I had jury duty today. It sucked. I would have rather been at work.
Like clockwork, I get a jury summons about every other year. Most of the time, I call in every day and they end up never needing me to come in. There was the one time about nine years ago when I was put on a jury for a child molestation case - I was actually the foreman! - but for the most part, I never see the courthouse door.
Today was the worst experience of all. I saw the courthouse door alright, but I never saw the inside of a courtroom. I sat in the juror pen from 8am to 4pm and my name was never called. The only good thing about today was that I got an almost two-hour lunch, and I got to read quite a bit of Ann Coulter and A Patriot's History of the United States.
The other excitement came about an hour into my marathon of sitting. Some people came out of a courtroom down the hall, yelling and screaming at each other. The yelling overlapped quite a bit, but I caught this much (Warning: Bad Language Alert):
"Fuck you nigga! Fuck you and your whole family, nigga!"
Some people have no shame. The use of that infernal word made me chuckle as I recalled how my black students often tell me that it's OK for them to use it because they mean it as a term of endearment. It didn't sound very endearing to me.
Next time I get jury duty, I hope to at least get into a courtroom so I can at least have a little bit of variety during an otherwise very long and monotonous day - family squabbles notwithstanding.
Good Day to You, Sir
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
2 comments:
I have always gotten out of jury duty, citing child care problems. I had my two kids eleven years apart specifically so I could claim 25 years of child care problems and stay out of jury duty. :)
My youngest is 12 now, and pretty soon that excuse won't count.
I'm 51. Time for another baby? ;)
So how was the book?
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