Civic Duty

A recap on my last blog entry before getting to the civic duty business. I did go help the church ladies make their pies over 200 hundred of them! It was a good time, it's like being surrounded in a room full of grandmothers, it was good for the soul.

Now on to my civic duty, I got summoned for Jury Duty! I have to report mid November to the court house for jury selection! It's not exactly the best timing with me just starting the new job, but then really when does social justice ever come at a good time?

I am nervous and excited all at the same time. I am a huge fan of John Grisham novels and have seen a few episodes of Law & Order, of course I'm not in the south or in NYC so I doubt the court case will be as interesting but it is kind of fascinating to be part of the process. The nervousness and anxiety about jury duty is from going to the court house, I've never stepped foot in the building so it's unfamilar and then the potential of sitting on the actual jury and dealing with possibly 12 other strangers and reaching a conclusion in the case, and having lawyers and the judge and court officals and police and spectators there freaks me out. Rationally I know I have nothing to worry about but the irrational side of my brain has other ideas for me.

And in today's day and age, I also wonder if one would even get picked to be on the jury after posting this blog and a little mention in my facebook status. Could it be seen as being over eager, or biased? Am I tainted? Or I can pretend that like in the John Grisham book the lawyers have teams of people going through the potential jury pool and my blogging/status update could be making me an ideal juror or maybe not?

I also had the fam jam -my parents, brother, his wife, her parents and my aunt over for liver dinner on saturday -well 5 of us had liver the others had pork. Despite my continued dislike of sister-in-law, it went well. However when I brought up my impending civic duty, sister-in-law had no clue what we were talking about! I found it disbelieving and unnerving that at 22, someone could have no clue about how our justice system works. Thinking back to my elementary school years I seem to remember doing something in either grade 7 or 8 about how the justice system works with mock trials; in fact I think we did the trials using fairy tales like Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. Even after explaining things I'm not sure how much she actually understood. It's little facts like that that make me question my brothers choice in a wife, sure it takes all kinds of people to make up this world, but I'm sure my parents tried their best to explain as best they could how things work in the "real" world, there is no way I could ever be with anyone so clueless about some of the most fundamental things in society.

Here's hoping that depite the unfortunate timing I get to be juror number something and the case(s) I hear are semi-interesting. Who knows maybe I could write the next great court drama play, call it, 12 semi indifferential Cochranites in a box? (title up for debate..lol)