the other side of the mountain

It’s been eleven months and change since the dwang hit the domestic fan and everything went pear-shaped in a handbasket+, but I finally had my day in court.

While I waited my turn, I was quite impressed how quickly they managed to get through the roll. There was roughly a five-minute turn-around time for each uncontested case. It essentially involved the advocate asking the plaintiff a few standard questions and directing him or her to “describe to the court the reason for the breakdown of the marriage”. The plaintiff would mumble something along the lines of “she kept gerbils in my sock drawer++” or some such and shortly thereafter, the judge would issue the decree of divorce.

“This is going to be a snap”, thought I, as my case was called. It seems that Murphy’s Law also has jurisdiction in the Cape High Court, because my documents had somehow managed to vanish from the judge’s file. The case was deferred while my attorney went in search of the missing papers and I was left to ponder exactly how I’d managed to accumulate such an enormous fucking Karmic debt. As the minutes dragged on, I couldn’t help visualising streams of money navigating a porcelain U-bend. I seriously don’t want to think what this two-hour scavenger hunt cost me. Hmmm… I wonder if I can take the High Court to the Small Claims Court and sue for damages?

Nevertheless, I eventually got to make my gerbil speech and it is now official: I am one of the eX-men. I’m still working on a catchy name, but my mutant power is the ability to have an empty bank account.

+ did I mention that I have a fondness for mixed metaphors? No? Well I do

++ a surprisingly common complaint