You have to Use Humor on Jury Duty

There are three main types of people who wait in the main jury room.

About half are readers, people smart enought to bring at least a daily paper, many have books. These folks settle down for the duration and might as well be in an easy chair at home, except for the 300 other folks around them. The smart ones have really thick books. It is amazing how fast you read when all you have to look forward to is lunch. People in books have lives, and families – have you ever noticed how few books are written about jury duty? Past The Runaway Jury I can’t think of any.

The next biggest group are the Cell-Phone studiers. What better place than a jury room to really figure out how all those options, that you bought the phone for, work. Intently studying the screen, fingers fly, an occasional “Oh Crap!” is heard when they accidently erase their entire address book – but really that’s a blessing too. Look at how much time it will take to recreate it! And on Jury Duty all you have is time.

After the readers and the cell=phone studiers there are the talkers, mercifully few, but evenly disperesed around the room to equally annoy everyone working on their cell phone or War & Peace.

The next group is sort of creepy, these folks zone out into a kind of Zen like mediatation, not quite sleeping, not quite awake, they stare, some mumble, and some giggle to themselves. They would have disqualified themselves by checking the “I am not mentally competent” box on the jury summons, except, like Catch-22, if you are competent enough to check the not competent box to get out of jury duty then you must be sane enough to sit on the jury.

And the scariest group of all? There are a few who are glad to be there. Will tell you what a privelege it is in a free society to serve on a jury. That it is a right we all should experience. That if we were the defendant or the plaintif we would want someone like us on the panel. Inspriring? These folks are… unfortunately they are immediately identified by the bailiffs, the non-competent box is checked for them on the back of their form and they are sent quietly away. And as they leave, many of them look back over their shoulder at we who remain in the room and silently mouth the word “Suckers!” to all of us left there.

Oh crap! I just deleted my address book.

You guessed it. I got picked! Many thanks to Chris at That Guy Over There and The Hussy Housewife who left comments on the first post, Jury Duty, of this unexpected series.

Help me see the humor. Leave your comments on adventures in the legal system below.