Lessons From The ‘Old Judge’

By Dr. Don Dafoe

How annoying. I had to take a day off and pull my 11-year-old son out of school to go to municipal court, again. He rode his electric bike through a stop sign, turning right on a quiet residential street and didn’t notice the police car. The officer gave him a scolding and a ticket. 

Why couldn’t it be a warning? 

“You’ll have two misdemeanors on your record,” I kidded my son. “You’re a thug at 11 years of age.”
My son’s first misdemeanor was riding on the sidewalk. Worried that a distracted driver might hit him on the road, I’m the one who told him to ride there.

My son would face the same judge: a reserved gent with freckles of the elderly and rheumy blue eyes, dressed in a large, black robe.  

As a surgeon, I have a degree of enmity toward lawyers due to frivolous malpractice suits. I told my boy to address the judge as “your Honor” and tell him, “I learned my lesson.” My son would be ordered to attend e-bike safety class. I’d pay the $246 fine, and we’d be on our way, I figured.

Speaking slowly in a Texas drawl, the judge asked my son if he knew the meaning of a stop sign and said, “I want to tell you a story.”

Oh boy, do we have to hear a story? It’s probably the same one he tells every kid. 

The judge began to draw a street intersection and recalled an incident from when he was my son’s age. 

He and his mother, in the car on an errand, stopped to say hello to a friend on a bicycle going the other way. The friend had acquired “doubles,” duplicate baseball cards, and proposed a trade. They would meet up later to determine a fair exchange. 

“That was the last time I saw him,” the judge dropped the bomb. “My parents wouldn’t allow me to go to the funeral.”

My eyes began to mist over. 

The judge leaned back in his giant chair and looked despondent. “So, hug your dad extra tight tonight.”

I composed myself enough to look at the judge. “I lost a friend like that too.”

When I was 10 years old, I made a new friend down the block. One evening, our doorbell rang. I answered it. The man at the door was wide-eyed, breathless, and sweaty. 

“Is the doc here?” 

“My dad is probably at the hospital,” I told the man.

“My boy was hit by a car,” the man said and ran off into the night.

At the hospital, they wheeled in a dead child, his body covered with a white sheet. Seeing the blond hair sticking out, Dad at first thought it was me. I remember lying in bed after hearing my friend was gone. 

The judge leaned forward and locked eyes with my son. “Be careful. Bicycles are dangerous.”

My opinion of the old judge reversed. He was everything a public servant should be. He put his heart and soul into his work. 

He cared about us.

Dr. Don Dafoe, a transplant surgeon, has lived in Highland Park for a year and a half and hopes Municipal Court Judge James Paul Barklow doesn’t mind being called old.