Sitting in a room of 600 people is strange. There's so many people yet everything still manages to look the same. Everything looked gray to me, maybe it was my crappy vision. Old white-haired women sitting in groups of 2 or 3. Middle aged business man looking at a newspaper. Me, sitting alone to avoid any human contact with strangers. I didn't want to talk to anyone. Why? Though the woman staring at me looked semi-friendly, she was past 60 and I have nothing to say to her but "Geez I'm barely awake" or "Do you know where the bathroom is?"
I was "summoned" to report to building 30 of the Superior Court of Orange County in Santa Ana at 7:45am. I'm not functional at that hour. Pretty sure half the people there were sleep walking just like me. My GPS got me there, I parked my car at the lot closest to the entrance and walked to the elevator. Got to the right floor...sat down...started playing Virus Buster on my mom's Nintendo DS (yea it's my mom's lol).
Of course I have the luck to be "randomly selected" for a case on some top floor court room with 75 other people. I was told "oh yeaa, you'll just sit there all day and probably never be called" BULLSHIT, this was the first "random" selection of the day. 75 out of 600 chances, FML. By now it's almost 11am, the sun is all the way up and I'm awake but feeling awful. I didn't eat breakfast because I'm never hungry when I'm dead asleep at 6am....oh and I'm low on iron right now so I feel dizzy.
Feeling sick, nervous, cramped, and bored out of my mind for nearly 3 hours. Unpleasant? Very. I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom. I wasn't a happy camper. I felt like I was either throw up or have an anxiety attack.
Luckily since I'm a full-time student and classes begin on Monday I was unable to be on the jury for the criminal case. I don't think I would be comfortable being on a criminal case anyways. Why can't all the old ladies in the waiting area just be the jury instead? They seem genuinely interested in being there unlike myself....and all the other students that wasted time and gas to report in (only to be disqualified).
"I hate that I couldn't bring in my knitting needles!"My dad said I had to call him whenever I got to the courthouse and when I left, for safety reasons. So I got to go out to lunch with him once I was done by 12:30....not a bad way to end that miserable process if I do say so myself. June 2010 I'll be called in again, hopefully not for a real case. Maybe I'll give them answers they don't wanna hear and get out of it. Orrrr I could pretend to be a crazy racist or mute. I think I'll go with mute.
"Why don't they let you bring those while we wait to be called?"
"They're considered a weapon"
"Ohhhh..."
is it strange that i want to do jury duty?
ReplyDeletebut that i probably wouldn't be good at it. hahaha
Some people around me (usually older woman that were clearly retired) were sort of excited about it because it was "interesting". So you're not alone.
ReplyDelete