Called To Serve

This morning, I awoke after a very fitful night's rest thanks to a sick toddler and got all dolled up to...(roll drum please) make my first ever appearance to jury duty.

There's a lot that goes into making our courts run smoothly. Involuntary jury duty is one of them. Let's face it, the only people who would actually go on a volunteer basis would be Law and Order buffs, Court TV addicts and crazy loons.

But I've been summoned, so my gracious mom came out to watch my son because who knew how long I was going to be gone.

We sat in a room for a long time. Then we watched a cheesy video that showed us what we should expect to happen--wait, I thought I'd get to see some guy in shackles led in, yelling obscenities to us. Darn.

Then we're escorted to the courtroom to await jury selection. We're given a piece of paper with 9 seemingly benign questions on it. Name, Occupation, Residence, Level of Education Obtained, Spouse's Name, Spouse's Occupation, Number of Kids and Ages, Newspaper and Magazine Subscriptions and Hobbies. It's like I'm interviewing for a date. We have to all stand up and answer these questions out loud.

There are 21 of us in the jury pool. There were suppose to be 30, but who knows what happened to the last 9. In any case, I'm number 30, so I have a long time to come up with the best answers to the questions that will get me thrown out of the running for jury. The first six questions are pretty straight forward. There isn't much you can do about them. However, I could have some fun with magazine and newspaper subscriptions as well as my hobbies. According to the Tooele District Court--and it's all true--we have subscriptions to the Salt Lake Tribune, Consumer Reports, Runners World and a bunch of nerdy computer magazines. My hobbies include anything to do with math, puzzles, reading, and running.

I'm happy to report that I was sent packing. Yay! It was suppose to be a two day trial and nothing can interfere with bowling.

On another note, I was asked what I will do if my friend from yesterday reads my blog and realizes that I'm talking about her. The answer is simple...no one in my neighborhood or ward knows I write a blog. I did this on purpose. I want to be able to freely write. Obviously, I would feel bad if someone read that and knew I was talking about them. But if everyone I knew and interacted with on a daily basis was reading my blog, I would have to censor what I said and that would defeat my goal for my blog--writing about everyday life and what's going on inside my head.