I'm a notary at my workplace, which isn't my primary role, but lots of people come in to get stuff notarized and I'm the only one in my store so it's important that I know my stuff.

Today a woman came in who I've seen a couple times before. She usually brings in weirdly worded documents she clearly writes up on her own, but they're never anything too terrible from what I can discern, so I notarize anyways - in the state of Texas at least, a notary's sole job is to ensure the person signing the document is who they claim to be (or in some cases to attest that an oath was taken).

The documents she brings in today are a) more than usual, and b) very immediately clear to be court summons for a nearby county's court.

In particular, she'd taken a letter she had clearly received from this county court, which defined the date and time she was to appear to face her charges (we'll get to those). She had scribbled over these in red marker something to the effect of "REJECTED - YOUR OFFER OF CONTRACT IS DECLINED IN ACCORDANCE WITH COLOR OF LAW --" insert some random statute number. Some of you are probably already seeing the red flags here.

The charge in question was that she was driving without a license. When I asked for her ID to notarize her documents, she presented me with a US Passport card. Perfectly valid ID for notarization, of course, but... Suspicious, given she had driven herself here. Given the context of the documents I was looking at, downright alarming.

Other documents included a "letter of special appearance" which in my briefest glossing over appeared to be stating that she was designating this piece of paper as her "appearance" in court, rather than appearing in person, "in accordance with color of law bla bla bla". Oh boy. Not only that, but one of the notary certificates seemed to imply that I, as the notary, was using my authority to notify the county court of... Something. Which is totally invalid - completely outside my authorities as a notary.

The final document was appatently an attempt to file a lawsuit against the court, or the county, I'm not certain which. She was seeking $20,000 for the court/county having a) violated her "right to travel" (more alarm bells anyone?) and b) daring to try to force her to appear in court, or as she seemed to phrase it, "enter a contract" with her.

All of the spaces where she was to sign had her title in extremely verbose language, like

Name, In persona significa, per se, as a living soul and a human woman... [etc.]

The best part was that this verbose title always ended with "all rights explicitly reserved." I'm surprised there wasn't a copyright symbol too.

Lastly, all of the spaces where I was to sign were indicated "Notary Republic" which isn't a thing. It's "Notary Public." I don't show if she'd simply been autocorrected or truly believed it was "Notary Republic."

I probably shouldn't have agreed to notarize all this utter nonsense, but I was tired and I didn't want to cause a scene. All while I was signing and stamping this stuff she kept rambling to me - "You know cuz I'm gonna file a lawsuit against them, because they can't violate your right to travel, haha! Everyone has a right to travel! They're gonna be so mad. If they make me appear in court I'm gonna serve them paper right there, they'll be so upset! Yeah yeah I took this class, this class on how to be your own lawyer, yeah! It's so awesome!"

I nodded and smiled and took her money and sent her on her way. She's absolutely going to jail

For those who aren't aware, the woman I dealt with today is what is known as a "sovereign citizen." You can look up the term on Google and YouTube, there's plenty of videos of these people. They subscribed to a bunch of absolutely deranged, nonsensical beliefs about US law, one of the most infamous of which is that they don't need a license to drive a car, because they're not driving, they're "travelling."

I don't believe any of these people are truly malicious - what I think is that they're all schizophrenic. It's the same sort of thought patterns as the people who see 666 and satanic imagery in everything, you know the type, "if you take this rapper's name and turn it upside down and turn it into the numbers it looks like and divide it by the year they were born and subtract 9112001 to it then you get the number of the beast!!!" They're completely disconnected from reality, and it's honestly more sad than anything else.

So after I clocked out I took a copy of her entry in my log book and a copy of the notary waiver she signed and I'm going to be writing and sending a letter to the county court she's being summoned to. I don't know if anyone will read it, but I feel I owe at least some responsibility to try and explain to the people handling her case why she is behaving in what is undoubtedly a bizarre manner towards them. Maybe I can convince them to make her seek help, I don't know.

So today was weird, yeah.

These people are fascinating train wrecks to spectate from a distance, but they are (practically by definition) exhausting up close. The shenanigans with the name is because some of them believe they can create a separate legal person from themselves, which is what any legal repercussion will effect.

It's all basically cargo cutting, heard-from-my-cousin hearsay that gets received as gospel truth. This person found a Guru for hire, as one does.

If you have an hour, an exhaustive examination on the topic is Meads v Meads. This is from a Canadian court, which makes the incoherence even more blatant when the person cites the US Commerce Code in a divorce trial.