Thank you RandB fan. I've met people who have had misdemeanor charges, and it seemed some places were extremely over zealous and literally took control of people's lives, while some just tossed similar misdemeanor charges to the wayside as if it didn't happen. From what I was able to learn from these folks, it didn't even seem to matter if previous charges were also an issue. I can only assume this occurs due to a specific court's "mindset", what the lawyer is willing to do if a public defender, whether elections are around the corner, etc. It seems there are too many factors which are not the actual law that was broken, which must be taken into account.
Again, thanks.