Jury "Service"

On Monday of this week I was summoned for Jury Duty. I innocently believed that I'd be in and out of there in a couple of hours. Not sure where I got that idea from, but let's just say my expectations were not met. At 9am I reported for duty, got signed in, and waited for 30 minutes. Then a woman who had clearly memorized a script proceeded to recite the script to us. If she had sounded the least bit conversational it wouldn't have appeared strange, but no. After her performance, she turned on the TVs and we watched a Charles Kuralt video on the pleasures of Jury "Service". "Many people call it jury duty", he said, "but truly you are in service to your community". Nice spin, I thought. And considering that Charles Kuralt has been dead for over 10 years, well.... the video was a bit outdated, to say the least. Then we got sworn in. Everyone had to find their nearest Bible (and there were tons of them laying around), put our left hand on it, hold our right hand in the air, and promise to tell the truth. "I DO", we all said in unison. I wondered about all the people in the room who were of other religions. Surely there has been some lawsuit somewhere in the country where a Muslim was offended that he or she had to swear by a book they do not believe in? Anyway.... 7 hours later and one very tired butt from sitting in a chair all day, we got released with no explanation and a "thanks for your service". If it weren't for a very good book, and getting to eat lunch downtown with my husband, it would have been a miserable day. (We even had a beer at lunch! Shhh... don't tell the jury police!) And thus concluded my "service" to my community for at least two years.