During my 28 years of experience as a haloed paragon of law-abiding purity with impeccable browsing history, I've learned a thing or two about staying within the bounds of the law.
Pay your taxes.
Don't touch museum paintings.
Never try to steal from Kevin McCallister's house while he's home alone.
It may sound scarce, but in my defence, all my judicial knowledge comes from movies and common sense. Where else? I don't know about you, but I got out of school knowing more about styrofoam solar systems than legal systems. Nothing I was taught back then can either keep me away from jail or help me break out of it.
Unless you count playing my recorder to put the guard to sleep but that's a long shot.
But now that I am an adult who manages his own bedtime, it really feels like I would've got a bigger ROI committing the Miranda Rights to memory than the Periodic Table.
No, seriously. I've watched enough police interrogation footage on YouTube to know that, should I ever be brought into a small interrogation room to watch a Good Cop/Bad Cop performance, I would immediately forget my right to keep my tongue indoors and start talking like I was a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience.
I don't know; part of me wants to go back in time to school and say I want to be a bank robber just to test their troubleshooting. We are never taught the law and there is absolutely no direction given as to how not to make terrible life decisions. Not even a pamphlet.
And by the way — no. The obvious stuff you were taught in civics class doesn't count.
Of course, if you make a CSI unit come to your living room to draw a chalk outline in the shape of your wife, you should instantly win an all-expenses-paid trip to Convict Con and hold tight to that soap bar for the next 15 to 30 years.
But a functioning member of society should be able to pick that up from social cues anyway.
I mean, if you need to get ambushed by Chris Hansen's camera crew to realise it's wrong to chat up underage girls, no "licit lifestyle" workshop is gonna save you, no matter how much tax money we throw at it. What you need is to get a prescription drug that parachutes wackadoos down to sanity and try your best to cope with the side effects.
But anyway.
Even if you aren't the type of person with a criminal urge to add true-crime podcast lead credits to your IMDb page, you're still not out of trouble.
Did you know sharing your Netflix password is a federal crime, you crook?
The only reason your apartment hasn't been swatted yet is that prisons are saving beds just in case the native inhabitants of Jeffrey Epstein's island turn themselves. Either way, you are on a list (unlike me; my cousins tried to waterboard me to get my credentials once but I powered through).
And I'm not even counting the weird laws.
In some places, it's illegal to fly a kite (yes, kites, history's least threatening aircraft you could possibly deploy in a country's airspace). There are also other places where, if you overdo tree climbing, pigeon feeding or gum chewing, you can find yourself wearing handcuffs in the least kinky way possible.
Add to that the fact that everything the average citizen knows about how courts operate comes from the highlight reel of the Johnny Vs Amber trial, and it's impossible to stay out of trouble.
Which is concerningly dumb on our part.
Something tells me I wouldn’t do well in court. I would try to bring Rich Uncle Pennybags as a surprise witness waving a Get Out of Jail Free Card and I’d be getting a strip search and an orange jumpsuit that same afternoon.
But oh well, that is why law school is Every Chinese Parent's 2nd Most Popular Career Choice for Their Only Child, you may retort.
After all, there's property law, IP law, business law, tax law, criminal law, contract law, landlord-tenant law... Mastering the inner workings of the law takes longer than a day's worth of toilet reading, I'll give you that.
But I'm not saying you shouldn't hire trained professionals for all your legal needs. I'm just saying it's concerning we know more about the judicial system of Westeros than our own. Hell, I should at least be qualified to appeal a parking ticket with a better defence strategy than just yelling “I demand trial by combat.”
So be careful out there.
Don't keep corpses in your trunk, don't save anything on your computer’s hard drive that Wikileaks may wanna farm for content, and maybe keep a backup passport and a cash bag under your bed. It seems that, guilty or not, our single best defence is to never get caught.
By Far the Dumbest Reason to Go to Jail For
I'm pretty sure every time you click "I accept the terms and conditions" without reading the terms and conditions, you're pretty much doomed to a criminal existence. I'd like to offer a product or service someday and write up a very elaborate set of terms and conditions that entitles me to large sums of the purchaser's money and unlimited access to their personal property. Just for kicks. To see how many people agree to my "terms". 🙃
In real life, I'm the rule follower type who doesn't want to risk the easy cheat because I know the ONE TIME I skirt the law, it'll be the ONE TIME someone is paying attention and decides to make an example out of me. No thanks.
I also think teaching kids to play the recorder should have been outlawed decades ago.
Thanks for another insightful read.
Just sat and verbally read this one (and your last post about crippling fears) aloud to someone. It was very fun haha. I chuckle in between lines a lot. They are punchy and clever. You have such an interesting, distinct use and flow of words.