JUROR 28

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Juror 28

Today I went to jury duty. The 1st one I’ve ever attended. I been summoned a few times before but didn’t go for various reasons. But this time it’s happening. It started with the dreaded letter we all hate to see but there it was and then I lost it and forgot about it. So a few months later another type of letter shows up. The one where they threaten you and make you feel like you are one on trial and it lets you know you may be subject to fines and or confinement. Is scare tactics really what you want to use?  But it worked. I called and a very nice lady said I was fine and they let me schedule it on the day I wanted. And that day is here. 

It’s a cool morning in April and I walk into a grey building in a grey room and plop my stuff on a scanner belt, like the ones you see at the airport. The lady is yelling out instructions behind dead eyes and to no one in particular. It’s very  creepy. As I walk through the body scanner, of course it beeps so loudly I jump and everyone turns to me as if I just had a severe bout of turrets and screamed a stream dirty words. The lady with the wand, who by the way looks like a member of the walking dead. I wasn’t sure she would use the wand to scan my crotch, where the scanner said I had something beep worthy, or she was going to use it to bash in my skull and eat my brains. 

As things are with me, I walk over to what I think is the line and I get yelled at. Remember the three little mean munchkins in the wizard of OZ?  That’s her only in drab blue and carrying a gun. She just says “sir” and points with a finger nail or should I say claw, to the other side of the room where the line wraps around a corner to its end. 

As I pass the tired sad faces of jurors, up too early and hoping for a fire drill just to get us out of here. A beacon of light in an already grey day is a sweet lady named Ramona who takes my form, that is empty because I filled mine out on line. She announces that she appreciates me filling it out online, “ We don’t get a lot of people doing that.” She tells me. As I walk to my seat in a room filled with ugly brown theater seats. I plop myself down in a end row in front of a giant screen TV ready for my orientation to be a good juror. 

They are sending people away to sit in what can only be described as the “bad kid” section, those who have not filled out there paperwork in advance. I’m sitting right next to that section and all you here is the hum of old vending machines and the scribbling of pens to paper and maybe a bit of regret. 

Now it’s just a half hour of waiting till they start the show and I see where I land. 

David Babb

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