Jury Duty

Let me just warn you in advance: I had a very interesting and rather stressful experience today, and I will likely do a lot of babbling about it. I've already babbled to my husband and to my coworkers, but there's still a lot of babbling left in my brain! My blog is the lucky recipient of all of my random thoughts!

I guess the story sort of started last month when my boss got jury duty. When he was done we were talking about his experience, and I mentioned (rather happily) that in the 18 years I've lived in Lawrence, I've never once been summoned for duty. The next week, like clockwork, I received my summons in the mail.

I filled out the enclosed survey and sent it back to the court, and was instructed to call the courthouse several weeks later to find out if there were any trials during my first scheduled week. I left the instructions on the kitchen counter to make sure I didn't forget to call at my appointed time, which unfortunately, I did. Apparently that summons sat on the kitchen counter for so long it just became part of the landscape, so I never once thought of calling the weekend before my duty began. When I came home last Monday night and realized I'd forgotten, I just about panicked, thinking maybe I would be arrested for "failure to appear in court" or something. I called the courthouse number and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I got the recorded message telling me there were no trials scheduled for Monday. Thankfully, I remembered to call again on Wednesday, when there were again no scheduled trials. I was instructed to call back on Friday after 5:30, which unbelievably, I forgot to do!

So this morning I'm sitting at work at about 8:50, and I get a phone call which says right on the caller ID that it's from "Douglas County." I'm a complete idiot, because at this point it still doesn't sink in that I had jury duty! The very kind clerk reminded me that I was suppose to report this morning, so after catching my breath I went flying out of my office and drove like a crazy person down to the county courthouse. Amazingly, I made it downtown and found a parking place even before the proceedings began.

At this point, I haven't even gotten to the stressful part of my day that I felt like babbling about, but I think I'm going to have to save the second half of the story for tomorrow. Clearly this post would be entirely too long if I continue, and I'm entirely too tired! I'm sure everyone will be on pins and needles waiting to hear how the jury selection process went!