I wear my sunglasses at night... court

I owe a shout-out to the good folks who do the screenings at York County Superior Court.

If you’ve never been to that Alfred courthouse, it means two things: 1) You’ve never sold crystal meth to a Hell’s Angel, severely beaten an epileptic circus clown, or done anything else that would land you there, and 2) You have no idea what I mean by “screenings.” Well, it’s simple, really. To keep lawyers, journalists, jugglers, and Emilio Estevez from sneaking suspicious materials into the courthouse, you empty your pockets and put it on one of those X-ray conveyor-belt thingies while you walk through a metal detector. It’s kind of a scaled-down version of what you would go through at the airport, although mercifully, the folks at court don’t make us take off our shoes. I wouldn’t want people to know I attend proceedings wearing Garfield and Odie socks.

It’s a common-sense safety measure, one that assures the law-abiding that there’s no one skulking around the stairwells with a pair of nunchucks, waiting to go all ninja on someone. But if you’re a person like me, who carries enough provisions in his pockets to survive a hike through the Gobi Desert, all that transferring of personal effects increases the likelihood that something’ll go missing. Last week, it was my sunglasses. My prescription sunglasses. The sunglasses that allow me to drive to and fro without plowing into mailboxes, trash cans, and the melting snowman near my home that looks like Joe Lieberman.

Truth is, I’m one of those poor schlubs who’s always losing things. Maybe you are, too. If you’re not, you probably know one – we all do. The grandmother who keeps leaving her car keys in the freezer next to the vodka; the cousin who wears a single glove to shovel the driveway because he hasn’t seen the other one since “the incident” in 1987. And me. The jerk who was once given a nice hand-knitted scarf by his mother, then lost it a week later while running across the street to beat traffic. I’d still have it if I had been more patient. On the bright side, I didn’t get killed by anyone driving without prescription glasses.

When it comes to keeping track of our personal effects, some of us have it, some of us don’t. Going to court last week, I carried only a small handful of items: My sunglasses, hat, notebook, spare pen, and the mints I’m constantly eating, in case anyone wants to randomly make out with me. (No takers yet, but I’m hopeful.)

You’d think it’d be easy enough to keep track of a load that small. There exists, however, a small contingent among us whose pockets are capable of swallowing bric-a-brac and making it disappear as irrevocably as does a flushing toilet. I could keep two live cats and a pool cue in my pants, and by the end of the day the only traces left would be a handful of whiskers and a piece of felt.

And of course, being afflicted with an especially powerful case of lose-stuff-itis, I had to lose the most important object in my possession. It couldn’t have been the spare pen that went missing, or the mints, which would have left me with onion breath but otherwise intact. No, it had to be the one item the lack of which represents a legitimate safety hazard for slow-moving pedestrians.

That’s pretty much the way it goes, I’ve found. You never lose the stuff that doesn’t matter. You lose the class rings, the car keys, the autographed David Ortiz baseball with the thumbprint that looks like Zimbabwe. But the crumpled, losing lottery ticket and that one loose penny left over from your spending spree at the Gap will be turning up between the sofa cushions until the end of time.

Luckily, there’s a happy ending to this particular tale of woe.

I had left the much ballyhooed sunglasses behind with the screeners, naturally – simply left them on the conveyor belt. After a frenzied, white-knuckle search, there they were, being held out to me by a smiling gentleman unaware that he had just staved off my inevitable ulcer for one more day.

Pedestrians, puppies, and traffic cones – all safe for now, thanks to the fine glasses-holding team of screeners at the courthouse. Thanks, guys.

I just hope I can hold onto them this time. Otherwise, some driver on Route 111 will soon be toting around an angry, squinty hitchhiker with a touch of mint on his breath.