Not The Fun Kind of Pool

Oy. I have the duty of the jury.

I postponed it once and I have the option of postponing it twice more, but I think I'm just going to go this time.

I've been before. In fact, I served on a jury. I served on a jury for a criminal trial and we found him guilty. And I found it extremely uncomfortable.

I mean, besides having to listen to days of boring testimony, fighting the whole time to keep my eyelids propped open without the use of my hands or toothpicks...besides being locked in a room with eleven other people who were, frankly, not the sharpest of tacks...besides the crappy little sandwiches and the wasted days and the blah blah blah... I had a moral crisis!

Okay, yes the guy was guilty. He was CLEARLY guilty. Ridiculously so. And we did (finally) find him guilty. I do feel confident that I gave the "right" verdict. But I didn't want that responsibility! I felt so strongly that it just wasn't my place.

Which, of course, is exactly wrong. Because it IS my place. Because I'm a peer. I'm a random sampling of the population and according to our glorious constitution or whatever, it is ALL of our places to serve as jurists from time to time.

Well, all I say to that is: I did it once and I ain't doing it again.

But I am going to go. It's the DAY after another IIN weekend, which means three early days in a row. There go my Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. And possibly longer... But I figured I'm not seeing clients yet, so it won't cut into my paycheck. Plus, even though it'll be tiring to have several days like that in a row, I'm sure we'll be given a ton more books and CDs and the like during our next weekend, so sitting on my butt in a jury pool waiting room will give me plenty of time to get some of that work done.

That is if I don't get picked.

Oh hell. I'm willing to fake mental illness here if it'll keep me from being picked.

And whoever's thinking "who needs to fake?" SHADDUP!