Monday, February 05, 2007

Tour of Duty

Day one of Jury Duty has finally come to a close!

I have only lived in this county for less than one year and already i've been summons for Jury Duty. Today, while doing mindless chitchat with one of the 400 other people crammed like sardines in a court room, I learned that he had somehow escaped the call of duty for 20 years! I have been summons at least 10 times in the past 15 years! How does this happen. What is it that i'm doing wrong.... to get drawn so many times in this duty drawing!?

I arrived at the courthouse early enough to get a front row parking spot in the parking garage. I gathered my things: gum, water, laptop and juror ID, and headed into the court house. When I got to the 5th floor, there was a line forming so I dashed in the bathroom.... tinkled.... and dashed out to find the line had grown by about 30 people. We stood for about 30 minutes and then one by one they filed us in the room, scanned our badges and had us take a seat. To wait.

We waited and waited. I watched the girl across the isle from me fall asleep, and when awoken by the guy next to her, she slung slobber all over her neck and dribbled it down her chin. Another man became irritable when he learned he would not be 'out of here' by noon. The Deputy in the room explained (as kindly as he could) that the little guy just had to be patient and wait for his name to be called to a court room... there was no other way around it.

After hours of sitting, I pulled out my laptop to do some surfing and email. However, there was no internet access available! ugh. ugh UGH! I text'd Richard and begged him to come pick me up for lunch. He and Eric made the trek across town (thank you guys.... you're both so precious!!!) to take me somewhere... anywhere.... to grab some grub. They had instructed us to not move our vehicles or we'd not be able to find a parking place when returning and we'd have to pay parking again.

At 1:30pm, I began my tour of sitting again. I nestled into my church pew and turned to look behind me only to see a man digging for the most stubborn booger i'd ever seen. I almost tossed my lunch. He dug and dug.... blah!!! This morning I had a guy coughing in my hair... so I moved... and now I have booger digger!

I partnered up with another laptop user and we swapped computer stories and played solitaire... which is how I spent the rest of the day! Finally, my name was called and I've been assigned to some jury selection and I'll be returning. Oh the Joy.

8 comments:

Circe said...

HAHAHA! Poor baby...
Oh, our favorite person had someone get on her computer sometime this weekend and they gave her a nasty virus. *snicker* And she lent out her laptop so she finally resorted to shuffling over to the library to use one of theirs. :P

Kerry said...

HAHAHAHHAHA... how funny! I bet you got a kick out of that ;)

Mrs. S. said...

My grandpa always manages to get out of jury duty by saying he hates everyone, is for the death penalty, and a whole bunch of other crazy things.. I got called once, but I didn't have reliable child care among other things, so I got out of it. I'd actually like to serve. Maybe not ten times, but at least once...

TC said...

Wow, I'm sorry. Soooooooooo sorry.

I got a notice once... about two weeks before I was supposed to move to Spain.

I didn't end up going in.

Kerry said...

Burg: I havent been given a chance to say anything crazy. They don't talk to you until you get your named called to see a judge (with 40 others) and then you finally get interviewed. However at that point, you've already sat in a room with all these people for hours... or days... just waiting. The horror!

TC: I'd hit the road to Spain too, If i could :) I'd love to visit there.....

TC said...

Well, um, the only problem with that Kerry is that there is no road to Spain... but when they build one, we'll drive over together, k? :)

(Or, if you get sick of waiting for the road to be built, I can send you information on what to do when you fly over...)

Kerry said...

yeah, well that was just a figure of speech. lol I'd be glad to fly over!

But really... imagine the bridge they'd have to build so we could drive over. Talk about huge floaties! I guess they'd be like pontoons....

TC said...

I know, I was just being a brat. :)

One longgggggggggggg bridge: you'd have to be really good at holding your pee since stopping on bridges is illegal.