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To Bail Out a Mockingbird

I don’t know if you know this or not, but bailing someone out of jail is boring. You arrive at a location at a particular time and talk to someone then wait. Eventually a bail bondsman will appear, take a random amount of money from you, and you wait. You may get an update and wait. Finally the bail bondsman will return, and if you are lucky you get to leave with your delinquent. Sometimes, like my experience, you find out that your charge was arrested in another town. This will require that the bail bondsman deliver the paper work you’ve just waited hours to have filled out be delivered to some other people an indeterminate number of miles away. Oh and during that time you get to wait. And if you are really lucky like we were, both offices are really busy and you get to wait even longer. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but I HATE waiting. Finally, a mere eternity after you’ve arrived, your charge is released unto the world to wreak havoc anew. Yay everyone!

Oh! What’s even better is that the whole process isn’t sexy at all. Where are all the scantily dressed hookers? The flamboyant pimps? The tough grizzled cons? The rich murderesses with straight scarlet hair and legs up to there? Nowhere!!! In reality it seems most perps are young thugs that don’t know when to walk away. Even the druggies and alkies are really just kinda sad and not entertaining at all. Hell even the female cops make Cagney and Lacey seem steamy. I will say the guns are sexy. I only saw one gun in my purgatory of waiting, but even an ugly gun is sexy.

Everyone was really nice, sure, or at the very least businesslike. I think that’s because the whole thing is a business. Our bail bondsman was a young black guy with the voice of a grizzled old white guy. It was really cool to experience, and he was really nice. There was another bondsman there too, an older white guy who should have had the voice of the young black guy. So that I don’t have to type young black guy and older white guy anymore, I’m going to call them Slim (ybg) and Hoss (owg). If Slim’s voice was any indication of who should have appeared that night, he should have been tall, slim, Caucasian, and had skin tough as leather. He would have stark white hair and been more than three score years of age. He could even have worn a bandanna in a manner that said “all man” and not “trying too hard”. If Hoss’s voice had a little stronger twang to it and if he wore cowboy boots and hat maybe with one of those giant WWE belt buckles, he would have been 100% Texan. He was also a really nice guy. I think you have to be a nice guy to work in that business due to always coming to someone’s aid when the person you are helping may not exactly be the best of people. In the end though, who are the best of people? We all have those friends and family that seem to never be able to get things straight, and more often than not we somehow tolerate those actions, marginalizing the actions to some degree if not outright denying that the person could ever do such a thing. Maybe working in that business casts a little additional light onto what it is to be involved in the Human condition. Or maybe being really nice is how you get repeat business. Guess which one I’d like to believe in and which one I do.

© 2010, Joe Little. All rights reserved.