Jury Duty....Civic Duty Bites!

So every day I look forward to the mail in my mailbox with a mixture of anticipation and dread.  Anticipating some neat magazine, product to test from the myriad of online surveys I busy myself with, or maybe a check from some long lost relative that kicked the bucket; or dreading bills or some other equally as vile thing.  When I got the big fat envelope that said U.S. District Court I thought, HOLY CRAP...who's suing me?  I don't have anything....I mean, my net worth is barely in the positive category...I have a dog and 2 kids..but nobody wants them, do they?

I open up the envelope with great trepidation and the words JURY DUTY leap off the page.  At first I thought, what the hell?  I've never seen Jury Duty on hot pink paper.  Then I started to get a teeny bit excited.  What if it's a salacious murder trial?  What if it's the mob?  What if it's a celebrity!!!! 

You have to fill out a very intensive questionnaire detailing your family information, employment information, and all sorts of other things and then mail it back.  Shortly thereafter, I got my "official summons for jury duty".  Please call this number AFTER FIVE PM the night before you are supposed to appear to see if you're needed.  So I call, and I don't hear my name.  Woo hoo!!  Off the hook!  I will admit, a tad disappointed as I was looking forward to the possibility of dead bodies and hitmen.  But wait.  Call back in two weeks?  What manner of madness is this??  Who does that?  So I call back in two weeks and hear the gong of inevitibility.  Show up.  Damn.  Now I don't WANT to go. 

So I furiously start thinking of ways to get myself excused. I can say I hate everyone, right?  Or my kids are on the transplant list for a major organ?  Or that I'm mentally unstable?  But when you get into the courtroom and that judge looks at you and is so stern about you doing your civic duty, and congratulating you about being such an upstanding citizen; all thoughts of standing in the jury box and shouting "I Object!" at the top of your lungs at random times fly right out of your head. 

So, I got stuck.  And now I have spent the last 4 days in the company of 7 strangers for 9 hours a day, who I now have the pleasure of serving with.  We are all the same, yet all so different.  Hopefully we can continue our camaradarie when it comes time to deliberate, and not reinact 12 angry men and try to stab each other with pens. 

Oh.  And our tax dollars provide us with some pretty tasty snacks and Starbucks Via coffee packets too.  Just so you know. 

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