Judge Not Lest You Shall Be Called to Jury Duty

All my life, my mother has complained about her inability to obtain two things: a Discover card and jury duty. The former had rejected one application when it came out the very first year and she still harbors resentment. The latter? I don’t know, the woman watches a lot of Matlock and Murder She Wrote.

I can personally vouch for the fact that the jury selection process is not nearly as exciting or quick as it appears on television and in movies. Nobody was throwing stones at my house or doing any back-door deals to get me excluded. Not that I know of, anyway.

The week started in a very cramped courtroom where we were forced to watch a video (yup, video, as in VHS) on how jury selection works. We were not picked based on any factors like sex or race. It’s random. You should feel honored. Blahbity blah blah.

Instead of going up and saying our piece about why we didn’t want to be there or couldn’t be there, we were asked to fill out a questionnaire.

Unlike my mother, I have no desire WHATSOEVER to be in a jury. My desire was even less because I was 5 months pregnant and just in general a fairly moody mess to be around. So I answered the questionnaire honestly, but with perhaps a little more prejudice than I actually felt. Cops? I love them, my entire family is full of law enforcement personnel. Only partly true. Church? So what if I mostly attend church to appease my husband and see if I can meet new friends? God bless America and all the little children and…um, all the flowers and the soil that grows them?

I was then told to call again the next morning and see if they needed me. I had to call 5 days in a row, if on the 5th day I wasn’t called in, my tour of duty was concluded.

Day 5 I get called in.

About 50 of us are there in the courtroom again. We are told this is a sexual abuse case and it has to do with an underage teen and a man in his late 20s working in some capacity on or around church grounds.

So we see the defendant, who looks like…I don’t know, a dude in his late 20s. Except he’s wearing a new shirt. I know this because the plastic part? It’s still in his collar. In my hormonal state, this brings a motherly “awww, sad” part of me with a side of “you’re grody, go away.”

Really, guys, would you want me on your jury?

So bottom line is we get another questionnaire, wherein I state (honestly) that I can’t be objective about this case. Given this is my first pregnancy and I attend church and it’s sort of hard to separate this child with the one I’m carrying, well it’s just a bad idea.

Then? Well, then I get to sit on a hard wooden bench for 6.5 hours while they questioned each person individually.

Did I mention I was pregnant? I only got the bench because some nice young man offered it to me. About 20 people were sitting on the floor.

Every hour or so, about 10 men in shackles would get paraded by us. There was no separate entrance into the courthouse for defendants.

Incidentally, there were also no metal detectors.

In addition to the perp walk, I also got treated to multiple out-of-court tete-a-tetes between divorce attorneys and men trying to get custody of their kids. I don’t know if they try them all at once or what was going on, but there were, oh, 10 sad dads on one side of the hall and about the same amount of very pissed-off looking women holding their kids tight, alternately crying, shouting, or pouting.

Did I mention I was pregnant?

You see it was a new courthouse in our area. And they hadn’t exactly built in benches. Or chairs. Or a way to bring in perps without parading them past potential jurors. Or conference rooms where people could speak about their cases without making potential jurors alternately want to cry and hit people.

On day 2 they brought in extra chairs.

Yeah, day 2. Because they didn’t get to all of us on day one. They didn’t even tell the people from Day one who had been interviewed if they were in or not.

So we all show up. We all sit quietly.

I should also note this is before I had cell phone with Internet and free texting.

Finally it’s my turn to go in. I immediately want to throw up, and not for the usual “wow, I just crammed 4 McDonald’s hamburgers in my mouth with a fry and shake chaser, happy eating, Baby” way.

For any long-time readers, my fear of authority may now be legend. But to recap: me no likey. I’m just quite positive my life will turn into the next edition of Brokedown Palace and nobody as cute as Kate Beckinsale will play me.

