Fulfilling My Civic Duty

Today was quite an eventful day for me. I was called upon by the Superior Court of California to report for jury duty. This was very agreeable to me, because it meant a day off from my much-loathed day job, with the possibility of even more time off to follow. Since the aforementioned much-loathed day job pays me my normal daily wage to serve on a jury, this seemed like a pretty sweet deal, and I was positively thrilled at the prospect.

The last time I served on a jury was about 14 years ago (ah, to be 15 again), and I remember it fondly. It was a simple theft case. There was one solitary vote against conviction by an obstinate woman who refused to vote "guilty," not because she thought the defendant did not commit theft, but because she felt that the theft "was no big deal." We all tried to reason with her, but it was like trying to convince a tree stump that it had an obligation to make its decision on the basis of the law and the evidence (and anybody who's ever tried to convince a tree stump of that, you know what I'm talking about). That's when I decided to dig deep and bring all my considerable powers of persuasion (and by persuasion, I mean angry scolding) to bear against her. Moved to tears by my eloquence and trenchant logic, the lone holdout changed her vote to "guilty." Thus, the conviction was secured, justice was served, and the evildoer was duly punished (maybe even executed, I don't know for sure). I was hailed as a hero by the other jurors, and the one pregnant woman on the jury promised to name her baby after me (at least that's the ending I'm going to use when I write a Tony-Award-winning play based on the experience—tentatively titled "One Angry Man").

So, it is understandable that I arrived at the courthouse bright and early with a spring in my step and a song in my heart (that song being Weezer's magnum opus Hash Pipe, for reasons that are unclear to me). With all dispatch, I made my way to the jury waiting room, signed in, and eagerly waited to be called. The jury waiting room had a fascinating assortment of magazines for us to read while waiting. I couldn't decide whether to read Bird Talk, Super Street Bike, Packaging World or the paint and coatings industry trade journal PCI, so I read the somewhat less glamorous book I had brought instead.

At about 8:30 there was a brief orientation wherein it was explained to us that we were the very backbone of the American justice system and that, as a sign of the state's gratitude, we would be earning a generous fee of $15 per day for our service. After the orientation, I was told to report to a courtroom for voir dire, along with a small army of prospective jurors populous enough to invade Cuba. With such a large pool of prospects, my hopes of being impaneled were severely shaken. Each juror was assigned a number and ushered into the courtroom, where we got our first glimpse of the dirtbag (oops—I mean alleged dirtbag) who was on trial. The deputy DA was a distinguished older man with a shaved head, who had all the charm of a CIA interrogator. Standing in diametric contrast was the defense attorney, an attractive young blond in a gray skirt suit, whose name, if I remember correctly, was Legs Magee. I immediately sensed a strong chemistry between us, an intuition which found undeniable confirmation in the way she coyly avoided eye contact with me throughout the proceedings.

My hope of being impaneled diminished even further, as both attorneys began dismissing people who I thought seemed like perfect picks. There was the surfer dude who appeared in a Hobie tee shirt, board shorts and flip-flops, a perfect representation of California cool. He was immediately dismissed. There was the gruff old guy with the gray goatee, whom I had first noticed in the jury waiting room reading the latest copy of Varmint Hunter magazine. Dismissed. And, most perplexing of all was the ample-busted young punker chick, wearing a low-cut zebra-striped tank top and short black denim skirt, sporting a piercing in her nose and no less than four piercings on her bottom lip, who dutifully informed the judge that her girlfriend was a "dancer" by profession—dismissed, inexplicably. If the most awesome people in the room were being shot down then what possible hope could I, in my boring tailored white cotton dress shirt and black silk tie, have of meeting their impossibly high standards?

I never got the chance to find out. By 4:15, they had found the magic combination of acceptable jurors, and the rest of us misfits were sent back to the jury waiting room, where the clerks validated our parking and gave us jury duty slips to take back to our employers. That was when the overwhelming despair washed over me like a flood of hungry army ants feasting on my innards. I had experienced more than my share of rejections in my 29 years of life, but this one stung far worse than any I could remember. I wasn't just being rejected as a juror, I was being sent back to my much-loathed day job. The court had sentenced me to hard labor, and I wasn't even the one on trial. So much for justice being served.

A courthouse statue perfectly depicted the sense of
desolation I felt at being rejected as a juror.