Jury Duty

I made it almost 10 years without having to go to the court for jury duty. The summons was for 9 A.M. at Skokie circuit court. I was easy for me to get there and I allowed enough time for traffic. I was hoping to be lucky enough not be called and go home early. It would have been nice to have the afternoon off. . There were 3 trials today that required juries. They called people for the first trial late in the morning; not me. I went back to reading my Dirk Pitt book; trying to tune out "The View" on the TV. Lunch time arrived and I grabbed a sandwich at Panera while washing it down with a delicious Jones soda. That's how soda should taste; not overly sugary like regular pop, not devoid of all flavor like diet pop. I wanted to go to Potbelly because I like their smaller sandwiches, but couldn't find it when I drove past its location on googlemaps. Natasha gave me a quick call before the end of lunch hour. I headed back a little early and it was a good thing too because the line to get back in was very long. . After almost half an hour of standing outside in the wet, I was able to return to the mostly comfortable waiting chairs. This experience was nothing like the DMV. Before I could really get back into my book, they called a lot of numbers, one group of which was mine. 34 people were called for this next selection. It was a civil case where a man was suing another man for injuries incurred from a car accident downtown Chicago in 2001. They picked 14 people for the first round of questions. Out of those, they picked 8. Now they needed just 4 more people to fill the 12 man (and woman) jury. I was in the second set of people to be questioned. In both sets, there were people who hemmed and hawed about whether or not they would be unbiased to the case. Yes or no, you can't wait to answer the question after you hear all the evidence. They picked the remaining 4 people for the jury plus 2 backups. Luckily, I was not picked and got to go home. Sadly, it was already 5:10 P.M. and it took me 30 minutes to get home. My day wasn't any shorter, but at least I got paid ($17.20) for sitting on my butt and answering a few brief questions. . I like the fact that I served my country as a citizen. It's really the only act other than voting that I've done for my country. It's not as scary as I thought it may have been. The nervous part is not knowing if you'll actually sit on a jury. Otherwise, it's really not that bad.