It was Monday.

I had to testify in court yesterday. One of our most contentious attorneys was asserting that his client could not possibly be as bad as I said he was. Before the hearing the lawyer and I had totally agreed on what we thought was best for this guy. In the end the judge agreed too and sent the guy to a year-long lock-up for drug treatment and to have his head examined.

But that didn't stop Mr. Contrary from fighting about it and belaboring every. single. point. It is always a 'trial' to have to be in a court room with him. I guess that's why the DA was a little distracted when he called me to testify. When he tried to call me to the stand, he announced to the court that his first witness would be Rachel Ward.

Yeah. I can see where he would've made a mistake like that.

Can't you?

White Joe will miss him too.

Today was Sonic gossip day. You remember my Sonic guys, right? Trinny reported first and he was bummed. He's losing Cheese. Cheese has defected to the new I-HOP as a cook.

Cheese came in right before lunch. He has indeed traded in the burger grill for the breakfast grill. Did you know there are four grills at I-HOP? One for meat, one for eggs and pancakes, one for other stuff and he doesn't know what the fourth one is for. There has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth at the Sonic since Cheese has announced he is leaving.

Cheese did do the stand-up thing and told the manager, Ray-Ray, that he will stay a couple more weeks and train his replacement to "f*** this grill-shit up tight" just like him. (Cheese and I have had conversations about the need for him to develop a more formal verbal register for daily business and professional interaction.) Ray-Ray has evidently just returned from some sort of Managerial Jeezus Camp. He called Cheese into his office a few days after Cheese announced he was leaving.

"I want you to read this book, Cheese."
"What is it?"
"Its called 'Choices' and it will help you with your Sonic Future."
"I don't have a damn 'sonic future', Ray-Ray! I'm goin' to I-HOP!"

Cheese actually read the book. I asked what it was about. He explained it thusly:

"It was about some runner dude. He was always runnin' all the time - every day. Like he was gonna get in the f***in' Olympics or somethin'. He was always in races but he never won shit. I don't know why he kept doin' it - he was messed up about it, I guess. Then there was some really long race or some shit and he won it because it went on and on and that's all he did."

I'm not really sure what motivational lesson Cheese took from that.

In addition to moving up the corporate ladder, Cheese is going back to school. He's attending classes in the mornings, learning how to flip pancakes in the afternoon and working at Sonic at night. I told him I was impressed. He's attending classes at the alternative education school, which is where his younger brother attends. The younger brother really looks up to Cheese. He wears the same kind of clothes, has the same goatee and now he's doing the same work to get a diploma. They're hoping to graduate together.

I asked Cheese what his brother's name is.


Cheeto.

What I Learned at Work This Week:

I learned from Mindy that you can now get glow-in-the dark ink in your tatoo. Who knew? At first I thought that's gotta be way all unhealthy. But then I decided its not as if you are getting the finest in soy-based, eco-friendly dyes in your average tatoo anyway. (Or are you?)

Mindy learned about this innovation in body decoration from the girl she met with right after lunch. The girl jumped out of the chair and dropped her drawers to show Mindy the smiley-face tatoo on her butt. (This happens more often than you would think. We're pretty quick at intercepting people before they can whip out the surgery scars, new tatoos or orafices emiting drippy stuff, but sometimes they are just too fast.)

Anyway, the glow-in-the-dark thing opens up a whole new realm of new tatoo possibilities - maybe something helpful? Along the lines of "Inset Tab A Into Slot B"?

People Are Funny. Really.

Remember the Only God Can Judge Me guy? Let's call him Roger. Roger's original guilty plea was rejected by the Judge. He tried to renig on his confession and de-implicate his co-defendant. They got all that sorted out and he was back in court on Monday to plead guilty again.

Following his guilty plea and his release from jail, he trudged down to our office for his initial intake. He arrived at 11:45 a.m. I tried to get some personal data from him, and ran into a bit of trouble. He is barely 20. His family are migrant workers and have all returned to the valley. They won't be back here until gin season. He had no idea where he would stay - homeless. No car, no phone, no money and no kinfolk.

Then he remembered a friend of his parents who still lives at the Campito (local migrant housing). He might be able to stay with the friend. I quickly read over the terms and conditions of probation with Roger. I felt pretty sure this would be my only chance to do so. I let him leave at 12:00 with strict instructions to return at 2:00 p.m. and to tell me where he would live.

Then the secretaries and I tried to make some wagers on whether or not he would return. It was pretty unsuccessful, as betting goes, since we all bet no.

Two o'clock, and no Roger. At about 2:30, Roger called the front office. He spoke to Sophie, one of our receptionists.

"Hey - this is Roger. Will you tell that lady that I'm going to stay at the Campito - apartment 2B."

"Didn't she tell you to be here at 2:00, Roger?"

