I Fought the Law and the Law....

LOST!

Last Thursday afternoon, I got a letter forwarded from our Dacula house to Florida saying that there was a "warrant for my arrest." Wow...that was out of the blue. I had absolutely NO clue what had happened nor what I possibly could have done to receive such a letter. There was a phone # on the letter to call recorders court so I did. After a 5 minute recording and a long wait for the next representative, I found out that the warrant was for failure to pay for or show up in court for a speeding ticket I never received. I couldn't handle it over the phone - only in person - which proved to be difficult considering I live 8 hours from Lawrenceville.

After panicking, praying, completely freaking out, hiding in the closet, and trying to relax about it, we did some checking into with the help of a police officer friend. He shared that I would likely have been arrested if I still lived in Georgia, and I could still be arrested in Florida.

So we sent my Mom to the courthouse, and they immediately went into a flurry as the ticket read "warning" where my signature should have been on the ticket that I never received. Considering I was speeding to avoid an accident, the officer didn't give me a ticket - just a verbal warning...a LONG time ago.

The solicitor said I could either pay the ticket or risk going to jail - and I WAS INNOCENT. We decided to take our chances and wait for them to go through all they needed to to gt a judge to free me from the fine. We got word today (through mucho complication) that a judge had indeed freed me from my charged. As a precaution, we sent Mom to the courthouse to get the signed copy from the judge.

I feel rather violated and stripped of my freedom. I was very panicky for a few days - this rule follower couldn't handle the stress of being "wanted." Plus we didn't have our Florida tags (and the GA ones expired yesterday) so I had to drive slowly watching over my shoulder at every turn.

I NEVER want to go through that again! I'm grateful that it is over AND that it ended in my favor without a record of going to jail!

My entire family is joking about it, and while I don't mind their jokes, it's still not very funny to me. This one may take a long time to be funny. In the meantime, I enjoying the feeling of having 100 pounds of pure stress lifted off my shoulders!