Court Jester

If you're ever bored, head down to the DC Superior Courthouse. You should be able to find entertainment anywhere in there, but my personal recommendation is the Family Court area. In just one hour I lost hope for humanity, but gained confidence in myself. It balances out.

It's funny because even if you're there for jury duty, they still assume you're there for a child support hearing. Just out of sheer curiosity, I took a trip down there. There was just an endless sea of angry guys lined up waiting to go in with their free legal aid rep in tow. The highlight of this trip was a guy who was cursing out the clerks because they duplicated his court dates. "What don't you understand? Yall got me coming down here three times for the same thing. It's an error on your part!" The clerk took off her glasses, put on her "negro please!" face and said, "No, what you don't understand is that there are three different plaintiffs for each of these three cases." It took him a while to get it. It wasn't a duplicate court case. All three of his kids' moms filed at the same time.

The highlight, however, had to be a conversation I overheard between two women. I would transcribe it for you, but unless you're fluent in Ghettonics (the Latin equivalent of Ebonics) then it wouldn't make much sense. Basically one lady was telling her friend about why she was filing for divorce. Apparently her husband had been living off of her for two years, and when he was finally approved for disability, he refused to share it with her. To add insult to injury, his disability counted as household income, which terminated her state aid.

She tried to kick him out, but he refuses to leave saying that it's as much her home as it is his. She disagreed because he moved in with her due to the fact that he was homeless when they started dating (no clue how that courtship worked, but whatever). She said that the two of them got into a heated argument over the weekend and he started punching her. She was very proud of the fact that she manages to hold her own every time they come to blows.

My personal thought is that the fight wasn't fair due to the next point she brought up. He has AIDS and suffers seizures. It was during their fight that he went into a seizure and collapsed onto the ground. "Girl, as soon as he went down I just started stomping on him." Apparently, she kicked him repeatedly during his seizure, and when her legs grew tired she began to hit him with items in their living room: vacuum cleaner, TV remote.

She asked her friend to keep this confidential, because he is threatening to press charges. She plans to say that he injured himself during the seizure.

 

So yeah... If you get bored, please stop by the DC Superior Courthouse located at 500 Indiana Ave NW.