So it’s the judge, the defendant, the lawyers. The judge is a nice middle-aged lady who actually seems rather sympathetic. She asks if I am far enough along where sitting for a long time bothers me. I blushed and said it required fairly frequent trips to the restroom (yup, just entered my pee-pee into the record). She said I had noted a bias in the case. I explained my reasoning. I even, for good measure, put my hand on my belly and said “I have kind of a mama bear protecting her cub mentality.”

I won’t even pretend I’m not proud of that one, guys.

I think I saw the defense lawyer snicker. Then he kind of turns on me and goes: “so you’re not just, you know, trying to get out of jury duty here.”

Why, the VERY idea!

The thing is, I was totally trying to get out of jury duty. But also? I was totally honest. I don’t know what became of the case, but I know at the end of Day 2 I was dismissed, and that was the best thing to happen to that defendant all year.

And then informed since I did not serve on the jury, I could be called AGAIN!

So I’m saving a spot for Wee ‘Burb’s sibling should I need another excuse to dodge.

Have you ever had jury duty or managed to get out of it? Would you want to?

I See San Fran, I see France!

I’m baaack! Pretend you all missed me for a moment. Done? Thanks. And special thanks to Kat, Amanda and Lola for filling in for me while I was gone.


So, there were a lot of interesting things that went down while I was in San Fran. There was a gay bar where heteros like Scott and I were extremely unwelcome. Seriously, I think the bartender used sanitizer after we left, not wanting to be affiliated with our straight-people money. There was the homeless man outside said bar who tried to convince me that they tried to use pigeons for military tactical missions, because of their “visual acuity.” It failed because “they weren’t very focused.”

But, by far, the most interesting thing that happened to us in San Francisco was the naked lady on the tour bus.

Allow me to set the scene. When we arrived on Saturday we walked eeeeverywhere. And seriously, guys? San Francisco is the only place in the world where you actually CAN walk uphill both ways. So by Sunday morning I insisted we take the tour bus that allowed us to get on and off as we saw fit. Sunday we spent the whole day going from town to town.

Monday we slept in, in homage to the fact that we could. We both woke up at our normal work time and kind of contentedly sighed and went back to sleep. Because we COULD, people! No baby, no dog, no work.

We got some coffee and some breakfast and we’re feeling pretty giddy. As we are turning the corner to the bus area, we see a cop car. Then we see three cops on top of the double-decker tour bus. It wasn’t our tour bus, it was a different company. We stretched our necks to see our bus, but no luck. So we sat back and watched the show.

So of course we watched the cops. We couldn’t see who was in the bus, but that person was clearly not leaving. And the cops didn’t seem overly anxious to get that person off, which seemed odd because this particular tour bus wasn’t touring. It was actually where people bought tickets, and the company reps were sort of wandering around looking oddly frantic.

Based on what we saw, and what we overheard, here’s what happened.

A homeless woman who, let’s say, had been more sober in her life than she was that day, climbed on to the top deck of the bus. The tour guides asked her to leave. She refused.

I am not sure in which order this happened, but two things occurred: the police were called and the homeless lady took her clothes off and threw them over the side of the bus.

So when we had arrived, the lady was bare-ass naked sitting in the seat with three cops pulling on gloves, but each refusing to touch her.

Why the wait? Well, you see, they couldn’t very well take her down all naked, right? Only they didn’t have on them a tarp big enough for this lady.

So they called the fire department.

You guys, TWO fire trucks and an ambulance turned up.

So now there is a cop car, an ambulance, two fire trucks, and one very naked lady with three very uncomfortable cops.

One fire truck? Had a cherry-picker attachment.

All we saw was the woman stand up with a huge blue tarp around her. How she got off was a bit of a mystery because our bus pulled up and there were so many people getting on and off and telling the story that all we saw was the cop closing the door to the ambulance.

I won't lie, I want to believe so very much that she had to be forklifted off. If only because then someone else lived my own nightmare, and what are the odds these things repeat?

So there you go. What was the most interesting thing that happened to you on vacation? If you’re a parent, did you do a baby-free vacay? I have to say, by day 5 I was missing her like crazy. But the first few days? Total recharge.

