Juryatrics

I went to Jury Duty yesterday and sat with about 150 put out people in a GIANT room outfitted with televisions. I am not sure why Jury Duty is considered nothing less than a SERIOUS PAIN IN THE B-HIND by all who receive its beckoning call, but it is. I felt that way too until I got there, and then I realized that the only thing that was bugging me was that I had to figure out a way to get there and I had to get up earlier. Once I discovered that it was a single bus ride and a two minute walk tops, I found the whole experience FASCINATING. Sure, it's a lot of waiting around, in a climate that is a little TENSE, but there was a little part of me that thrilled at being PART of something that keeps our society going, for better or for worse.

Oh yeah, and they showed us an instructional video complete with reenactments of the "trials" they did in medieval Europe and narration by Ed Bradley. It was AWESOME.

Sprouting from the homes of latter day counter cultural types, I come from a short line of people who have been fighting, questioning, two-stepping, coming to blows with, and losing to the law. Some of my people think its their DUTY to both participate in the system and well, for lack of a better term, fuck with the system. If you ever want to know the MANY ways you can avoid the draft, using a good dose of method acting and a jar of peanut butter, grab a cup of coffee at my childhood kitchen table. If you want to know the ins and outs of our criminal justice system, and how it does and DOESN'T work, I may know the phone numbers of a few people that have some (ahem) OPINIONS from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. So you might just guess that it was interesting for me to actually be IN this system that has been such a colorful backdrop to so many events and campfire tales in my life.

I went in ready to be as discouraging as I needed to be in order to get out of doing any kind of court case, as a sort of knee jerk reaction. Then, as I sat there, going through the process of selection, I realized that if it came down to it, I'd want me as a juror in my case. I'm interested, I think of myself as pretty fair, and I care. So I got chosen. I got sworn in by a man who resembled Cedric The Entertainer and I am going to court next week and I am actually kind of looking forward to it.