plastic water bottle she filled at home; turns, opens the door, and stalks out. The hearing examiner calls me to the chair. As I’m getting seated, the door opens behind me and she sticks her head back in the room.

“Thank you,” she says, and closes the door.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I admitted with explanation, told my story, and asked that he waive the $100 penalty because I’d misread the website instructions. He waived the penalty and the points but let the $100 fine stand. I said thanks, picked up my stuff and headed out the door, thinking I’d had a pretty good day.