Jury Duty

Sorry it's been so long between posts. There are only four and a half days of school left, and that makes every day after school, busy and very valuable---plus people keep scheduling things and I end up getting home really late. Sooo...

We went to visit our grandson for his birthday over Memorial Day weekend, but had to get back to Las Vegas on Monday evening because, of course, it was school the next day. I had an extra little wrinkle, too, it turned out. I'd been issued a summons for jury duty in January that would have required me to appear the day before my scheduled foot surgery. I begged off, citing the pending surgery, but mostly because I didn't want to be out of school any more days than necessary at that point. I had things to do and things to get ready and, even though they'd have given me a pass, I would still have had to show up that day at the courthouse. So, my new jury date was Tuesday, May 29th, and---sure enough---when I called the phone number to see whose badge numbers were being called in, I was on that list.

I drove downtown to the parking garage they'd designated (in the Fremont Center experience) and parked. Then, I hiked the three (huge) blocks to the courthouse to see a line of people that went out the door, down the steps, around the corner and then half way down the next block. We had to go through an airport-like screening procedure. I don't blame them---two years ago, a disgruntled man came to the federal courthouse a couple of blocks south of the county court building. He had hidden a shotgun under his coat, and he just walked in without saying a word, and began shooting. It was crazy!! A security guard was killed, another was wounded, with the gunman himself being killed nearby, as he attempted to run away. So, there is no question that security procedures at Las Vegas courthouses are not academic.

But, I was dismayed to see that there would be a long wait to get inside the building. I hoped they wouldn't be too pesky about my being late for my designated arrival time. However, my little concerns about jury duty were eclipsed by the young woman standing in line behind me. She had a deadline, too--an appearance at 8:00 A.M. in a court--as the defendant. She complained to all around her about the length of the line. She smoked a cigarette. She complained some more. She smoked another cigarette. The line moved steadily, but it was such a long line, that we weren't going to get in that door before the top of the hour. As we were moving up the granite steps, edging ever closer to the door, she got on the phone to someone. It wasn't clear who. It could have been a lawyer. The woman pointed out that she WAS there! She was in line! It was a &%$## long line!! Did she miss her appearance?? OMG!!! How can she have a warrant already?? She was TRYING to be there!! She was stuck in this *&^%*$ line!! OMG!!

Just then, I saw another person with a jury summons in their hand walk through the glass door marked "Staff, Attorneys" so I went up the steps and entered there too. I still had to walk through all the metal detectors, removing my shoes, putting my watch and purse, etc. in the little bin to go through the X-ray machine. But, I didn't have to listen to the distressed rantings of the woman whose life had just gone from bad to worse.

As I stood in the line, I realized that I live a sheltered existence. In my line of work---school teaching--I am rarely in the presence of people who smoke. There are very few people with visible tattoos (except at the end of the day when I supervise the crosswalk and various family members come to pick up their children). And I rarely hear profanity. But, as you observe the variety of people entering the county courthouse, there were some patterns. People are either quite professionally dressed: business suits, with the women wearing heels and deliberately coifed hair, or the people are dressed very casually in commonly seen motifs (sagger pants, wife-beater shirts for guys, and skin tight jeggings, snug, cleavage revealing shirts for the ladies) with an abundance of visible tattoos,  and lots of nervous smoking. Lots. Oh, and conversations using words that will get you recess detention in fourth grade. There were a few scattered folks who were somewhere in between: not dressy, but not quite as casual---most of us clutched a jury summons.

I didn't get chosen for a jury. That's good, because I really didn't want to miss more days of school. I was hoping that I could plead that I really needed to be in my classroom, if I'd had to make a case for it, but, since I wasn't chosen, I just left at the end of the day and I don't have to worry about it for another eighteen months. I  would really like to serve as a juror sometime. I think it would be very interesting. CoolGuy served once in California, in a robbery case. Any other time I've been summoned for jury duty, I had preschool children, and that excused me from having to appear. Someday, I'll get called up again. I'll hope it doesn't happen during the last week of school and then I'll get a chance to stay there and immerse myself in a whole new world.