Jury duty

Today I got called in for my first day of jury duty. I was a little excited, but more annoyed by the fact that I had to find someone to take care of my kids all day. Thanks to an eager teen, Andy Miller, who has made my life easier. He is "on call" for the next two weeks, as am I. So everyday I call at 4:30pm to see if I have to go in the next day. Although really I call at like 3, see if there's a new message, if not I call a little later, and so on until after 4:30pm. I am a little obsessed with calling. I practically know the number by heart. I think it's because I want to get the dread of knowing over with for the day, and if I have to go in I think by calling in it's going to magically "change" and tell me that it was all a mistake and I don't need to be there.

As I was walking across the street to fulfill my public duty (and trying not to get hit by cars) I see a cop hop out of her car, wipe the powdered doughnut off her face (just kidding), and pull out her notepad to write some poor sap a parking ticket just because his meter ran out. Nice. Our government must need his $14.50 pretty bad because I found out that our stellar pay of $20/day is being docked to $10/day next week due to budget cuts in the state. What a nice way to say thank you to all those hard working people who are missing work and most likely won't get paid their regular salary that day.

Today I show up on time, thank goodness, because they were starting to get mad that some people had not arrived by 9:05am, and those people never actually showed up at all. I wonder what happens to them? Does some cop come to their house and arrest them for skipping their public service? They probably have to serve a double sentence of jury duty, Which might be worse than getting arrested.

When we first arrived they showed a cheesy movie reminding us all about our fantastic judicial system and how people were really glad they had served their public duty as a juror. Good for them and the 150,000 people that Minnesota "serves" every year. I am not one of those "happy people." Unfortunately I think I have a bad attitude about this whole thing. I have been thinking about all the wrong things I could say that would get me out of serving on a trial. I am pretty sure that I wasn't the only one. After the entertaining movie was over we just had to wait. We had no idea how long we would be waiting. Everyone just sat there in total silence. I got hungry about an hour into waiting. I didn't want to eat in the room with everyone staring as I opened my noisy bag of granola and scarf down my snack in awkward silence so I stepped outside to talk with the guy in charge of our group. I tried to pry as to how long we would be sitting here. Sometimes they let people go home if 3 pm rolls around. Yeah, what a nice thought. You hurry to get somewhere, and then you wait all day. Awesome. We didn't have to wait too long, after about two hours of waiting we were sent to the courtroom.

We sat in the courtroom and waited forever for the Judge. Judge Weiners. No comment neccessary, except that it was hard to keep a straight face when we all had to rise as the Judge came into the room. Maybe someday I will grow up, and that won't be so funny, but probably not. Hearing his name out loud was even funnier, and yes it is pronounced like how you would imagine. Everyone is so serious in the courtroom, it's like going to church on Sunday when your bishop greets you with a solemn "Hello Sister Murphy, it's nice to see you today." Except that no one is smiling in the courtroom, and there are no children whining, particularly mine. So maybe the waiting wasn't so bad....

I was selected to sit in the juror box along with 10 others. We were asked all sorts of questions. The lawyers were so careful with their questions, and so particular about their words. I thought that was the most interesting thing. They wanted to know if I stayed home with the kids and what Aric did for a living, and lots of other random questions just trying to get to know us. If we were in a union, had issues or disputes with neighbors, owned a firearm, had small children, owned a dog, didn't drink alcohol. The only person who raised her hand along with me on the alcohol question was a recovering alcoholic. They asked me if it was because I was pregnant, I said no, because of my religion. I am pretty sure that got me thrown off the jury for being a prude because they kept the recovering alcoholic. The case was about a disagreement on land, not if I owned a dog, or drinking. Fine with me. That jury has to report for trial tomorrow too, and I don't. But I still have to call in for the rest of the 2 week term to see if I need to come in again.

I will be so glad to finally get this jury thing over with. I was supposed to do it in February, but I was gone on vacation, so then it was pushed back to June, and then I was sick, so third times a charm. I have been dreading this for many months knowing I was going to have to serve sometime.