If you’ve ever been to court, I’m sure you’ve always wondered how you can escape going through the trial without admitting your guilt. Last month during an assault trial in Philadelphia, the most unexpected thing occurred during the trial.  A man who was in the witness stand spoke of a fight he was in that cost him his left eye. Moments later as he became emotional, the trial ended abruptly in a mistrial when his $3000 prosthetic eye popped out as he was testifying. To say the jurors were startled would be an understatement.

The victim John Huttick, was weeping on the witness stand in court when his blue eye popped out unexpectedly. Huttick caught it and cried out as two jurors gasped and started to rise. Huttick later stated, he “couldn’t believe it just came out.”

Now I’ve watched numerous Perry Mason movies, I can say unequivocally that this scenario has never played out in any of the ones I’ve watched. I do believe that rather than the mundane, Americans have become just too used to the outrageous. What surprises us anymore?

If you have never visited the web site People of Walmart, you’d soon realize that those of us who look “normal” are quickly becoming “abnormal” in this world. Whether it’s wearing your hair in multicolored tufts like a parrot, pants down to the ankles as you shop, or a face that looks like it took the full force of an exploding tackle box, why can’t things be normal anymore?

Oh there is elements of irony when a global warming conference is cancelled three years in a row because the organizers planned the conference  during three separate brutal winter storms. But rarely do I get satisfaction when people choose to do weird things and don’t get called on it.

I guess we could take some solace that the man testifying in the earlier trial wasn’t missing his upper left appendage. Then we’d have to see a newspaper headline the next morning that read, “Mistrial called when witness becomes disarming.”