Go Directly to Jail

Aidan's schooling of the past two weeks has basically consisted of a daily field trip to here and there and everywhere. The teacher always requests a few parents to chaperone the class for each trip. My chaotic schedule, combined with work and the responsibilities of two other little kiddies (no siblings on field trips!), has made my chaperoning options limited. This is how I got stuck taking his class to the local Whoville police station instead of to the more exotic locales of the Buffalo Zoo or the Sweet Shoppe.

I mean, it's Whoville people. How much goes on at our police station anyway?

Not much apparently. They pretty much let the kids wander anywhere and everywhere, including locking them up in the empty jail cells. (I winked at the officer as he locked up the cell doors and asked if I could drop off my other two kiddies later on in the day for lock down. I don't think he knew if he should take me seriously or not. He gave me a small, nervous smile and backed quickly away from me.)




After lock down, the officer even gave us a tour of the local Whoville courtroom. It brought back many a memory for me, back in the day, fresh out of law school as a brand spankin' new assistant district attorney. As a new ADA, I spent my days (and nights!) holed up in many a town courtroom. I engaged in quite alot of sophisticated jurisprudence (jury trials for drunk driving charges), intertwined with excruciatingly long arraignments where my supervisor told me to think of the clanking of chains of the prisoners as mere "sleigh bells." I realized I wasn't cut out for the life of crime fighter when I won my first probation violation hearing, resulting in jail time for the defendant. I should have celebrated my victory, but instead I had to quickly excuse myself to the judge's chambers where I promptly burst into tears. The judge found me there still crying five minutes later. He wasn't quite sure what to do with me. At that moment, the only thing I was most sure of was that I was probably not cut out to be a career prosecutor.

(And then I sold out, selling my soul in return for a white collar job at a fancy law firm doing anything that did NOT involve going to court. Anything but that. Me, save the world? What? Ah, I was cute that way.)

But today, was simple. No soul searching or tears, just police sirens and cute jail, all to entertain a bunch of sweet first graders in the last few days of school before summer.