Cells My most memorable birthday was my 30th birthday. Of course, at the ripe old age of 29 we all dread turning the Big 3-0, but I really didn't care. I told people that with all I'd been through in that past year, turning 30 was the least of my worries. I'd been dating a horrible guy and had to take the bar exam a second time. I finally passed the bar, dumped the rotten guy and was living on my own in peace.
I was working at a fun job with the L.A. County Public Defeneders office, handling misdemeanors which were crazy. They made for the best cocktail party stories - junkies, hookers, petty theaves and drunk drivers with every excuse in the book. Not the usual people this white, freckle-face girl from "the valley" was used to meeting.
On my 30th birthday I had the pleasure of being assigned to represent a lovely woman in her 20's who was accused of being under the influence of heroin. She'd been arrested along with her mother...another charming lass. Together, they sat in the dimly lit lock-up in skimpy cotton gowns provided to them by the women's jail. They looked like a couple of refugees from a tornado; hair matted, black smudged eye make-up, dirty feet and fingernails.
When a person is arrested for this charge and if they are brought to the courthouse within 24 hours, they have an opportunity to provide evidence that there was not, in fact, any illegal drug in their system by way of a urine sample. The sample must be taken in the presence of a sheriff's employee of the same sex. On this day, my client requested a sample be taken but there were no female sheriff's deputies on hand so I had to witness the sample.
I slipped on a new set of rubber gloves and handed her the little cup. She tried to give the sample in the toilet in the back of the lock-up, but it was blocked by a wall so I told her she had to pee in the cup out in the middle of the cell where I could see her. Luckily it was only her and her mother there, but what a scene....she pulled down her panties and tried to squat over the cold concrete floor and pee into this little cup. Needless to say, she peed all over her hand and the floor, before getting anything in the cup. Her mother was flipping out - cursing like crazy and calling her an f-ing idiot for spilling urine all over the place. The girl was crying and pleading with her mother to stop calling her names. I stood there outside the bars, mouth wide open, staring with amazement and disbelief at this mother-daughter scene - heroin addicts floundering together in the world. Damn! Why hadn't my mom bonded with me in such an interesting way?
At last she managed to get some of it into the cup and I was able to take it from her, urine dripping down my rubber gloves, label it and write it up just like at the sterile doctor's office. I handed it off to the lab driver and with this final step, I left the courthouse to celebrate my birthday..... after a good long shower.
I don't recall what became of that mother-daughter drug duo, and I have no idea what I did to celebrate.....but I know I had much to be thankful for that year. Except maybe having such a boring mother.
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