Intersection

The other day I was traveling somewhere with Wee ‘Burb, and this woman pulled this spectacularly scary driving move. Two lanes were turning left. I was in the right of the two lanes, behind a woman who was very slow to turn left.

I honk.

She stops in the middle of the intersection.

I honk again.

She is still.in.the.intersection!

Five or six cars are going by in the left-most lane and she’s just sitting there. I wonder if she’s stalled, but I don’t see any signs of distress.

Before the light turns, she makes a U-turn.

A U-Turn across two lanes going left.

I was enraged. I wanted to take her license plate number. I wanted to follow her and get out and shake my fist and tell her of all the terrible things that could have resulted from her complete inattentiveness to anyone’s safety. I wanted to ask her if getting to her destination 12 seconds faster was worth risking the life of me and my child.

And I was gut-wrenchingly thrown back into a time about 15 years ago when I WAS that careless driver.

I was driving from my part-time summer job, and was late meeting people for dinner. There was a lot of traffic and I knew that I could sit quite awhile trying to make a left into the restaurant parking lot. I saw an opening and I took it, barely missing a car that was turning right from a parking lot further down. We almost collided in one of those sickening moments where you inadvertently close your eyes, sure this is death.

We were both fine.

Or so I thought.

I grabbed my purse and was two feet from the door to the restaurant when the woman in the other car pulled up. She was hugely pregnant, and had two children in the backseat. She was crying and telling me how irresponsible I was.

In my heart, all I wanted in the world was to crawl in that car and tell her how sorry I was, to hug her children and her and tell her how reckless I was, how incredibly self-absorbed I was to think getting to that restaurant sooner was worth more than her children.

That’s in my heart now.

I regret that at the time, I rolled my eyes and fought the urge to say “seriously, lady, chill the eff out!” I gave her a snotty “Sorrrrry” in the vein of a 3-year-old faux-apologizing to a child whose toy he’s just blatantly stolen. And intends to keep.

She threatened to take my license plate down and I’m like “do what you gotta do.”

The truth is, I think of this woman often. When I was pregnant, I was almost in an accident that surely would have been fatal were we not in an amazingly new rental car with incredible anti-lock brakes. I immediately though back to that moment, how just one second of inattentiveness could have changed so many lives.

Where I Ask if I Just Need to Embrace My Lack of Cool

So the latest discussion in Suburbia is related to vehicles. And the need to purchase a new one.

Soon.

Preferably before last week when the current vehicle snapped a belt and cost us $400 when it’s barely worth that in trade-in.

Sigh. Hindsight and all that.

Our discussion is an age-old one, with a bit of a twist: the slightly cooler SUV with fair to crappy gas mileage or the practical mini-van with the total giving up of any pretense that we’re a cool young couple.

The twist? Scott is the one who is clamoring for the mini-van.

I know! What dude is all “this is half the reason I got married and had a kid, I want the mini-van.” Say whah?

Look, I was never a member of the cool club. I was marginally acceptable in school, not so dorky as to have the radar gun of bullies at me; but not cool enough to bully anyone myself. I just imagine after I get the keys to a mini-van, there will be a line of cool moms with their colored hair and manicured nails ready to throw tomatoes at me.

That’s what happens when bullies grow up, right? This is my understanding.

There are no practical reasons Scott wants a mini-van, I would just like to point this out. Since he’s given up his truck, he is clamoring for a place to put his tools. Apparently a 1997 Saturn doesn’t provide enough space for the amount of tools formerly held in a Chevy S-10? Who knew?

And let’s just be honest: this is going to be like the dog. “Oh we can totally handle a baby and a dog, I’ll walk the dog twice a day, it’ll be fine.”

Yup, til you get a job and don’t want to walk the dog at 6 a.m. I’ve got approximately 4 pairs of eaten shoes and a destroyed comforter that shows you how well THAT argument worked out. Let's not even discuss the nightstand drawer. THE DRAWER, PEOPLE!

