Civic Duty

Yesterday I had to go out for jury duty.  Adam happened to have yesterday off work, so he was home.  I wanted to stay here with the kind of fiery passion with which my friend, Michelle, would want to stay home if Henry Cavill had the day off and wanted to spend the day with her.  I have both entirely sweet and appropriate love for my husband and the kind of inappropriate, hot and dark kind of attraction for him that most people reserve for their celebrity crushes.  I wasn't looking forward to leaving.  Leaving the hottest man on earth is never easy, no matter who you think he is.  (Sorry, Henry, it's still Adam.  Michelle and probably millions of other women would beg to differ, though, so don't feel too bad about it.)

I got to the courthouse and had my bag searched, saying vehement and constant prayers that they wouldn't take my knitting away.  I'm doing a self-imposed sock of the month club this year like Stephanie Pearl-McPhee did a couple of years ago and I'm determined to at least get January done.  I'm knitting on my Signature stiletto needles.  These needles have made strangers come up and say to me, "Whoa, those look like they could kill people."  Those strangers are right!  Thankfully, the purse searchers were not of the same opinion, because I got to keep the knitting and all was well.

I made my way to the jury summons room and got to it.  I was the only one in the room knitting.  Other people got stuck with magazines.  I felt sorry for them, but happy for me.  I was stuck doing stupid jury duty with a hot man at home, but at least I was being productive.

After a while, a judge walked into the room.  I put the sock down while he talked because I was being polite.  It still cracks me up that I put my knitting down to be polite.  I mean, I know that I'm still listening, but people don't know you're still listening when you knit, almost like they think that any motion in your hands shuts your ears off, but I digress.

He explained what a privilege it is to come in for jury duty.  That we're either the only country or one of the only countries in the world that judges its people by the people.  People have the right in this country (America) to judgment by their peers.  He said we were the judges in the courtroom, and the most important people there.  At first, I knew he was just trying to convince us that being there wasn't akin to midieval torture, but after he kept talking, it sort of started working.

I started feeling really good about going in.  (The sock felt really good, too.)  I was being a living part of the Constitution of our country.  I got all of these warm, patriotic feelings.  He said that the Constitution guarantees that right, but that it's just meaningless words on a page without us, the people, doing our duty to make that right possible.  It reminded me again about how important it is that we, as citizens, get involved in our country to make it better.  Whatever our politics, we can't just gripe about what we don't like--we have a reponsibility and a duty to make positive change wherever we are, wherever we go.

The judge left after a little while and I got back to my knitting, feeling a bit glowy inside.  I'm just the kind of ridiculous sap that this stuff works on, too, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  I felt like even though I was missing out on being with Adam, I was doing a good thing, and I shouldn't be too upset.

After a little while, another man came into the room and said, "I have some good news, depending on how you look at it."  He said that the parties in the trial had reached a settlement and our service was no longer required.  He said that many times in these situations it takes the parties just knowing that the jury has assembled to get them realizing that they're about to go somewhere they might not want to go.  They'd better come up with their own solution, then, instead of putting themselves at the mercy of all of the people they've dragged into their issue.  People might have been too busy packing up to listen very well to all that he said, but I had a row on a heel flap to finish, so I sat politely, impolitely knitting as he talked so that I could break out of there and fly home to my love.

The sock was pretty thrilled about not actually having to do its civic duty.