Parents in Crime

I’m hard pressed to play Go Fish and I am utterly unable to comprehend Poker.  Card games just aren’t my cup of tea and it’s just as well, I suppose.  I have been informed that I have a bit of a tell.  Yes, when I get peeved and I am trying like the devil not to explode all over the place in a Sam Kinison-esque rant (God rest his talented soul), I get a twitch in my right eye.  Trite, I know, but I’m so unusual in so many other areas of my life that you have to throw me a bone somewhere for Heaven’s sake.

As you’ve probably already deduced, my poor little eye twitches numerous times a day.  I’ve even woken up in the middle of the night because the darned thing was twitching from an apparently annoying dream. 

Of course, there are some things that make my eye twitch more than others.  In the non-attorney arena, aggressive drivers trump dumbass lost drivers.  Temper tantrums trump [most] whiners.  Clutter around my house near about trumps everything because I SWEAR TO GOD I JUST CLEANED THE FRIGGING COUNTER OFF AND NO ONE CARES OR TRIES AND I’M JUST BEFORE SETTING A TRASH BAG ON ONE END AND SWEEPING EVERY DAMN THING INTO IT STARTING AT THE OTHER END WITH THE ONE-ARM SWIPE METHOD.

Oh yeah, now it’s really twitching.

When it comes to my life in the legal world, there are a gracious plenty of irritants and I do so hate to speak it certainties (that’s one of the first things they tell you not to do in law school), but I do believe that the winner and continuing champion is...THE ANGRY PARENT!!!

The irony about the Angry Parents from Hell is that—nine times out of ten—they aren’t in Juvenile Court.  Yes, it’s the mothers and fathers whose “precious babies” have entered into court for the big boys and the big girls who go all Parental Perry Mason on me.  The oh-so-fun parents tend to break down into two subsets:  (1) The I Don’t Care What You Say, My Baby Didn’t Do Its;  and (2) The My God, It’s Not That Big a Deals! 

I can tell before a parent even opens his or her mouth if they are going to be in denial about their one-person crime wave offspring.  They have this air of injustice about them as though it’s appalling that they even have to address the baseless charges.  Of course, they don’t have to address any charges at all, but there’s no point whatsoever in reminding them of that little detail. 

Once they do open their mouths, it’s:  My baby wouldn’t do that!  My baby might have been there, but she was with her friends and they were the ones doing it, not her.  The police are targeting our family because my baby’s daddy has a warrant out for his arrest and they think they can get one of us to tell them where he is. 

The higher the evidence piles up in favor of the State, the more vehement the parent gets that their baby didn’t do what they were accused of doing.  Media has been doctored, witnesses have been paid and cops are crooked.  There is a vast, intricate and overriding conspiracy reaching up into the upper echelons of Capitol Hill and the White House and every last iota of it is directed at bringing down their precious baby. 

Naturally, I’m not doing my job because I don’t have 100% confidence in their baby’s innocence and because I can’t get the District Attorney to drop the charges while simultaneously filing a civil rights lawsuit against the police department and negotiating a multi-million dollar settlement.  Yeah, I know, I suck.

One time, I even had a kid come out and tell his mother right to her face that he did it.  He smashed the window and stole the radio.  She sat there for a minute and then launched into a theory about how the police were targeting him and following him unfairly so they were watching and waiting for him to “make a mistake” so they could bust him.  That woman probably should have considered law school.

Yes, the “My Baby Didn’t Do It’s” are a real barrel of monkeys, but the “C’mon You Must Be Kidding” parents can be some serious SOB’s: 

Daddy sends Pumpkin down here to UNC-Weed where Pumpkin proceeds to get a truly “higher” education and gets busted on possession of marijuana charges.  Daddy gets a call from the police and he is understandably irate, but not in the way you might think.  No, Daddy is irate because “it was just a little pot, for God’s sake!”

Daddy is indignant at having to take time out of his busy schedule to deal with Pumpkin’s “little pot problem.”  As a matter of fact, all of us folks here in New Hanover County are holy rolling, backwater, hillbilly morons for making such a big deal out of some weed.  Honestly, if the problem had occurred where they were from, not only would the matter have been swept under the rug, but Pumpkin would have received an invitation to join the Country Club!

P-Daddy:        This is absurd.  My wife and I have taken time off to come down here and deal with this.  I mean, who didn’t smoke a little pot when they were in college?

            Ashley:            Me.

Yep, there goes my eye again.