The courtroom is full, people are scrambling around and then all of a sudden a bang of the gavel followed by absolute silence.
"Bob Liger, you are accused of stealing the car of Jason Frederick. You say you have some evidence that he agreed to let you borrow the car?" the judge asks the defendant. "Yes your honor, I have this." Bob says as he brings an old tape recorder to the judge. They put a mic next to the speaker.
"I haven't seen one of these in quite some time." The judge comments examining the tape recorder. The judge hits play and everyone in the court room listens intently to what is on the tape.
"I'm recording this as a record of our agreement." a voice, higher in tone but Bob's voice nonetheless.
"That's fine." another voice answers.
"Ok, I'm recording this because I don't want you to forget. Not tomorrow, not in 30 years on 2020, January 26 or ever. So you Jason Frederick agree to let me use your car at least once a month for forever if I give you Trish's phone number, even though I don't think she likes you and it's going to be awkward when you call her?"
"Yes OK? Just give me her number, it's not going to be awkward!"
The tape was stopped by the judge.
"January 26th, 2020, that was yesterday." the judge pondered. "It feels like you made this yesterday. "
"No, I made this a long time ago. The reason I postponed the court date from yesterday to today was because I thought it would seem too suspicious that the date mentioned in the audio was the exact same date as the hearing. When I made this back then I just randomly made up a ridiculously far date in the future as a joke but I could see how it would be very suspicious at this point and I regretted making that date even though there is no way i could have known this could be a problem when I made it."
The judge sighed.
"Even if this is a real tape, do you really intend to enforce this tape as a contract? If you were not of the age of 18 at the time of this tape, this contract would not be legally binding."
"I see. In that case I would like to change my plea to guilty and I apologize for taking the car."