I was driving when I saw the flash of a traffic camera. I figured that my picture had been taken for speeding, even though I knew I wasn’t. Just to be sure, I went around the block and passed the same spot, driving even more slowly. But again the camera flashed. Thinking this was pretty funny, I drove past even slower three more times, laughing as the camera snapped away each time while I drove by it at a snail’s pace. Two weeks later, I got five tickets in the mail for driving without a seat belt.
My boyfriend was working in the souvenir shop at the Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, England. One afternoon he was talking with an attendant who worked in the cathedral when they were approached by two tourists. "Are you a monk?" one of the women asked. "No," the attendant explained, "I wear this robe as part of my job, but I'm not a member of any religious order." "Then where are the monks?" asked the woman. The man replied, "Oh, there haven't been any monks here since 1415." Hearing this, the woman looked at her watch and announced to her friend, "Betty, we missed the monks."
As a commercial diver in the offshore oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico, I was assigned to a job on board a derrick barge. After my dive I spent the required time in the decompression chamber, and went to bed. Later I walked into the TV room, where I was surprised to see the entire dive crew sitting around. I asked one colleague, dressed in his wet suit, why work had stopped. Without looking up at me, he replied, "It's raining."
I am a deputy sheriff assigned to courthouse security. As part of my job, I explain court procedures to visitors. One day I was showing a group of ninth-graders around. Court was in recess and only the clerk and a young man in custody wearing handcuffs were in the courtroom. "This is where the judge sits," I began, pointing to the bench. "The lawyers sit at these tables. The court clerk sits over there. The court recorder, or stenographer, sits over here. Near the judge is the witness stand and over there is where the jury sits. As you can see," I finished, "there are a lot of people involved in making this system work." At that point, the prisoner raised his cuffed hands and said, "Yeah, but I'm the one who makes it all happen." Arrested on a robbery charge, our law firm's client denied the allegations. So when the victim pointed him out in a lineup as one of four men who had attacked him, our client reacted vociferously. "He's lying!" he yelled. "There were only three of us."
Sidewalks were treacherous after a heavy snowstorm blanketed the University of Idaho campus. Watching people slip and slide, I gingerly made my way to class. Suddenly I found myself on a clean, snow-free section of walkway. This is weird, I thought— until I noticed that it was directly in front of the College of Law building.
After I prosecuted a man for killing a bird out of season with his slingshot, the court clerk suggested setting up a date for him to return with both the money for the fine and proof of community service. "That way," she said innocently, "you can kill two birds with one stone."
In Fort Worth, Texas, I was hauled before the judge for driving with expired license plates. The judge listened attentively while I gave him a long, plausible explanation. Then he said with great courtesy, "My dear sir, we are not blaming you—we're just fining you."
|
They are all good and clean.