Escaping It

Escaping it. Jury Duty. Several things had me dreading Jury Duty. One is appearance. I likely look more like a criminal than law-abiding citizen. Not that all criminals have missing teeth. Just homeless people do tend to have dental problems. Especially the crack addicts. Or so I have been told, crack use leads to tooth loss. Mine is due to gum disease which I had been aggressively treating back in 2001. Will never know what shape my mouth would be in now, if only...

Chances, I think, were slim and none that I would get picked to serve on a jury. But if I did, then I would be needing to wear the same outfit every day I sat at trial. A flimsy leopard skin print skirt with a sweater or something. Tights. No dress pants. Ended up wearing black jeans that I made the mistake of buying a size too large. Too cold to consider just the tights. And those tights, nearly killed my toes. If I had my folding scissors (long gone and would not have taken it to court house, they would have taken it from me) would have cut out the toes. Lost feeling in them, and painful, too.

The other issue is smoking. I mistakenly thought we could no longer smoke on the 6th floor balcony. Balcony? Rooftop, I guess it is called. Patio area.

Other than that I loved serving on Jury Duty. Well, I only ever got picked to serve on one jury actually. Then while we were on lunch break the criminal plea bargained and bye bye trial. I enjoyed the process of Jury selection. I did not mind the endless waiting. Here in California I made friends. One I hired to work part time for AAI. It was a fun week. Or did we used to go for two weeks back then? Do not remember.

It was never on my mind to escape Jury Duty. Until now.

The day was a short one. Wasted money on home fries. That and coffee cost close to ten dollars. I dumped most of the coffee to put the uneaten potatoes in the lidded cup. I just wanted a little bit to warm me up and they looked so good. That was on first break. Shortly after first break, some people got called, then they got sent home. And again. Third time, my name was on the list.

Judge is pre-qualifying jurors for a trial expected to last 30 days. I have to show up again on 1/11/11 at 10AM this time. No problem there. I am thinking this is what court does on Fridays. Just prepare lists of people to appear for jury selection at a later date, rather than pulling people on day one of trial. Likely a better system rather than having hundreds of people sitting around waiting all week, some never to be sent to a courtroom at all. And trials being postponed due to not enuff pple in jury pool to begin selection.