[McClain]

From: McClain
To: Sentimental Jury

Not having known that scaling the walls of a public elementary school could be construed as destructive to public property, I plea with you to sanitize the charges and minimize my penalization. Please understand that ignorance, in this case solely, is an effective defense.
My mother will surely cry, if my siblings show up they're likely to cry as well (my brother has loose bowels) and those lines I helped to create on my father's brow will show themselves again. My great-great Aunt Bee, god bless her failing heart, would surely fail Being were she to hear the news. She’s legally blind and deaf so she would require the sentence by way of a Braillewriter, or perhaps one of those legalese psychics. We do have a system worked out where if you shake her briskly twice it means yes, three times means no. Four times is for maybe, and indefinite shaking is for when she needs to be aroused from coma or sleep.
She has marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and has also met the Dali Lama. She also thinks I'm a stellar young man.
Please don’t brand me the catalyst for my family's ultimate collapse. I used to be the black sheep but have turned over a new leaf. My antics once caused us to be removed from the Home Owner’s Association at Harrison Hill. It was a shameful time but my father has recently been reinstated. I have no doubt they will again shirk him from membership if you find me guilty.
The relationships that my parents established with neighbors, once sullied by my childish offenses, are like pillars of wet noodle. A little bit of turbulence and the years of rapport patchwork are for naught.
Please reconsider the charges and objectively imagine trying to match them with the offense. They just don't pair up. Please see that I am being raked over the coals.
But if I must, I will grab that time card, my shovel and my rubber boots and I will pick up marmoset shit at the zoo with conviction.
Nothing is more important to me than justice. My fate is in your hands.
Signed,
McClain