"Well, yeah. But I don't have a ride. Tell her I will be here until December."

Sophie quickly convinced him that he needed to report prior to December. She hung up the phone and came to my office to tell me all about it. By the time she finished the story, Roger was in our waiting room. Even though he claimed he had no ride, he managed to make the three mile journey in less than ten minutes.

I went to the front to talk to Roger. I took the information on his new abode. As we spoke I noticed he was chomping wildly on a peppermint. Just as I was explaining how much time he would spend in prison if he didn't follow these rules, I caught a wiff of his breath.

Wheeeew!

"Roger! How many beers have you had?!"

"What?" Roger tried desperately to appear stunned. He managed to look stoned. "I don't know what you mean - I'm not drinking."

"You're lying Roger. Don't lie to me. How much did you drink?"

"Well, ok. I had two beers. But I just got out of jail, you know?"

"You're still lying Roger. How many?" We are nose to nose at that point. He tried to break eye-contact.

"...I had five. Maybe six. But, but, how did you know?" Roger was pretty well wasted.

Not being one to waste a chance for manipulation of a soddenly suspicious mind, I glared at him over my glasses. "Never, never, never believe that you have us fooled Roger. We. always. know." If I'd trusted myself to do it without cracking up, I'd have thrown in a bit of maniacal laughter just for effect.

I have to admit a modicum of grudging respect for Roj. If I had been released from custody with nothing but the clothes on my back, I certainly couldn't have scored a place to live and a ride into town, not to mention a few cold ones in under two hours.



I gotta tell ya this story too. I have a woman on my caseload - about my age. No teeth, almost bald but kind and cheery as can be. But, good grief, she is naive. After ten years of smoking crack with her no-good, abusive husband, she sobered up. She's been clean most of the last three years. He hasn't. A couple of months ago, he beat her up. Again. As usual.

This time, however, she had a job. And co-workers who convinced her he couldn't do that to her any more. She left him and went into the women's shelter. The last straw came when she discovered he'd been smoking crack all the time she thought he was clean. She never suspected that all the time he spent hanging out with his same old druggie friends was time spent doing drugs. I don't know what the hell she thought they were doing!

Today she told me a mutual friend came to visit her at her new digs at the pay-by-the-week motel. At this point, she told me she had to tell me something embarrassing. "Um, ok?" was my brilliant response. She then whispered that she and her husband hadn't done "what married people do" since January of 2005. I think I just blinked stupidly at her. Today, while talking to her friend, she learned a horrible truth. Her husband has been seeing another woman all this time.

She sat back and waited for me to fully grasp the magnitude of this bombshell.

"Well, uh, you knew something was wrong all along, right?" I said. "I mean, you knew he was up to something, even though you didn't know all the details, didn't you?" I stammered.

"Nope. I didn't have any idea. He always told me he just couldn't, you know, do it with me while I was on probation. And I always reminded him that I was gonna be on probation for three years." She paused and I clamped my mouth shut. "He told me he could wait."


Regardless of whatever else happens - political shenanigans, budget crises, and bureaucratic inanity, I love my job.

What's your Sonic name?

I have three guys on my caseload who all work at Sonic Drive-In. They love to unload all the Sonic gossip when they come to see me. I occasionally try to be somewhat sympathetic and use the fact that they hate working fast food as a motivator for them to get their GEDs.

Bleh - they ain't buying it.

The funniest thing about all this is the names of these guys. They are Trinny, Cheese and Slow Joe. Evidently to work at Sonic, you gotta have a special name. Cheese is the most frustrated with the Sonic politics and the most likely to keep me up to date on what's happening. He told me last week that they hired two new guys. Neither of the newbies is working out. I asked him who the new guys were. Cheese did not disappoint and deadpanned the names just like he was reading them off a baptismal certificate: "Old Man and White Joe."

I thought I was going to bust a gut from trying not to laugh. Of course, the moment he left I ran to all my co-workers and let them know the latest additions to the cast of characters at Sonic. We all had a good laugh.

Then we reminisced about the time we all chose our stripper names, in case we decided to make a career change. But that is another story. This time we pondered what our Sonic names would be. I want to be Chili Dog. We decided Mindy's name is gonna be Tots. TH would be Route 44. Rose is Frito Pie.

M2 came down the hallway then and we asked her what her Sonic name would be. She never broke stride and said:

"Do they have a drink called Bitch?"

What's in a name?

M2 was hired as a probation officer six months before me. I've written about her before. Which means she's been here, striking terror into the hearts of evil-doers for 13 and 1/2 years. She's crazy. And I don't mean crazy as in ha-ha-isn't-she-quaint-crazy. I mean eat-your-children-for-breakfast-crazy.

