How I Waited For Four Hours Not To See The Casey Anthony Trial

(Right: Me leaning against a column looking like Jane Velez-Mitchell is pointing me out, outside the OC Courthouse on the Casey Anthony line. She wasn't.) 

      I wrote Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad partly because I'm endlessly intrigued by what keeps some people away from the edge while others go over it. Craziness, it's triggers and components, can always be closer than we think...not sweet, endearing "Your so crazy!" crazy but lost it, out-to-lunch, Screw-Loose-LaTrek, dropped neuro-stitch crazy, the kind where people are often just functional enough to keep up appearances...until one day something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

         The Casey Anthony murder trial is not about a crime of passion, but it is a pu pu platter of crazy - everyone connected to it either started out crazy or could sadly be driven mad by its Sophoclean weight- and since it's going on so close to my house I thought I'd try to get in. The anarchic nighttime line for tickets had scared me (crazy) so I was glad when things changed to include a daily announcement of ticket availability (with 50 tickets usually available). I saw one at around 11 a.m. Friday and was there by noon.

         Guess what? We were told we'd have to wait until 4 pm. So there's still a line - it's just happening in the day time when it's 2439 degrees outside. Every workplace has a Tracy Flick that is just dying to be given a clipboard and told to take names... why not utilize them early on? No one knew.

         The lady behind me -  who had helped search for Caylee - did a head count and found we were numbers 47 and 48. Huzzah, right? But the line meandered. People came and went. Bathroom and parking meter needs beckoned. You could probably do a head count every 15 minutes and get a different number each time.

         The tedium was mitigated by chatting with fellow my hostages and the chance celebrity encounters. Applause broke out for Geraldo and that was fun but my big squee moments were when Jane Velez-Mitchell and Aphrodite Jones, passed by (I'm an avid watcher of both). The officers on line duty were pleasant which made things feel better. It's like a flight delay. It sucks less if you feel like the crew is in your corner. More head counts were by the officers and I was still in the game. And then at about 3:45 the news came.

         An officer came out and declared the line of demarcation....three people ahead of me. I was out. A lot of people who thought they were in were out. We were too soggy and surprised to talk. Had people cut in line? Had all those counts been wrong? Most people waited to see if it was a mistake but one cop who I hadn't seen before started loudly telling people to go. It was that "You've been told to leave," authoritah voice that always reminds me of Chet from Weird Science. It was more dispiriting than not getting in.

         I figured I'd watch it on TV the next day...on a softer chair than I'd have had in court but through a haze of bitterness. Then.. there were no next-day proceedings. Judge Perry had declared a recess almost before it began. Ha! Schadenfreude. Had I been teased only to still not get in I'd have been seriously ticked instead of mildly irked. 

           It just goes to show when bad thigns happen don't go crazy. They might not be bad at all.