FIELDER’S VOICE: Trip to court can be enlightening

I’ve always said that schools aren’t the only place where I can learn.

Skate parks, football stadiums and pretty much any place I can take a field trip to qualifies.

I’d never really thought about courthouses. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen Judge Judy and Joe Brown and Divorce Court, and it’s cool, but I never thought I’d like being in court.

Then all of the forfeits and injunctions and temporary restraining orders came up with Western’s boys basketball team, and before I knew it, the Sunset Region playoffs were being decided in district court.

I like to know what’s going on, and truTV wasn’t planning on covering the hearing, so I decided this was more important than anything I was going to learn in chemistry.

So I called Eric — we only see each other every few months or so now — and said we should go.

Eric and I skipped class, got a grand slam at Denny’s (though we had to pay for it ... waitress wouldn’t believe us when we tried to convince her it was actually last week and our breakfast should be free).

Oh, if you’re going to cut class, Denny’s isn’t the best place to go. Too many people.

Eventually we made our way to the courthouse.

If you haven’t been there, you walk through metal detectors like you’re getting ready to board a flight somewhere. Lawyers are everywhere. Never really liked lawyers. Always look like they’re trying to get away with something and make the real criminals look like angels.

We got to Judge Miley’s courtroom and were surprised to find out that she doesn’t look much like Hannah Montana at all. Eric was disappointed. Me, not so much. At least we didn’t have to hear any annoying songs.

The cool part, though, was the court marshal’s name was Elvis. Elvis and Miley, what a duo.

The judge told everyone to come back at 1 p.m., so we wandered through the Fremont Street Experience (it looks kinda dumb when it’s not all lit up, though don’t we all?) for a while and came back just in time to hear testimony in a case about some woman’s knee.

Eventually, the knee people went to lunch, and it was time for Westerngate.

Both attorneys presented their cases, some Western fans got upset, and Elvis almost threw Eric out of the courtroom for starting a “We love Miley” chant. You can’t take him anywhere.

What really sucked was there wasn’t a winner.

Western’s players feel like they got cheated because they were good and probably would have won without playing a fifth-year senior (which they should have done in the first place).

The Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association didn’t really win, because it didn’t have anything to gain. It just wanted to see its rules followed.

And I didn’t get the digits of the cute juror in the knee case.

Bottom line is I couldn’t have seen this on TV or learned about it any classroom. I needed to be there to experience it, to know how our justice system works. To see Elvis and to tell people that he’s still in the building.

The other kicker is — the case still isn’t resolved. Western finally filed the appeal it should have filed last week, and we wait on a hearing officer to tell us who’s in the playoffs and when they start.
I may need to go watch that, too.

Just hope my teachers understand that when I go back to school tomorrow.

Or maybe I’ll just go back to Miley’s court room and learn more about knees ... or get ready for her world tour.