Civic Duty

A confession: I'm 44 years old and have voted in every election for the past 15 years or so (and every presidential and midterm election since I was 18) - but I've never served on a jury. I never even received a summons until we moved to this house ... maybe I moved too much? In any event, I soon started receiving them regularly, but got excused so I could attend classes and later because I'm self-employed and need to, like, make money. Once I did try to go and do my civic duty, but here's the true story of why it didn't work out.

8:00 am, and I'm standing in a huge line of prospective jurors, loitering outside the courthouse. When they finally marched us inside, I... got lost. I trailed along behind a couple of people who looked like they knew what they were doing, but as it turned out their ultimate destination was ... the office where one requests an excuse from duty. At that point I was pretty disgusted with the whole situation. So I went ahead and got excused; it was easier than finding my way to wherever I was supposed to report for duty. (Perhaps as karmic retribution, the bus I was riding on the way home broke down.)

About a month ago (when both Mercury and Mars were retrograde) I got another summons, to report tomorrow. I'm no longer in school. Business is pretty quiet. And by God, I was all set to go. Then I looked at the fine print: "You're a prospective alternate juror," it read (I am paraphrasing). "Call us the day before you're supposed to appear. Maybe you won't have to." Sure enough, I called at the appointed hour and "your duty has been postponed. Keep calling until we decide we want you."

County of San Diego, hear ye, hear ye: Don't mess around - you need to grab me while you can. Before I lose heart. Before I get too much work.

Before I get lost.