the trouble with jury duty... and google

last week i was called in to jury duty. i was not new to jury duty, as i'd attended once before in LA. that time was easy. just sat there without being called in for questioning and got excused at the end of the day.

unfortunately the NY system was a bit more painful. instead of one day of duty, if you don't get assigned to a jury for a trial, you have to come back a second day for questioning. jury duty has always slightly fascinated me. being a product of the tv generation, i had grand visions of getting called on to a high profile criminal trial. i pictured over the top judges ordering the court, dramatic lawyers pleading their cases, and seedy criminals begging for forgiveness... and that it would be all up to me and my 11 other peers to put them away or let them go. sounded kinda cool. but this was not the case.

city court houses are generally pretty boring places. those court rooms we see on tv aren't even close to what the real thing looks like. they are drab, flourescent lit rooms and the cases are far from what i'd pictured. you see, i was called into civil cases which equalled personal injury law suits. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

the first case i got called in for questioning was all about a car accident. a mother and her two daughters were suing their husband (and father, respectively). walking into that one automatically sounded fishy. when they asked if i could be impartial to this case, i said "no." that i was skeptical about cases such as these. and they let me go.

more waiting and i got called into a similar case. this was starting become tiresome and it was only the end of the first day. i didn't get questioned that time, so i had too come back. the next day, same story. they asked me if i could be fair and i told them basically the same thing i said the day before. again i was let go and back into the waiting area.

half way through that second day i was really ready to go home. with only a couple hours left in the day, i thought sure i'd be free to go, but then the dreaded loud speaker fired up and called my name yet again. UGH! back to the little white room with no windows and crappy office chairs for more questioning. all i could hope for was that it would be a new kind of case. i didn't think i could take more sleazy lawyers asking me to be fair on a car accident case about millions of dollars.

sure enough, it was the same old story. i was so done. and so was everyone else in the room. obviously everyone there had a problem with cases like these. they had all been questioned for 2 days and none had been picked for a case. i felt kinda bad for the lawyers trying to find jurors for their trial in a room of skeptics, but that's part of the job.

they called my name for the first round of questioning. you could just tell by the body language that people were pissed off and wanted to leave as soon as possible. they began with the first guy... "can you be fair?" the guy said no. he'd been sued before and had witnessed too many crimes to walk in and be fair in a trial. the next woman's husband had been in an accident and she felt she'd sympathize with the plaintiff. no matter what the evidence, she'd side with the victim. next!

the guy sitting next to me was a young unkept kind of dude. long shaggy hair, unshaved face, slouching posture. when asked if he could be fair his argument killed me. he simply said "look, i have a problem with making decisions about my own life. it'd be hard to decide the fate of someone else." the lawyer couldn't quite get what he was saying. he knew he just wanted to get off the case, so he probed for more. "can you expand on that" he asked.

"well man, like i can't even decide what kind of soda i want to drink." that was his argument. HA! i had to laugh out loud. what an excuse! but after more questions, the laywer moved on. on and on it went and finally after questioning all 10 jurors, they let us all off. in a defeated tone, he told the group at the end of the day "you guys should teach a class on how not to get on a trial."

when i was in line for getting discharged, i stood behind soda guy. i had to tell him "dude, nice one on the soda. that was pretty good." all he said back was "it's true!" ha!

ok, so now to the funniest part of the story. two days after jury duty, i received an email from guess who. soda guy. and you must read it:

Haha Hi ! is this Megan that was on jury duty last Thursday and going to D.R soon? I bet i'm like the last guy you thought would write you . This is Ray who cant decide on a soda Hahah How are you? I did decide that I wanted to talk to you but you got called so fast to get discharged! So i tried to look you up on the internet and it seems like this might be you. Creepy? I dont think so haha just thought you were really cool and wanted to find you ! Maybe hang out one day or something.... If you dont have a bf or seeing anyone. I hope this is you though and would like to talk . You can look me up on google or the internet also , to know that im not a jackass or anything haha Well ok , write soon then maybe we can have our own jury duty one day ! hehe :) later
Ray xo,

first off, whoa.
second, kinda crazy that he found me by doing a little google search.
thirdly, i'm not looking for love at the moment (in case you're reading this ray... which you probably are if you found me on google). should i be freaked out? only slightly, but you didn't seem like a total creep. i'm just not really down with the looking up people on the internet thing. i probably would have taken the craigslist "missed connections" approach. but that's just me. HA! good luck man.
god love the internet. or not. it's a head scratcher.