And the White Trash Award Goes To…

Over the last few days I’ve been wondering if it’s more white trash to have a couch so broken that it very nearly swallows unsuspecting individuals alive, requiring the owner of said couch to either call out a warning to guests and/or forgetful children or to be sure to swoop in and sit in the spot the most prone to human ingestion before anyone else unwittingly risks life and limb, or to have a couch that’s been fixed with a piece of plywood under to cushions, making sitting on said couch feel (oddly enough) like one is sitting on a piece of plywood with cushions over it.

And then I realized that when one’s husband is facing drug possession charges the question really becomes moot.

About a week and a half ago Sean the WonderHusband drove to Current Creek (pronounced “crick” naturally) to hand the Princess off to her grandmother for a few days of girly bonding fun or something.  On the drive back home he was pulled over for speeding.  This sucks but it’s not interesting or even unusual enough to bother commenting on so we’ll move on.  Now, the “highway” on which he was driving is a relatively narrow one, so despite the fact that Sean pulled over as far as he could and that the officer in question didn’t pull over quite as far, giving himself some measure of protection from passing vehicles, the patrolman still chose to use the passenger side window for collecting the license, registration and so forth.  Which meant that he was fairly close to the glove box in which resides the registration and insurance information (as I believe it does in most cars although I have been given to understand that this is not good practice and they ought to be kept elsewhere).

As a little background, let me explain that Sean, the WonderHusband, has chronic back pain and chronic headaches.  In an attempt to manage this pain and leave the WonderHusband in a condition in which he can do anything other than lie in bed groaning (which is not really conducive to being an effective husband and father) he’s on some fairly heavy duty pain killers.  And then to mitigate the side effects of the pain killers he’s on some other meds and so on and so forth.  (It’s not an ideal situation in any way and it’s something that we try to be really careful about as far as dosages etc. but that’s not really what I’m talking about here so I’m not going to go into it.)  Because he’s on these medications daily, and in most cases more than once a day, he has stashes of his medications in various places including in the car.  Specifically in the glove box.

I imagine that you know where I’m going with this.  The officer, of course, saw the bottle of pills and inquired.  Sean answered honestly, he does have prescriptions for all of his medications and is followed closely by his doctor, and the cop was very nice about the whole thing but he was unable to access the database that should have confirmed the prescriptions (who knew there was such a thing?) and so he issued a ticket, or more accurately, two tickets, one for speeding and one for drug possession.

When issuing the drug citation the officer assured Sean that all he would have to do was call the county in not less than 5 nor more than 14 days and give his name and they could then check the database and drop the charges.  And then he let him go on home (which is a lot better than hauling him off to jail which he certainly could have done).

(Except that he didn’t go home he went to my mother’s where I was, with my children and my siblings.  And then he related the tale of how he very nearly got arrested for drug possession to me while I was sitting at my mother’s kitchen table playing Boggle with most of my siblings and my father and while my mother did dishes not ten feet away.  Picture that scene for a second will you?  Put yourself in my place.  Fun huh?)

As instructed Sean called The Wasatch County Justice Court yesterday and apparently what the patrolman told him is not quite how this whole thing is going to go down.

So Sean scheduled an arraignment for August 15th when he gets to go to Heber and enter a not guilty plea after which, we are told, he will schedule a hearing at which he can present his prescriptions and the charges can be dropped.  He’s been assured that this is all standard and not a big deal and nothing to worry about.  And yet I find that it feels like kind of a big deal to me and I’m a little worried.

The bright side is that if he goes to jail then I’ll have and extra car so I can finally have one up on blocks in the yard.  And I’m sticking with the plywood couch.