Juror #79
Up late Sunday night helping Puck sort out about two hundred eighty dollars of apparent fraudulent Playstation charges on his debit card... while Sally's texting about fighting a possum and fat black rat snake out of the chicken coop (she's already lost three chickens) and then a bat in the garage...
>>>>
Up at six-thirty to a quiet house to dress for jury duty...
Oxbear prepares a pan of eggs for everyone while I pack for the day...
He and the younglings drive me to Clayton to avoid the two-block walk in the rain... Puck calls just before I hop out on the sidewalk → questions about the bank and Playstation... “We'll figure it out... I gotta go”...
Slip through metal detectors and check-in desk for number tag holder – 79 – find a seat in the back room, less claustrophobic than the uniform rows of cushioned seats packed into the larger assembly room...
Unnatural silence broken only by tapping keyboards and allergy sniffles and the guy three empty chairs down from me crunching a bag of chips from the vending machine... in the drowsy drip of rain from a pale sky...
Half an hour later... the judge arrives – he's cheery – thanks everyone for being there... words like “privilege” and “opportunity” and “make friendships”... there will be six cases... five civil one criminal...
Fifteen minutes later thirty-six names are called from the podium for the first panel... I escape call...
Back to quietly moving hive of lightly diverse humanity... some guy behind me begins loudly playing a crime TV show on his phone...
About an hour later another bailiff at the podium... forty more names are called... again, escape... as the guy next to me starts a second bag of chips before ten-thirty...
About another half hour and the podium is live again... “May I have your attention please...” → all cases have been spontaneously dropped... the five civil cases have settled and the criminal case has accepted a plea deal... “Your service is concluded”... there are cheers and fist pumps around the room...
Exit with a quietly happy stampede back into a light rain... all those grateful citizens who aren't very concerned about all that “privilege” and “opportunity” in that moment...
About half an hour later Oxbear and Patience pick me up... Patience with a pack of press-on nails in pale lavender which she bought with her own cash at Walgreen's... and Oxbear orders me a “Tasty as Cluck” sushi-burrito wrap from BLK MKT Eats to make up for it being closed yesterday...
Home for all the work I missed getting done in the morning...
Before Puck leaves for work... joins me at the table for ASVAB math review which leads to discussion on dark matter and energy and enormous numbers and the lack of helpful application between advanced algebra and the “real world” and how cats are faster than snakes...
Then the drip-drip-drip of trying to get Yali to sit long enough to write just three sentences in his journal... but he's vastly more interested in fitting peanut shell “caps” onto all his fingers and shoving original Pringles into his mouth like a duck bill...
Oxbear and Patience leave for authentic Mexican food that evening – belated farewell dinner for one of the Irish dance teachers...
...while Yali demonstrates an entire air-punch battle against himself in the living room set to the background of “Blinding Lights” on his tablet...
...as the rain returns to the neighborhood... pink and violet rain clouds into the night...