Jury Dutes: How I Fulfilled My Civic Duty

I had managed to avoid my civic duty for the last four years by making the excuse that I was in school, or out of the country, but as soon as I got back, I received my jury summons. I know that my mom always gets out of jury duty because she pretends she "can't to speak the English very well". People have also told me that I can get kicked out of the jury pool by expressing incredibly extremist beliefs. I couldn't do either of these things so I was pretty certain I was doomed for sure.  My day went a little something like this:

12:30 pm
I was about to leave the house wearing a plaid shirt, some shorts and a pair of flip flops, and I walk out of my room, and my mom's like "You can't wear that. You have to wear pants. And shoes." I was thinking like...man...adulthood is hard. I tried to think back to the last time I had to wear shoes. Clubbing?

1:00 pm
Arrive at the court-house and go through security. I follow some people up to the second floor and there's this huge waiting room full of people. I check in and the lady in the window asks me who I work for. This totally throws me and I give her this goofy look and say "...nobody..."
I find one of the empty seats and sit down next to this nurse lady who keeps sighing. I felt kinda bad cuz she actually had somewhere to be. The fact that everyone else in the room was acting so serious made me want to giggle, but I knew it'd be like one of those instances where if I started giggling, I wouldn't be able to stop so I'd end up creating this huge awkward scene.

1:15 pm
A boring instructional video came on, and all these jurors started talking about how serving on the jury changed their lives and they came to respect the system and what not. An overwhelming wave of 170 tiredness washes over me and my eyes start feeling super heavy. The room feels so comfortably warm...I wonder if "I might fall asleep during the trial" or "I have a really short attention span" is a good enough excuse. Yeah, I'm a terrible citizen...

1:30 pm
We were informed of the location of the bathrooms, and a little room where there were snack machines and free cups of water, but we could only eat/drink in the boundary of that room. I walked in and there was this woman with such an angry look on her face that my heart seized for a moment and I had to look away immediately. I had to gather up the courage to look her in the eye and she glared at me. After that I was too scared and avoided looking back in her direction. In the course of my time in the little snack room, I had 1 bag of Cheez-its, 1 bag of Funyuns, 1 bag of Sour Cream Ruffles and 2 cups of water.

2:37 pm
A judge came out and made an announcement that a lot of times the defendents don't actually think that thier case is going to trial so they put off taking the plea bargain. In this particular case, the defendent who was on trial decided to plead guilty, and was sentenced to 30 years. Which meant that this case no longer needed to go to trial, (and it was going to be a week long trial) that we were free to go, and would not be called upon again for 12 months. Everyone started cheering and getting up...I think I was about 5th in line...when the lady at the window basically said "PSYCH! There are two other trials that need jurors so you are not free to go." And then the judge was like "Ooops, I was told you was all mine...MAH BAD." I wonder if reality is actually a lot less funny than the way I imagine it...

4:15 pm
I'm sitting out in the waiting room spacing out and watching Paula Deen. A bunch of people have made jury duty friends and are chatting it up and hanging out on the sofas or outside in the hall. I'm mesmerized by the sour cream muffins...Suddenly, one of the ladies behind the window comes out and turns off the TV and someone in the back yells "TORTURE!!". There's an announcement that some of us are free to go, and they start to annouce the names. They get to about the S's and then say that everyone is free to go and we're free for the next 12 months! Hoooray!

And so concludes my first post-grad interaction with adulthood.
<G