anyone know what time it is?

My judge and I had set up a time for me to have coffee with her and the rest of the Court of Appeals earlier this week and all leading up to the appointment, random ways to screw up kept popping into my head. Ways that really didn't even make sense. Like once, where I envisioned myself offering to burn a copy of a song on the radio for one of the judges whom I had previously met. WTF? Like I'm going to offer to make a mix tape for a judge on the Court of Appeals. Maybe if we were in high school and I had a crush on him, but, well, no. Honestly, my mind can go the strangest places when I leave it unattended for even just a few minutes.

Point is, somewhere in my subconscious I must have been expecting to screw this up somehow. Which is likely why I panicked when deciding how to cross the street. A simple task, you might think, but not when contemplating jaywalking in front of a judge.

Needing to put more money in the meter for my car that sat parked across the street, I soon found myself in a dilemma. Does one needing to cross the street to get to his car a) Jaywalk in front of a judge on the Court of Appeals who also happens to be his boss, thus getting to his car as quickly as possible but also flagrantly violating a law, be it ever so small; b) Walk all the way down to the crosswalk, cross the street legally, then walk all the way back along the opposite side of the street, thus showing respect for the law but disrespect for his boss's time, or; c) Walk across the street while looking at his watch, pretending to be too distracted to actually notice whether there is a cross walk in front of him.

I think we all know which one I chose. In perfect honesty, my looking at my watch as I crossed wasn't consciously done to feign distraction, but it is certainly possible that my subconscious was operating independently of my conscious. Hoping she hadn't noticed, I came back to a conversation between my judge and her career clerk ... discussing jaywalking. And discussing how one of the former judges on the Court of Appeals used to get so worried over what to do when crossing the street that he would just look at his watch and feign distraction. Apparently I have a future on the Court of Appeals. Or at least my subconscious does.