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There we were, an eclectic collection of flawed people, listening to a gray-mustached man in a black robe, sporting reading glasses midway down his nose, reading for what seemed like 45 minutes on a flat screen TV. The fact that the TV was not at the front but in the back right side wall was the first disconcerting part of our day.

It was our job to listen. It felt like Judge Judy was talking down to us. It was Mustache's legal obligation to read all about our rights and obligations and how we were to obey everything he said that day and shut up and do whatever he decided.

We were a local town courthouse awaiting our fates for doing bad things. Why else would be there on a Thursday morning the day before the Fourth of July Holiday?

On the wall next to the TV, where the lawyer kept reading our rights and obligations forever, hung a four-by-six-foot painting of George Washington and his crew in the row boat crossing the Delaware River. Our country's first leading man stood on the bow staring straight ahead amid the choppy waves, ready to go to battle to save America from itself. At the front of the court room was a circular plaque of the cover of an Olympic Bronze medal with the township emblem inscribed. Near the front stood a police officer who looked like he lifted 400-pound weights every morning for three hours before coming to work. His face was stern, serious and scary, and he had a big black pistol in a holster on his right hip.

And there I sat in the back wondering what how much hazing I was going to endure from a prosecuting attorney and how much money he would insist that I pay for a traffic accident I had with a middle-aged woman a few months ago.

I knew the accident had been her fault. But I also knew the lawyer would try to convince the judge and me that it was my fault. The day was not looking good. I would have rather been at a Rotary Club meeting that didn't serve food or drinks.

Before my trial began, the policeman told me the attorney wanted to speak with me. He escorted me to a back room to a conference table at which six people I did not know stared up at me when I came in the door.

The prosecutor wanted to have a word with me outside in the hallway. Whenever a prosecuting attorney wants to pummel you with a pre-trial inquisition, don't expect a pleasant exchange of ideas. It's going to be as ugly as a dead slug.

As expected, he launched into me with this: "The woman says that right after the accident you apologized to her. That would suggest to me you thought you were at fault for the accident. Why did you apologize?"

Thinking slowly on my feet, I said I apologized because I felt bad about the accident.

"The damage to her car indicates she didn't hit you but that you side-swiped her," he said.

I then remembered that in this situation, having watched "Law and Order" several times, that I had the right to remain silent. Anything I said could be held against me in the court of law.

Not feeling warmed by this guy, I stopped talking. He had long grayish/black sideburns which, in and of themselves, would not have bothered me. But because he was interrogating me and wanted to destroy my integrity, ruin my morning, and take lots of my money and prove to a judge that I am a schmuck, his sideburns bugged me. As thick as a yardstick, they extended to the bottom of his ear and made me want to say something like, "Nice sideburns, you jerk."

But I didn't say that. He held the future of my life in his vanilla envelope of evidence he was sure to float in the courtroom to get me squirming and feeling small and confused. Anyone who wants you to feel that way is not your friend.

I had had enough of him and his questions. So I shut him down. No more self-incrimination from me, Sideburns Sharphead.

I went back to the court room and got ready for the trial. When it began, he asked me to tell what had happened.

"I was driving down the road and this woman pulled out and hit me on the right side of my car."

I demonstrated with my hands how she hit me at a perpendicular angle.

"Did you say perpendicular?" Sideburns asked.

"Yes," I said. But I then knew where he was going. He was going to try to prove that I had not been hit at a perpendicular angle but something less direct than that and this would prove to the judge I lacked credibility. So I maneuvered my hand to about a 75 or 80 degree angle.

"It was more like this angle."

"But you just told the court it was a perpendicular angle, which is a direct hit at 90 degrees."

"It was, I don't know, about 75 or 80 degrees."

He had already made me feel like a liar and non-credible witness. This was not going well. I knew it wouldn't. His sideburns were repulsing me.

My time in the sun continued. He put various photos of the woman's car in front of me on the table. His goal was to show photos proving that she had not hit me the way I said she had. It was all going wrong. I was losing. Sideburns was killing me. I felt as if I was being punched in the face by a guy who wanted to crunch me into charcoal dust.

Once he was done trashing me, I was told to sit in the back. How many thousands of dollars am I going to have to pay Sideburns once he slam dunks the case against me for lying under oath about the perpendicular thing?

But my mood lifted once the woman started testifying. She reminded me of my experiences reading and/or hearing about Aesop's Fables. She told the judge about how I swerved into a lane of oncoming traffic and then sped up and sideswiped her after she had made a full turn into my lane and drove down the road some 30 yards. Neither of these things happened. This was confirmed when I saw the cop who wrote the police report after being on the scene at the accident. After testifying about the accident with the same facts I shared, he looked at me with a quizzical look on his face as if to say "What is this woman talking about?"

At this stage I thought about what Sideburns was thinking. At that moment I bet he regretted he took the case because his witness was making up details about distances she traveled before the accident that didn't make sense mathematically.

She went all perpendicular and no one could follow her train of thought.

Before the judge, the prosecutor's sideburns were being shaved off. I left the courtroom victorious.

I swear I have told the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

- Charles Hartley

Charles Hartley is a freelance writer who has had more than 1,000 articles published in a wide range of media outlets focused on humor, sports, business, technology and consumers. He has earned master's degrees in journalism and business administration and a bachelor's degree in English and communications.