Ok, I went to court yesterday to explain to the judge why my son was not in school for 31 days this past school year. We were all (there were about 100 people there) told to be at the courthouse at 3pm. They do drug tests on the kids and that took about an hour. Finally at 4pm they moved us into the courtroom and there we sat for another 1/2 hour before the judge came out.
They start with the people who have lawyers. There were maybe five or six of those. Then it goes alphabetically so I was able to see a couple of the cases before I went up there. I was shocked to find out that a couple of the kids had a test come back "dirty". One kid tried to tell the judge that he hadn't smoked since april. But the Detective explained that if he last smoked in May that he would have been clean. The kid would not fess up and he has to come back again.
When it was my turn, the judge realised that my son was not with me and he asked where he was. I told him he was in Virginia at a Boy Scout summer camp. He asked if it was a local troop. I said yes and he asked who the Scoutmaster was. I told him his name and he looked at me and said "you realise that he is a magistrate of this court." And I said "yes, I know that very well". Turns out that this judge knows the scoutmaster. Very well. And he informed me that he will check into it. Anyway, they agreed that they need to do some background search on my son and to come back in two weeks.
For some reason I don't think I am off the hook yet...