Today I Learned

I've skipped a number of days and I can't possibly remember everything I learned in that time -- but yesterday I learned that lawyers speak with unbelievable deliberateness, repeating the obvious over and over, because of their need for perfect understanding from potential jurors. It's kind of soothing to listen to this exceptionally rational, repetitive discourse. It's almost mathematically precise and in fact there are no wasted words. Just a constant hammering of meaning.

Jury duty was like being imprisoned in Kafka's Castle. You would think we, the unwashed of America, had committed the crimes. We were put in a huge colorless room for 5 hours. Then we were summoned to sit in a small, windowless, also colorless room for another hour and a half. This room had the shiny gray walls of a holding cell. It was totally like the rooms they break suspects down in on Law and Order. There, we had to account for ourselves to lawyers.

I wanted nothing but to get out of there. But I struggled to do my duty as a citizen. Still, I had to be honest about my intense antipathy for the MTA (our transit system). When I heard the case involved the MTA, I thought, Good. I can't wait to stick it to that bunch of corrupt, negligent a-holes!

Of course I didn't say anything like that. I said I had grievances against them, but those grievances probably wouldn't affect my ability to be impartial.

The male lawyer, an older guy with a nice New York accent, said he knew everyone wanted to get out of jury duty. He said we could get out of doing this case, because he didn't want any jurors who didn't want to be there, but we couldn't get out of doing jury duty -- we'd just have to go sit in the big room again. Anxious not to waste the 5 hours I'd already put in, I tried to express my sense that my contempt for the MTA could be put aside while I weighed the degree of their responsibility for this accident.

But really it couldn't and the lawyers knew it! And they dismissed me and I've never been so happy in my life. Because it means I don't have to go again for 8 years. The male lawyer was wrong -- once I got dismissed from his case, I was dismissed from the whole dreary shenanigans. Thank god because I'm finally getting some work again and I need to work. So did many of my fellow inductees and there was a great sense of shared anxiety among us.

I think it's too much to ask people to lose their ability to earn while performing jury duty. They should raise the daily fee from $40 to $80 or higher. We're all holding on by our fingernails in a system that screws us to the wall anyway. That's why we're not more gung ho to sign on and help out. If any of us had paid our rent, or could afford our medications, or had a ghost of a future to look forward to, we might be a lot more willing.

There were two lawyers questioning us -- the defense and the prosecution. The woman lawyer was young and very hot. The male lawyer seemed like a klutzy, patronizing older-guy type -- he kept mispronouncing her name, to her visible irritation. I looked forward to watching the tension between these two and fantasizing about sex between them as a way to keep myself awake. I mean that's the only strategy I could think of as I slumped miserably in my prospective-juror chair. But I didn't have to do it and I don't miss it one bit!

I'll try to update more regularly.