Category: Uncategorized

best service ever: i knocked on the door firmly (not the first time i’ve been here and i was getting fed up).

the door was opened abruptly by a girl with a pissed-off expression. “Who th- oh!!!! I love that website!!!” she says, doing a complete 180.

we do the dance and it transpires that she doesn’t actually live there but her bf, who’s my target’s brother, does. she calls him, apologizing for him being really involved in Call of Duty right now.

he comes to the door, stops dead, looking from me to her and back, then says slowly “i know you’re not her mother, cause I’ve met her, but are you, like, an aunt or something?”

the girl and i look at each other:

• we both have washed-out red-dyed curly hair (mine is long, hers is shoulder-length
• we’re both on the comfortable side of plump – me more so than she
• we’re both wearing black-framed glasses
• my black t-shirt has I fucking Love Science, hers has Nikola Tesla (all hail!)
• I’m wearing charcoal grey microfleece lounge pants, she’s wearing light grey Puma sweat pants
• I’m wearing beige suede slip-on loafers, she’s wearing tan suede Birkenstocks.

Whoa.

Never mind that goofy MIP thing, this book should be required reading (and a mandatory purchase!) for all divorcing couples:

“In some cases, the court must deal with “recreational litigants” – parents who literally fight until the children are grown up.

Which is part of the reason Brownstone is donating all the proceeds of his $19.95 book to the Children’s Wish Foundation, which helps children facing life-threatening disease. “I want parents who are fighting over Halloween access and Christmas vacations – who’ve lost sight of the big picture – to know that there are other parents out there who won’t even have the privilege to see their children graduate.

“It breaks my heart that some parents are planning funerals for their children while others are fighting over who gets to take the kids trick or treating.”

Judge Harvey Brownstone, author of Tug of War: A Judge’s Verdict on Separation, Custody Battles, and the Bitter Realities of Family Court

Source:  https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2009/02/07/family_court_judges_book_a_caution_to_warring_couples.html

So my client fills me in:  “We asked if we could serve by email – declined.  We asked for consent for late service and filing so we could serve via courier – declined.  Basically, we were told that our client made a serious mistake by bringing it to court so the other party is going to make our client’s life as miserable as possible.”

The service was in a town over an hour away.  I timed it to arrive as close to 9:30 p.m. as possible – I got there at 9:22 p.m.

The lights in the house were off but I could see the blue flicker of a TV so clearly someone was up.  The driveway was empty, but a car with a matching description and plate was parked across the street a couple houses up.

I walked up to the door and rang the bell – nothing.  Dunno if it was broken or deliberately silenced.  So I knocked.

Hard.

Lights came on all through the house and the door was opened by an adult male, Caucasian, black/brown, approx 55, average height, approx 250lbs, wearing Y-fronts.

Blue.

In need of laundering.

And nothing but.

He looked out, saw me, then flung the door wide and stared at me challengingly.

In my head, I’m thinking “Buddy, I’m half Finn.  From my perspective, you’re a bit overdressed.”

Served.

Honestly, some people need to learn that they don’t HAVE to bring their kids absolutely everywhere – especially when they have zero control over them!

Today a couple was at the courthouse with their children – a boy, aged about ten, and a 2 month old infant girl just cute as a button.  She was a teensy little thing with a thatch of curly black hair and the biggest, brightest black eyes I’ve ever seen.

The boy was a train wreck:  he was running and shouting and yelling all over the place.  After about the fiftieth time both the clerk and I said to each other “Excuse me?  What?  I didn’t get that…” (because we’re speaking through perforated safety glass and his voice and stomping  on the marble floor are just echoing all over the place), I went to my bag and retrieved a colouring book and a box of crayons.  Up to now, it’s been 99.99% successful in quieting kids down – only two have declined and that was politely.

This kid!?  Oh, hell no!  He tensed up his body, balled up his fists and shouted “I don’t WANT to colour!  I don’t WANT to colour!” and started working himself up into a tantrum.  His parents?  They just sat there with goofy “Well, whaddaya gonna do?” expressions.  I couldn’t take it any more.  I looked the brat in the eye and said sternly

“You cannot make that kind of noise in here!  People are trying to pay attention and they can’t hear because you’re being rude and loud!”  He then twisted up his face and began to bawl in the most exaggerated fashion (“AAAH!  AAAH!!!  AAAAH!!!”) while – I’m not kidding! – peeking surreptitiously at me to see if it was working!

I turned to the father and said “You need to control him.  If you cannot control him, you need to remove him because he’s distracting everybody and the courthouse is not somewhere to make a mistake.”

He apologized profusely and left, taking his son with him, who kicked and screamed the whole way.

Honestly!

Note:  yes, yes, well aware the kid might be autistic or have other such developmental issues to which I say (and yes, I’m qualified to speak on the matter) he’s not stupid – he can clearly learn but was never taught to control himself.  If he honestly cannot learn, then the parents have no right to bring him into such an environment because it’s unfair to everybody, including the child.