How I Became the Clerk of Court
by Rhode Island Clerk of Court, Nathan Thannery

     No one has ever asked me about this, but I can tell that many of you have been wondering for quite some time.  My rise to the lofty title of “Clerk of Court” is packed with much intrigue and wonder…and I don’t mind telling you all about it now.

	Above: Me in my clerking suit on my way to clerk somewhere.

     It all started when I graduated college from Milford State thirty years ago.  I was a Pre-Clerk major with a minor in Court Affairs.  I had no clue what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  So I backpacked around Rhode Island for three years.  Actually I was just homeless, but I called it backpacking as a little joke for myself so I had something to laugh about when I got a little depressed, which was quite often.

     I was using a Rhode Island Picayune for a blanket/toilet paper roll, when I noticed an advertisement for a job as First Assistant Clerk of Court in Delaware.  It wasn’t until a few weeks later when that newspaper ran out and I was about to wipe with my college diploma in Clerking that I realized that I had been living a lie.  I was born to become a clerk and I knew it.

     I said goodbye to the streets and the friends I had not made over the past three years and I began going around to fast food establishments in Delaware and asking if they were hiring any clerks.  After many disappointing answers, I hit rock bottom.  Desperate and hungry, I stole a police car so I could get some free meals at the local smoothie stores.  I was promptly arrested and put on trial.

     As I stood in court a month later, Lady Luck offered me her hand to shake.  Little did I know that the Clerk of Court at that time had contracted a rare form of impockaru earlier in the day, leaving no one to fill his spot.  The courtroom became chaotic when the Clerk didn’t show. 

     All my college training came back to me and I stepped in and clerked like I never had before.  The charges against me were dropped and I was given a job in that court’s mailroom.

     In the following twenty-something years, I moved up in the ranks of the Clerk of Court Office until I had achieved what I had not set out to do thirty years before.  That’s right, I became the CLERK OF COURTS!

     Now I’m happy as I ever was, I make hardly any money, and I’m still not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do when I sit at my large desk every day.  That’s my story.