Jury Duty

So hey, guess what? For the last 2 days I have been on a jury for a civil court session. 1st time I've ever received a summons, and dang if I'm not picked. We go in, and you see this dude with a Joe Dirt style manscaping on his face and the beady eyes, so you know he's the guilty one.

I guess it was because I wasn't smart enough to come up with some lame excuse like several of the others. When asked if any of us had any physical issues that would not allow us to maintain attention to the trial while seated for a few hours at a time, one lady said "I have a small bladder and I'm a nervous person!"

Apparently that's all it takes, as she didn't make the cut.

Another guy just out of no where says "I think that cops are too lenient on people they're chasing! They need to pull out their guns more! If some guy's runnin' from the law, then pull your gun out and end it right now!"

Again, didn't make it. Joe Dirt's got a huge WTF!?! look to it, but needless to say Dirty Harry didn't get picked either. It ended up being me and 6 other average people. Thankfully.

Well, come to find out now that we're all settled in that Joe Dirt is not on trial, rather he's suing to county prison he was incarcerated in back like 3 years earlier. The quick version of the trial was that Joe Dirt got sucker punched by his cell mate in the lower back on the left side. Although complaining on hurting inside the whole trial was about the jailers not reacting in timely fashion to his pain. Ended up that like 26 hours later he was taken to the hospital and they found out his spleen had ruptured, and he was like 6 hours away from bleeding to death!

Good gravy!

But enough about that, I'm not here to talk about the boring ass trial. If you must know, we ruled partly in favor of him, and he was awarded $3200. Weeee....

What I want to talk about are the freaks at this court. This court guy, which I have no idea what he was doing other than officially look busy as he just bustled around in front of his computer and his notepad (legal size, naturally). He would leave, come back, sit down, this, that, etc. Since I had nothing important to pay attention to, I watched him for like 2 hours.

At first I thought he was trying to hide yawns all the time, but it dawned on me that this dude must have been blind as a bat or something, as he would lean waaaaaaaay in to his screen, like less than 3 inches from it! Also, when he would write on his notepad, it was so close to his face his pen would be by his ear. Ok, so I guess he has some issue, so I quit watching him after another 30 minutes. Court is really fucking boring. It's not like it was going anywhere.

Next up, lawyers. Lawyers are dicks. All of them. Dicks. Lawyer is probably derived from some Latin word that means shape of the phallus. Just the mannerisms they had was driving me nuts. On the plaintiff's side, we had the late 50's looking guy, and the defense was a mid 30's dude. It must be something they are taught in law school, like Arrogant Swagger 301. Especially for the young dude, he must have been the TA or something. To walk from his desk to the podium took him 30 seconds. This wasn't the Supreme Court, it was 12 feet away!

Also, they both had all these asshole mannerisms. During a 20 minute conversation, the old dude put on and took off his glasses 47 TIMES!!! Yes, I counted. The young dude didn't wear glasses, so he had to make up for this shortcoming by having independent control of every involuntary muscle in his face. I firmly believe he could have used his face to express every human emotion at the exact same moment. And the hair, they all had the lawyer hair! And the suits! It just made you want to puke! Maybe I'm just naive, but I believe any court process could be figured out in like 20 minutes if it weren't for all the BS that lawyers bring to the table.

Ok, so fuck them. I can't waste any more skin from my fingers talking about how annoying they were.

The case is now 1/2 way done for the 1st day. I know exactly what ever ceiling tile looks like and which ones are hanging out of place. I noticed that on the steel kick plate on our little Jury wall of safety that all the screws are perfectly vertical (and thank God, otherwise I would have had to screamed out for a mistrial). I also noticed that my ass was about 1 inch too wide for the chair for it to be comfortable for 2 day ordeal. I probably looked like that dude on the Preparation H commercial, shifting from side to side every 5 minutes.

Oh yeah, one time out of nowhere my stomach made one of those internal fart sounds. Kind of like a humpback whale calling the young home for dinner. Hurry your ass up Moby, the street like is kicking on!

Travesty strikes me at this point.

The guy sitting next to me in the Jury box, and also all through the deliberations afterwards, HAS NO THUMBS!!!! I'm not meaning lost in an accident type of no thumbs, I mean "Hi, my name if Bob, and I ain't got any thumbs from never!" Talk about attention holding.

When you would look at them from the top, it looked like just 4 fingers, other than the index finger was this super finger or something, being bigger, stronger, and faster than your run of the mill finger. What really sucked in your attention was when you looked at the palm side. Imagine if you could push your thumb up on your hand towards your index, and bring the index down to the thumb and they meet in the middle. They then merge into the Devistator of digits. From the palms you couldn't tell if it was a really long thumb or an oddly shaped index.

And dang it, I'm not trying to be an asshole, but he was a handsy talker! He was constantly stirring these things around in the air while he talked, since he was the jury leader. Constantly counting out the points of his argument, constantly clicking his pen open and closed, and constantly opening his water bottle. Shit like that. Maybe he could have just worn a t-shirt that said "hay, look at me and my no thumbs! I'm gonna make you uncomfortable with your 10 digits!!"

So all I worry about now is not to slip and say something like "yeah, I'm all thumbs when it comes to all this paperwork." I really wanted to ask how a person wipes their behind like that, or does he carry a special glove around that has a thumb on it for just such an occasion? These are important facts. I could be in some tragic masturbatory accident tomorrow, and have to live the rest of my life without my thumbs. I'd sure which then that I had the gumption to ask.

Well, at least from all this I didn't walk away empty handed. I earned $80, plus got a cool lapel pin. I'll have to break that out the next time I ever have a lapel on.