i suppose that part of being an "adult" is being an active and functioning member in the greater society: being called for jury duty. buying porn. voting. being served a citation for littering.

all things that clearly denote adult status.

wednesday, eric - my boyfriend - and i were called before the district of columbia's judicial courts to testify and plead our littering cases. (section 21 dcmr 700.4 and blog entry 10.25). my furry companions at home - not including eric - said they use litter all the time. and begged us not to go for fear that - like the legislation against the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country - we, too, might become aggravated felons.

eric and i received citations back in october accusing us of littering. the city found some random unopened mail in some random trash bag in some random alley in dc. neither of us has any idea how our mail wound up there. i mean, aside from the possibility that the endangered bald eagle who sits on our balcony and delivers our correspondence to friends and relatives when so called upon may have accidentally dropped it on one of his routine fights. but other than that ...

my law-school bound hero, upon deciding that we were going to refuse the fine and deny the accusation, took on his first pro bono case. he prepared pages of testimony - facts, alibis, references to precedent cases, and a handful of personal depositions (admittedly, i requested a series of photographs of our trash chute) - which concluded with the fact that, in essence, no one saw us throw our trash out.

and so, wednesday morning was our opportunity (insert performance music here) to make our case. to purge our records of false accusations. to determine if law school was a good idea for either of us. and (dramatic pause) to save the cats from some unknown horrible foster woman.

we were going to wear matching suits, but eric's purple one was at the dry cleaners.

eric briefed me on our defense on the way there. he read through the pages he had prepared without missing a beat. he sounded professional. charismatic. scholarly. lawyerly.

"what should i say?" i asked when he was finished.

pause. he bit his lip.

"uhhhh ... why don't i just speak for both of us?" he said.

"i'm going to law school too," i mustered.

i even offered to be the standard cleavage character witness, but eric said that it wasn't necessary. the final deal was that if we lost, he'd pay my $75 ticket fine. and do my laundry for a month. the latter obviously more traumatic than the former.

instead of the grand courtroom ala the oj simpson trial that eric and i were both expecting, it was more of an anti-climatic office building. while in the holding cell (read: waiting area), eric was re-prepping for our defense while i was absorbed in a sodoku puzzle pulled from the newspaper. when the clerk called us into the courtroom, i considered leaving the newspaper on the chair for the next fellow criminal ... but decided it probably wouldn't bode well for our "we don't litter" defense.

the judge was procedural, reciting the case number and allegations and asking us to speak our names and relationship to each other.

"sexual," i offered quickly.

eric corrected me. and then kicked me under the table.

"we're roommates," he stated.

"who sleep together!" i added.

a guy from the city public works department actually showed up to represent the prosecution. when the judge told him that he wasn't adequate representation (he wasn't the actual one who found the trash bag, opened it, went through it, took out random pieces of mail that happened to be addressed to eric and me, made copies, and then slapped us with a $75/each citation), the public works guy insisted he still wanted to proceed with the trial.

for just a brief moment, i wondered if i'd have to report to graduate schools and the federal bar that in 2005/2006, i was indicted of and found guilty for littering.

the city spends money on trials like these? in the 7 minutes we spent in the courtroom, 28 women were battered. 70 violent crimes happened. 14 murders transpired. and who knows how many people in washington dc contracted aids.

the judge rolled his eyes, politely declined the gentleman's insistence, and dismissed the case.

dismissed it ... "without prejudice."

meaning that if the city reports a good reason why the accusing officer was absent from the trial of the century, eric and i will be retried for the same crime.

which i could have sworn was against the bill of rights. but apparently those basic human rights don't apply to wrongly accused litterers. we're left to fend for ourselves in a court room.

but don't doubt what we're capable of.

recycling, however, is not one of those things.