Jury Duty

 

I take my civic duty seriously; so seriously in fact, I wore shoes, long pants, a shirt with a collar, and even put on deodorant this morning.

 

Up and gone at dawn so I could be at the Corpus Christi Courthouse by 8am, I was seated in the jury room right on time.  There were several hundred chairs.  Over the course of the morning, all of the chairs were filled with people, then people were moved, names were called, and people were seated in groups as jury panels.  Bailiffs moved them out.  More panels were assembled.  It was a well-organized, meticulous, laborious process.

 

Finally, they finished assembling and marching off all the jury panels they needed.  To the best of my knowledge, my name was never called.  I was part of the leftovers.  They let the leftovers go home.  My civic duty done.

 

There was one slight glitch in the process, which accounts for me being almost, but not completely, sure my name was not called.  We started at eight am.  They allowed a bathroom break at nine.  I didn’t have to go at nine, but it wasn’t long after that until I did.  Problem was, by then, they were steadily calling out names and shuffling people.  I held out until eleven, name never called.  At the first lull in activity I headed off for a quick trip “down the hall”.  As I was going out the door, I heard the namecalling start again.  No time for that, I was on a mission.  By the time I got back, they had assembled another pack of sixty.  I waited and listened for protests about the missing juror, but I heard none, so there it is.  By default, my name was never called.

 

Okay, so there was one other slight glitch.  During the hurried trip down the hall there was an unfortunate incident that involved water and a baseball cap.  I had left all extraneous articles in the car; sunglasses, jacket, anything I didn’t actually need while I was inside.  As I was checking in through security, I saw the sign declaring “NO HATS”.  Oops.  I still had my hat on, my favorite hat, even though earlier I’d decided not to wear it in.  It just went in on my head of its own accord.  No problem.  I took it off and stuck the bill in the waistline of the back of my pants.  It rode comfortably there, out of sight and out of mind until the unfortunate incident down the hall.

 

It was my favorite hat!  I couldn’t just leave it there.  But now I had a new problem.  I didn’t want to carry a wet hat back into the jury room.  I certainly didn’t want to wear a wet hat back.  I didn’t want to lose it.  I couldn’t just leave it out in plain sight.  I found a secret place to stash it until I could come back later and recover it when the coast was clear.

 

The plan worked.  Duty done.  I’m home.  The hat is in the shower.