Honesty is the Best (Way To Increase the Premium on Your Insurance) Policy

While not the official transcript, here's what happened in court today:

I'll begin by saying that I again find myself disappointed that life is not the TV show I desperately want it to be. Instead, as it consistently does, mundane reality has bitten me in the ass. I am not sure exactly which episode of Law and Order I thought I was walking into, but this experience was a bit less...well, let's just say it was a bit less.

First, I got lost on the way to the courthouse...excuse me, the industrial strip mall in which JP Court #15 is located, because my request to appear had the WRONG FREAKING ADDRESS on it. When I finally got there, dressed nattily in my best custom-tailored polyester suit, (okay, my only custom-tailored polyester suit), I found that instead of lawyers, the JP court is peopled mostly with ladies named Diane seeking no-contact orders from weird guys who keep showing up at her job. In the conference room/courtroom, there was just the police officer representing the state, the guy who I got in the accident with representing himself, and a judge who really thought he'd be somewhere else in his life by now.

What I didn't explain in my previous post about this matter was that there was a third car "involved" in the accident, driven by Evel Knievel's crackhead cousin Darryl Knievel, whose shitty driving set the stage for the accident, and who promptly sped away before the dust had settled. I won't rehash the tedious details of what happened, but a pretty good argument could be made that Darryl was the only one at fault -- not me, and not the guy who I wound up hitting, even though he got the ticket, which is again what he was contesting today in court. Yup, apparently, and running contrary to both my deepest-held beliefs and the title of this here blog, it wasn't about me at all. No one was even entertaining the idea that this was my fault. So I took it personally for nothing. Well, at least now I can feel bad about overreacting.

Not that I don't have an interest in this case -- if the other guy is found not guilty of improper driving, his insurance company has a pretty good shot of getting my insurance company to pay for half the damages. Because in the absence of the guy who really caused the accident, (the third car), we two innocent babes must shoulder the burden. And that's exactly what happened because my stupid ass told the truth.

I backed up the other's guy's claim that this third car cut him off and caused him to veer into my path. I know it was the right thing to do. After all, I did put my hand upon the Bible and swear to tell the truth in front of God and the Delaware State Police, and let no man put that asunder. But I must say that I felt like an ass afterward, like I could have been savvier. Like I could have used my superhuman intelligence and years of legal experience-by-proxy to outwit them all and wind up not only without any financial responsibility for the accident, but with a citation for bravery issued by the emotionally overwhelmed judge.

But no.

Instead, I just went home and changed out of that goddamn suit.