Jury Duty

There are only a handful of things that excuse you from jury duty. If you’re a police officer or you’re caring for someone that cannot take care of themselves, you get off. No questions asked, other than those that establish proof of your claims of being a cop. Plastic badges purchased in the toy aisle at Walgreens don’t cut it... unfortunately.

There are a couple of other excuses as well, but they don’t apply to me, so I won’t bother listing them here. I think one of them has to do with being unthinkably old.

The most important one states that if you’ve served within the last twelve months, you’re free and clear. They have to let you off if it’s been under a year. They can, however, ask you twelve months and two days later, which is exactly what happened to me. Technically, it was twelve months and three days later, but I don’t count the imaginary leap year day since pretend days are bullshit.

I know leap year has something to do with astronomy, seasons and the Gregorian calendar, but I don’t care. I still think it’s a bullshit day.

Jury duty sucks enough in its own right, but it’s that much worse when you have to go on an annual basis. I considered not showing up at all, but I might have had to face fines, jail time and some sort of implied civic humility. I’m perfectly fine with the humiliation part, but the other two things sound pretty lousy.

When I showed up to the courthouse, the holding pen was already nearly full. I wedged myself in between a woman correcting test papers from her grade-school students and another woman who entertained herself by staring straight ahead into an empty space just a few feet in front of her. Surprisingly, she wasn’t the only one doing this. About thirty or so people out of the 350 in the holding pen didn’t bring a book, magazine or even a cell phone game to pass the time. They just sat there. Staring. Some of them watched the TV during the moments when it happened to be turned on, but for the most part, they just stared like some freaky cult members who were waiting for instruction from The Leader. It would have been genuinely cool if they’d all been wearing Snuggie blankets. Hell, it’s my story, so as far as you’re concerned, they were all searing Snuggie blankets.

There’s a delicate balance in communicating with people in the jury holding pen. It’s similar to talking to a stranger on an airplane. You might luck out and engage in a stimulating conversation with a truly interesting person. More than likely, though, you’ll be stuck talking to a total twit who refuses to shut up once you’ve shown them even the slightest bit of decency by being polite to them. I take the cautious approach and just block everyone out. I bring a book, shove my nose into its spine, and remain there for the duration of the unbearable experience. It usual works out pretty well for the most part, but chances are someone will eventually ask you what you’re reading. If this happens, pretend you didn’t hear them. Or, just say, “Not really sure” without looking over in their direction.

I was passed over on the first three roll calls. Lucky me. The space around me was freed up a bit since the test grader and staring lady had been called away, so I enjoyed the added elbow room while I continued to wait. One of the staff came in to announce that it would be at least two hours before any other jurors were called into the courtrooms, so we could wander about wherever we liked... so long as we confined ourselves to the space between our current location and the nearby hallway leading to the bathrooms. As long as we stayed in that very, very small section of the building, we were completely free to make ourselves comfortable and rome about endlessly.

I took them up on their offer to become free range and went to the bathroom. When I got back I noticed that a large gurgling gentleman was planted in the previously vacant seat to my left. I sat there next to him for a while, but eventually had to find another spot. He made a lip smacking sound every few seconds without ever opening his mouth. He also made a gurgling sound that was not unlike a water cooler with its bubbles rising to the top of its clear, plastic canister. After seeing him adjust his pants for the third time, I decided to find another seat.

I found a spot in another section of the holding pen. I was sitting in my new spot for about five minutes when I started to smell something. To be more specific, I smelled an entirely new smell. The room is overloaded with odor at all times, most of which is gut wrenching and partially unidentifiable. It’s kind of like listening to classical music when you hear a single instrument somewhere deep in the mix, but you can’t quite pick it out because it’s being overshadowed by so many other sounds. You know you recognize it, but you can’t quite figure out what it is. The funk in the holding pen is a collage of sweat, perfume, bad breath, food and unwashed clothes. It’s a symphony of stench.

But this new smell stood out from the others. I knew this smell. It was strawberry Pop Tarts. Problem was, nobody was eating strawberry Pop Tarts. Why was I smelling the distinct and unmistakable odor of strawberry Pop Tarts if not a single person was eating a strawberry Pop Tart? This new seat was even farther away from the coffee maker and the elevators than I had been before, so there was no chance that the stink was wafting into the room from another location. It was coming from the people that I was sitting next to. As in, the people themselves smelled like strawberry Pop Tarts. That’s not normal.

To be fair, it might have just been one person. I actually hope it was only one person. I would hate to think that more than one person goes through life from day to day smelling like strawberry Pop Tarts, and a notable handful of those very people happened to show up in a courthouse on the very same day only to sit right next to one another by chance alone.

I don’t think I mentioned that this particular day happened to be Inauguration day. That sucked. Do you want to know why that sucked? Because if I ever happen to be asked where I was on the historic inauguration of the first black President of the United States of America, I’ll have to say that I was stuffed into a room with disgruntled people staring off into space, some of which smelled exactly like Strawberry Pop Tarts. I’d prefer not to have any memory of that day remain, but now that it’s been tagged with the inauguration, it’ll be stuck in my crawl until the day I’m too damn old to serve on jury duty.

After sitting around for the better part of the day, the courtroom staff eventually let the rest of us go. I was conflicted. I was definitely happy to get the hell out of there and not have to return for another 367 days, but I was disappointed that I was never was able try out my bag of tricks to try to convince the lawyers and the judge that I was unfit to serve, like twitching every twenty seconds or so and saying “apparently”. Or, loudly saying “case closed” when the judge told us to be seated. No matter. There’s always next year.