He Stole My Story

Lucy wrote a blog piece a while ago, “He Stole My Blog” which reminded me of something that happened way back in 1973. (by the way, I didn’t steal Lucy's blog; she reminded me of the blog that Jahn had written and I beat her to the keyboard)

I was assigned to work Jail Division; part of the initiation for rookies. Part of the job entailed “the Jake Docket”; taking all the municipal court offenders in front of the judge. These included traffic violators, failure to appear cases and all the winos who’d been hauled in. These folks would be lined up in a hallway, a secure area linked directly to the jail, where they would wait until their turn came up. My job was to make sure they remained orderly.

On one such day, toward the end of that long line of sob stories; stories about how the proverbial dog had eaten my bus ticket out of town, or how I was sleeping innocently and some other wino poured a quart of Thunderbird down my throat; those kind of excuses for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I heard one of them rehearsing about how his dear old mother had died on the same day he had sworn off “the drink”.

He was next in line, still going over how he was going to perform his act in front of the judge when he heard another fellow standing in front of the judge, “Your Honor, I had just sworn of drinking when I heard that my dear old mother had just died….” Before I could stop him; this other fellow stepped into open court all upset and yelling, “He stole my story, your Honor!”

The judge looked at me, at the fellow standing before him and then at the guy who was all upset. “Well…” the judge putting his thoughts together, “…at least you admit that it’s a story. Not guilty for both of you. Next case please.” The judge had a good sense of humor as both of these pillars of the community were given a, “Get out of jail free” card.