So I can’t write in detail about the Dec. 22 eviction court date because the dude got Legal Aid, and astonishingly enough, this introduced some hilarity to events as well as cemented a final date of Jan. 5.

I respect and support Legal Aid. It’s not my suggestion that Legal Aid is to be laughed at; they do amazing work for important reasons. So let me explain just one thing about the day in court, and we will save the other funny stories for after the ruling has been made (Jan. 5).

The Legal Aid lawyer sent (on the Thursday before the Monday court date) a demand something called a Bill of Particulars. The bill asked seven questions, requiring documents for each.

My lawyer said this was highly unusual for an eviction, and since three weeks is the standard response time, it could be seen as a stall tactic to keep the dude in housing for another month while they thought of something else. I have started looking up some of the ways Legal Aid plans its strategies. There’s not a lot blatantly available on the Net, but a few people who have dealt with them in good faith have suggested that stalling and draining the coffers of the evicting party seem to be common approaches.

So my lawyer walked into the courtroom prepared to tell the judge that we would reply to the bill within two working days, because this had dragged out long enough. I assured him I could pull together all the documentation for the seven questions within that time, the bulldozers in my front yard notwithstanding.

(We had a plumbing issue: tree roots in the pipes. Not a hard fix, but an immediate need, and hence the guys showed up the same morning I was prepping for court.) My friend Amelia took pity on me and offered to take me back to her house so I wouldn’t have to time my bathroom visits with dashes to Walmart and the grocery store. And so we could print the documents there.

But my lawyer never even got a chance to say this. The judge had been very kind and prescient with the people before me, all of whom were having to own up to debts of a few thousand dollars, mostly from overdue rent. He joked with them about peanut butter balls and Christmas traditions and put them at ease even as he bonded them over for debt collection. He was great at reading people quickly, and matching energy.

So before my lawyer even spoke,the judge had sized us all up, and he said, “Right, my next available trial date is Jan. 5. So everyone will have their paperwork in by this Friday.”

A slight slump appeared in the shoulders of the Legal Aid lawyer. I almost felt sorry for her. This might be called getting hoisted by your own petard, when you try a tactic and it turns out creating difficulties for you.

Perhaps the judge knew that the court would be closed Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Which meant his “By Friday” meant “by 28 hours from now.”

Amelia and I bought booze, picked up a ream of paper, and went to her house. One hundred and twenty pages later, on the morning Dec. 23, with my friend driving the getaway car, we left copies with my attorney, filed one bundle with the court, and drove the third to Marion with a slip the Legal Aid office there could sign to show they had receive the documents on Tuesday.

Then we went to lunch.

The many funny stories that were part of this process, and the other funny things that happened in court, I will wait to tell you. My friend Laura was right: this is gonna make a helluva book.