My Day In Court

So today I left work early to make my first appearance in court. I had no idea what to expect. Kami from work gave me a little advice on what the judge was like and what how he handles things in his courtroom, but I don't think it is too common for a 19-year-old girl to be seen in a court room for running a stupid little stop sign! It all happened on Friday, March 27th on my way home from Kayley's baby shower at Janae's house. I was on 7000 South in an area that I was most definitely not familiar with and apparantly missed the "red octagone with STOP on it" (as the jerky cop told me) and almost hit and killed his kids. The cop first asked me, "ARe you DRUNK?" hmm coming from a baby shower I can hardly imagine that happening. He told me to turn my car around and go back to the stop sign. He came to my car and told me to get out of the car. I was totally mortified standing there on the side of the road while he yelled at me telling me I almost hit his kids and that his son has been hit before and he doesn't want to go through that again. All this time I was doing what my dad always taught me to do and be polite, but when he brought me the ticket that said I was being charged for running a stop sign AND reckless driving, I lost it. As far as I knew, reckless driving was for drunk drivers or street racers that are all over the road. Running a stop sign going at max. 29 mph is not what I ever imagined reckless and putting the public safety in danger. Well after I expressed my thoughts about his accusation I went home. One month later there I was sitting in the court room with my mom. Little did I know that I would be in a room full of fellons that were in there for abuse or possesion of marijuana and in handcuffs while sweating profusely the whole hour while I waited for Judge Kunz to call my name up to the stand. When he did he told me my charges and asked what I pleaded. I plead guilty to running the stop sign but not guilty to the reckless driving. He then told me he will set up my pretrial on June 2nd, which I fear the stupid jerk will be there to try and convince the judge that I am some insane careless driver that needs to be taken off the streets because his kids were 6 seconds from stepping out on the street. So after a whole month of nightmares and worrying, I get to go through it all over again :)