From Last Week At The Courthouse

Last week, I was participating with the VLSP's courthouse project, helping it represent indigent tenants who are faced with evictions. I have mentioned this program a few times in the past. Because I have been doing this for a while, the people who run the program feel that I can best serve a certain type of client. A very special type of client. You know, crazy.

So this week's crazed person was an immigrant from Czecheslovakia (now the Czech Republic). This person had fallen behind in their rent, but the landlord was offering incredibly generous terms (they actually liked this peson and wanted to keep them as a tenant.) In the space of a few hours, this person managed to alienate me, the person overseeing the program, the opposing party's attorney, and the judge pro tem. It included both the pro tem and myself, at separate times, reading the client the riot act in order to bring this person back down to the planet we like to call Earth.

And after three hours of work to get the client to agree to something which they told me they wanted in the first place(!), the client walks up to me. He tells me (in a thick Czech accent), "You look too...uptight. I watch Matlock, you could learn from him."