It’ll be the same with the van. I’ll be driving the damn thing around with his tools and a bunch of baby crap, and really, is it big enough to hold all my tears, people? IS IT???

The man has done his research, though. And he wanted to show me the coolest car he’d found. The Honda Odyssey. Honda…freaking…Odyssey.

He tries to point out the cup holders, the fancy seats, the this and the that. I’m searching for the in-seat Kleenex dispenser and mentally revising the lyrics to the Britney song all “I’m not a giiiirl, not yet a crone.”

I mean…come on! Who are you trying to kid? He’s talking to me the way I talk to Wee ‘Burb to try to convince her that the broccoli is just as delicious as the steak I am eating. Only, contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t born yesterday!

The only thing I am afraid of with the SUV option is the perception of invincibility you get when you get behind the wheel of those bad boys. I saw the best example of 4-wheel-drive hubris the other day. A tow truck driver and a cop had stopped traffic while they towed a car out on the ditch. The tow truck had to park on the right side to get the car out of the left side ditch, for some reason I assume has to do with gravity or leverage or something. I didn’t question it, just put the car into park and turned up the Christmas music.

But the 4WD vehicle in front of me was in NO MOOD to wait. So he attempted to drive around the tow truck. And ended up in the ditch himself! I am not going to pretend I didn’t totally crack up and thank the entire principle of karma.

And thought to myself: don’t think there’s such a thing as mini-van hubris.

So weigh in, party people. Mini-van or SUV?

The Fifth Circle of Hell

You guys, I haven’t seen this much traffic in Suburbia since we hosted the golf tournament last summer. It’s frightening to realize that one street closing can cause such traffic Armageddon. And it does not help at all that said traffic is being re-routed through rotaries.

Some of you may know rotaries. You may know them as “traffic circles” or “roundabouts.” I have more colorful phrases for them, but around here they are called rotaries and they are just plain absurd.

Here’s the deal: the rotary has a purpose. It’s meant to manage traffic in an area that can not otherwise be easily served by a stop light or four-way stop sign. It’s essentially a large circle with (usually) two lanes that features (usually) 4 or more exits. If you are exiting at the nearest road, you take the outside lane and dart through. If you are going through the rotary to one of the further exits, you stay in your left lane.

These are not necessary for where we live. At all. But for some reason, Suburbia decided that they just…I don’t know. Look cool? Save money? I truly do not know. What I do know is, they suck. Let’s be honest, 90% of the population can’t handle a simple merge onto a highway, much less make a quick decision when faced with four routes to choose from in a big circle.

I’ve studiously avoided the rotaries as much as possible. But now because they are building a hospital on my usual route and it took me 6 minutes to get a left turn light, I am forced to take the rotary. As a result, I am pretty sure Wee ‘Burb’s first full sentence is going to be a string of expletives, followed by her mimicking the sound of a horn.

The lanes are clearly marked, if you are going straight (yes, because somehow going straight is an option in this messed up version of a rotary), you go in one lane. If you are curving, you go in another.

I’m not without sympathy here. A confession: when I discovered these in MA, I would do about anything to avoid them. I would go miles out of my way just to make sure that I did not have to enter the vortex of speeding cars. But I was 16, a new driver, and I got over it. And when I did have to face it, I followed the logical setup and nobody died.

Mostly, people just stop and stare for a minute or two. Occasionally, a car in the rotary thinks the one merging on to the rotary has the right of way and stops for a minute or two.

But a few weeks ago I saw, hands down, the most insane and idiotic thing I have EVER witnessed…for sure with rotaries, possibly with all driving in general. This person in front of me stopped dead to look at the signs, presumably. And then realizing they had missed their exit, they backed up!!!

Let me slow this down for you: they backed up…on a circle! It’s a circle!

You will, I promise, get to your desired destination. You will not, I promise, be stuck like in European Vacation pointing out: “Look, kids, Big Ben!”

I think I may need to start walking to the grocery store.