Jury Duty

Disconnected Reflections While on Jury Duty

It’s not so much the waiting as it is the indeterminate nature of it,

That we have no idea how long any given period of waiting is likely to endure.

Nor does our waiting have any single place to call its own.

Doctors, at least, have “waiting rooms,”

Rooms designed to contain the waiting, to hold it in one place.

Not so the Criminal Justice Center.

Here waiting oozes slowly through granite corridors and up marbled stairways,

And we move with it: Room 101, Room 305, Room 601, Room 602…and on, and on…

We drift, we flow, we stagger in ill formed columns like drowsy, irritable sheep.

But mostly we wait.

Music seeps in occasionally,

Mostly from cell phones which we have been told to turn off.

That will be the first of many requests made of us today.

Soon we will be asked to render just judgment on our fellow man,

To set aside our passions, preconceived notions and prejudices,

To deliberate with an open mind but an independent voice,

And to responsibly deploy the immense power we will be given over the life of one of our peers.

But for now, we have just been asked to turn off our damn cell phones.

0 for 1 so far…