Accused of “Clap and Run!”

A Medium Courtroom Drama

Oh the shame! Oh the indignity! My unblemished Medium record has been permanently stained!

Just this morning I was pulled over by the Medium Highway Patrol for clapping and running! “Me!” I protested! “I’ve never done such a thing!” As he slapped me in handcuffs, the officer stood there smirking smugly behind his thick shades. “Tell that to the judge,” said he. And there the cop took me, where I now cower beneath the statue of Lady Justice, waiting my turn on the stand, where the honorable TzeLin Sam presides.

The other defendants lined up on the docket tell me she’s ruthless, a real hanging judge. My neck starts to itch. Where’s my lawyer? I texted five times already. Probably off on some South Seas bender, again.

“All Rise!” the bailiff announces. Tze Lin walks in, looking exceptionally cranky, like somebody barfed in her ang pau packet. She bangs the gavel on the bench, looking like she would rather do it against my thick skull, but is restrained by courtroom decorum.

“The court of Medium calls Mel Carriere, accused of Clapping and Running! How do you plead, Mr. Carriere?”

I stand humbly before the magistrate. I think of saying, Not Guilty by reason of insanity, just for lolz, to lighten her up, but she ain’t smiling. “Not Guilty, Your Honor,” I say, safely.

“Mr. Carriere, be warned! I will tolerate no foul language in my courtroom!”

I’m confused. What did I say? “Beg pardon, Your Honor?”

“There you go again! One more time and I’ll hold you in contempt of court. I won’t stand for your improper speech. I’m a respectable Malaysian judge, not some cheap Yankee trollop. You will address me in the proper Queen’s English here! The correct word is honour, not honor. None of your bastardized American spelling!”

Noah Webster flops in his grave as I bend over to the bloody Redcoats. “I’m sorry, Your Honor-er, Honour,” I say, blushing.

At that point Dion Groove (aka Seaspray D) strolls in, his fabulous feline Lady Donga luxuriating on his shoulder, her tail undulating languidly, like a Golden-Headed Langur. I breathe a sigh of relief. Saved by the bell.

“Who are you sir?” the judge asks with a scowl. “I don’t allow animals in my courtroom!”

I blush again. “Excuse me, Your Honour,” I say, but the cat is actually my defense attorney. Mr. Groove is just her human interpreter.”

The judge thinks this is just some Anglo-Saxon, ANZUS end around. She flips through the Medium rules and regulations manual, as if that goody two shoes fussbudget didn’t have them memorized already. “All right, proceed, but no funny stuff!”

The judge hits a button on her laptop, and my mug shot appears on a screen to the side of the bench. “Exhibit A!” she proclaims, triumphantly, though she’s not a fan of adverbs.

“Is that you?” the judge asks me with a wicked gleam in her eye, already fantasizing about how my neck will look in a noose. “So, you’ve been playing the old clap and run game, eh? Do you have the audacity to deny it?”

“Uh, yes, uh-no!” I admit, not sure which end is up right now. “I mean, the top three notifications are mine. The bottom two I had nothing to do with.”

“Mr. Carriere,” the judge says. “If you continue to perjure yourself, we’ll skip the trial, and I’ll string you up from the flagpole myself, right now!”

Lady Donga meows, and her human Dion translates. “Objection, Your Honour! 👩‍⚖️🧐😻My ol m8 Mel would never do anything like that! I’ve known him for weeks, 🗓️🌅😎 and he’s never done me dirty!” 🙏🙏🥴🐾🐕

“Overruled,” the Honorable, er…Honourable, Tze Lin Sam says with a scowl. “I have more evidence of his foul crimes. Not only does he clap and run, but he’s one of those one of those loathsome one-clappers too! Exhibit B!” She hits the button on her laptop again, then the hands of justice rub themselves together with wicked glee.

“One clap, one measly little clap!” Judge Tze Lin says, as she pulls a hankie from the luxurious folds of her robes and dabs her eyes. Boy howdy does she look good in those duds! I think to myself. “And I thought we were friends,” she sniffs.

Lady Donga purrs softly, and Dion Groove speaks once more. “My ol m8📧 Mel 📫💌 always claps👏👼😽50 5️⃣0️⃣😐🧮times! Even when his fat clapping finger is misfiring!”👆👇💅😿👹

I sit there aghast, not believing these cruel, unjustified allegations against me.

“I’m being framed!” I protest. “Somebody hijacked my account! I have an alibi. I was busy clapping on somebody else’s article that day!”

The merciless eyes of Lady Justice glare down upon me from the bench. “Uh-huh. Oh, how original. Like I’ve never heard those lame excuses before, in this courtroom.”

I experience the horrible sensation of the gallows trap opening beneath my feet, and can actually feel my body swaying in the tropical breeze, by the neck. I’m forced to do some quick thinking.

“If you’ll excuse me, Your Honour.” I don’t dare screw up her title now, with my life literally hanging in the balance.

I pull my cell phone from my pocket, not sure if that is proper courtroom protocol or not, but having too much at stake to care.

I scroll through my Medium account a moment, then declare “I’ve got it! I’ve solved the mystery!”

Lady Justice looks at me suspiciously, like a teacher staring at a student who is trying to fool her with that old, tired, the dog ate my homework excuse.

“You see,” I say, pointing to my phone, as if she can see it all the way up there. I don’t doubt she can. That girl seems like she can gaze straight into people’s wicked souls, sometimes.

“You can actually clap from the profile,” I say. “You don’t even have to open up the article to do it. On the morning of said incident, while I was scrolling through yours, looking for an old article to read, I must have accidentally fat-finger clapped on two of your other stories. Look!”

The judge pulls her own phone from the pocket of her fashionable judicial robes. A pair of bright red ang pau packets fall out, stuffed to the bursting point. “Aiyooooooo, so sorry,” she says, blushing like a schoolgirl herself now. She scoops the packets up swiftly and tucks them away. Oh great, I think. The judge is on the make. I’m doomed.

Tze Lin looks at her own phone screen, then glowers at me skeptically. “Why don’t I see that on my phone? I don’t see any clap icons when I’m scrolling through the stories on your profile.”

“I don’t know, Your Honour,” I plead. “It must be a difference in operating systems between your phone and mine. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen before. My son’s a techie. I’ve talked to him about this.”

“Hmmm…” Lady Justice ponders.

Lady Donga meows emphatically. Mr. Groove speaks up: “I 🤔 think we’ve solved the mystery ⁉️🧩😕 of those Medium clap and runners! 👏👏🏃🏃‍♀️👟💨 They don’t even bother to open the article to read! They just click the clap button on the profile, and off they go la!📚🦸🖱️🐭🪤👤My m8 Mel is innocent! Let him go!😇🆓🌈☺️

The honourable Tze Lin Sam doesn’t look so sure. “What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Carriere? Why should I be lenient?”

I fall to my knees before the judge, throwing myself on her tender mercies. “I don’t know, I can’t explain my mistake. The only possibility is that my fat clapping finger is still stiff from the polar vortex last month! Puhleeeeeze! I promise to me more careful.”

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse for criminal activity!” the judge says, pounding her gavel so hard that I really do feel the reverberations from its painful thud against my noggin, this time. “I sentence you to ten apology poems! Next case!”

“Nooooo…!” I wail, as the bailiff leads me away to the poetry holding cell. “I hate writing poetry! I suck at it! Anything but that!”

Lady Justice shoots me a diabolical grin. The gallows pole is looking like a better option, all the time.

The star performers in this drama, Dion Groove and TzeLin Sam