The Courthouse

"Fun with the Family"

With kids middle-school age or older, a good choice is the special program “Order in the Court.” When the clerk at the courthouse calls out for jurors, if you are, as required by law, a man, over 21, Protestant, white, and a landowner, you can serve. Others can be plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses. Cases vary. On one visit we observed a husband, whose tipsy wife sang a ditty belittling the king, receive a two pound fine. The poor man, played by a visitor reading from cue cards, complained that such a fee is beyond his means. How then is justice served? The judge ordered the wife to be lashed to a stool and dunked six times. “As you grow wet, may you grow wise,” he intoned. As the guests filed out, a teenage girl in the audience wondered why the husband wasn’t dunked instead.