She's really proud of her Hispanic heritage, but doesn't take it too seriously. She and I went out to dinner together one Friday night at a new local restaurant. We were immediately seated and given a couple of menus. We sat there. And we sat there. And we made a pyramid out of the menus and some condiments. And we sat there. Finally she announced in a loud voice: "I don't know what the problem is. I look white!"

The waiter made it right over to our table after that.


She had to go to court this week for revocation hearings. One of her guys, who is also Hispanic, was in court because he'd screwed up his probation. He's much too busy to report, too hedonistic to spend money on fines and court costs, and too popular to be seen doing community service.

His attorney put him on the stand and he talked about how he'd wanted to make a success of the probation. He just couldn't get any help from his officer, Ms. Maldanado. She wouldn't cut him a break. He felt that he couldn't confide in Ms. Maldanado. In fact, several times when he had tried to call Ms. Maldanado to ask for her help, she wouldn't even return his calls. He knew he should have made more of an effort, but he hoped the Court would understand that Ms. Maldanado, rather helping, had been a hindrance to his efforts from the very beginning. He had tried. Ms. Maldanado had not. And that is why he was in trouble.

The Assistant District Attorney stood up and asked one question. "Mr. Garcia, would it surprise you to learn that your officer's name is MEJORADO, not Maldanado?"

He went to jail.

Tim the Tool Man

The best thing about my job is the people. They're insanely interesting. They become almost predictable in their unpredictability. There are little nooks and crannies in each of them that hold the knick knacks of their personality. I love to be able to peer into those places and experience bits and pieces of who they really are.

Tim is one of my people. He is 41. He looks to be about my age or younger. (I’m 35.) Tim has a problem with drinking. He is on probation for Felony DWI. He drinks for a lot of reasons, including loneliness.

Tim has four kids (with a couple of different women), but he is closest to his twin teenage sons. They are about 14 years old. They live in San Antonio, which is 455.64 miles from here. He calls them every single day. He tries his best to father by phone.

He has family here in town, too. I don’t know a lot about Tim’s family, but I know they have no use for Tim. He has brothers and sisters here. His parents live in an even smaller town 15 miles away. His parents never call, never acknowledge him. When he calls, they will talk about the weather and answer Tim’s questions, but never really engage him in conversation.

Everyone in Fake Cow County shops at Wal-Mart. It’s pretty much our only choice most of the time. Tim makes his pilgrimage every Saturday morning. He knows his parents usually shop then, as well as his siblings. He hangs around, hoping to see them and talk for a while. No matter what Tim does, it seems it is never good enough for his parents. He can never measure up. He can’t even get a peek at the yard stick to see how far he has to go.

Tim also has problems with women. He’s a good looking guy and he likes good looking women. For Tim, relationships are all sex, all of the time. We have discussed this. At length. Mindy was his officer previously and diligently tried to teach Tim that women use him and he them and nobody is happy. I’ve had the same conversations with him since I took over his case.

A couple of weeks ago we had another long discussion about why he should stay away from women until he gets his life together. He can’t attract a sane, stable and independent companion until he is sane, stable and independent himself. He understands that, but wants to make sure I understand that his main criteria is that the woman is good looking. I want to make sure he understands that all women will eventually end up looking like his grandma. Which is ok, because he’s going to end up all stooped and wrinkly and cantankerous like his grandpa. Especially if he keeps drinking.

I have tried. Mindy has tried. I’m sure his minister has tried. Tim understands that women make a sucker out of him every time. All it takes is a little bit of sex and Tim will do whatever they want and give them whatever they ask for. Until he has nothing left to give. Then they kick him and move on. And all that just for sex.

We’ve talked about cold showers. And other things. Sometimes Tim gets embarrassed. That’s usually about the time I’m pounding the desk raving about how “Its just sex, Tim, my God! Its just not all that important, man! You can even do it alone. Stay away from the women, Tim – they’re evil!”

And Tim tries. He really does. He’s been living alone for several months now. That’s a big change for him. Most of the time Tim learns which sexual position a woman prefers before he learns her last name. I’m not kidding. When he talks about his friends, he now anticipates my questions and says things like “She just gives me a ride to work and I give her gas money. I haven’t slept with her.”

He’s also working out. He wants to look good for the ladies. His blood pressure is a little high. He needs to work off some “energy”. Exercise is good for all of that.

And, believe it or not, Tim reads his Bible. Every day. A couple of weeks ago, Tim told me he reads various passages each day, but always tries to read something out of his favorite book - Palms.

Yes, Palms.

I did not laugh. I did not blink. I did not even grin. I told him I thought that was a good book too, and suggested he read the 27th chapter, since it related to what we were talking about. He told me which chapter was his favorite, and I’ve been kicking myself for days because I did not write it down and now I’ve forgotten.

But maybe I can ask him about it next time I see him. In between questions about his fatherhood and his … other problems.