Here in America, we all have two civic duties. We pay our uncle Sam once a year for the privilege of his protection and once and awhile he asks us to judge our peers by sitting on a jury. According to uncle Sam's employees, jury duty is an exciting window to the American legal system and one of the differences between us civilized folk and the rest of the world. In addition to being a highly regarded democratic principle, jury duty is also a terrific way to people watch and make a cool $17.60. Having no idea whether or not I'd make it out alive, I felt the need to keep a diary of my experiences, so future generations could learn valuable survival lessons. Below is my harrowing account.

9:30am: I'm herded into a room with a few hundred other cranky looking individuals. Clearly, everyone else has better things to do or was hungover from the previous night. Thankfully, it's pretty silent, thus there was no need for idle chatter or even eye contact.

9:50am: After 20 minutes of wondering how much trouble I could get in for making a small cot out of a few chairs for a much needed nap, a woman who sounds like a female version of Stephen Hawking's voice box on uppers gets on a microphone. She informs the room that we'll be watching a short training video to help us better understand our civic duty. The low budget production, possibly originally shown on Beta max, features celebrity news hound Lester Holt, whom Tina Fey once described as a “great guy who's very flexible.”

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_{I'm assuming she meant his schedule.} 

Lester comforts the bleary eyed jury pool by explaining the “one day trial” system. For approximately 35 seconds, I'm hopeful I'll leave today unscathed. Then, Lester immediately contradicts his earlier statement, saying that if we're indeed selected as a juror we need to report back for as long as the trial drags on. He also tells us that in the selection process we may be asked personal questions about how fair and open minded we are. I'm thinking he's being a little forward here. I thought this was jury duty, not an orientation for The Facebook of Sex. Lester then informs the pool we shouldn't try to research or investigate the cases ourselves. I'm saddened by this since I hoped to play a good game of Benson and Stabler today. After all, I thought we were being open minded.

Speaking of Law and Order, I make a note that the video took entirely too long to explain something anyone who owns a television already knows. I rule the training video would be better explained by a Stabler style interrogation scene or possibly by swapping Lester for the Honorable Harry Stone. Since I don't have a fancy robe or gavel, this goes unnoticed by the masses.

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10:00am: Stephen Hawking's female voice box doppelganger gets back on the mic. We'll call her Mrs. Hawking from now on. She says we're not fully trained yet and goes on to explain a few things Lester forgot to tell us, including our stellar compensation of $17.60 for the day. We're informed to shut off our cell phones or Blackberry's (multiple times), but for some reason laptop's and iPhones get a free pass. I wonder if Apple has infiltrated our justice system.

The waiting area is laid out much like an airport waiting room. There's a giant counter in the middle and two seating areas on either side a pretty fair distance from each other. Mrs. Hawking informs us that the area I'm seated in will be the side for folks who want to watch TV while the other side is for quiet people. The television activates and I'm treated to the loud shrill voices that can only be ABC's The View. I contemplate swallowing the suicide pill I tucked safely in my shoe, but opt to live another day and head to the quiet side.

10:15am: Every morning, I chug damned near an entire pot of coffee. Every seasoned caffeine addict knows that around mid morning, a five alarm fire waits in the bathroom for him or her to attend to. I head to the men's room and promptly realize that someone wired speakers above the urinals. I'm listening to The View while fucking pissing. I contemplate my suicide pill again while trying to ignore Elisabeth Hasselbeck's shrill voice. She repeats various accusations and theories regarding Michael Jackson's questionable behavior in regard to children. Needless to say, I'm beyond disturbed to hear any of this while shaking out my firehose.

10:35am: There's a questionable class divide between the The View side of the waiting room and the TVless (we'll call them Readers) side. The View's watchers either struggle with today's Junior Jumble or read varied issues of Cosmo and old Danielle Steele novels. The Readers either clack away on laptops, frantically look at their Blackberry's or appear to be buried in extremely mundane paperwork. I'll leave you to guess which side of the divide won the award for best hygiene.

10:37am: Who's fucking running this show? On entering the room, Mrs. Hawking and her robocop assistant handed each potential juror a piece of paper with a number on it. One would think that a numerical representation indicates some kind of logical order, but it appears that the organ grinder monkey that chooses winning lottery numbers holds authority here. First, lots 9 and 10 are called followed by 40, 25, 32 and 41. I ask the robocop assistant if the monkey might need help throwing darts in the back, but robocop only responds by lightly stroking his taser.

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_{Your tax dollars at work.} 

11:00am: I spend some time in the phone booth, first talking to my girlfriend followed by three calls to the suicide hotline. The third person from the hotline tells me that I may just be stuck in some kind of time warp ala Dylan Hunt in the first episode of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, where Dylan was imprisoned for 300 years on the edge of a black hole. When I try to debate the physics of an event horizon localized entirely to floor 17 of the Daley Center, he informs me to stop waisting his time. Fortunately for him (and their lawyers), I sold my suicide pill for vending machine money.

I'm very snacky at this point, since the county sheriff generally frowns on smoking in the bathroom. I pay 80 cents – 80 damned cents for a Twix. I wonder how our state is so broke with such outrageous snack prices, but promptly remember that Blago needed hair care products. On the Reader side of the divide, I can still make out a shampoo commercial coming from the TV watchers, since the volume is cranked louder than Manowar's record setting performance at Magic Circle Fest in 2008.

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11:18am: Without access to nicotine, I revert to the atavistic state of annoying public nail biter. I make no apologies for my behavior and promptly throw a chair at the first person to suggest I move to the TV watcher side of the room.

11:45am:  In order to keep me sane, I begin my attempt to provoke an all out war between the Readers and former View watchers. The former View watchers are now engrossed in a 35 year old episode of General Hospital, so I explain to them (ala Sauroman) that the Readers stole their lands (re: the other side of the room), much like the horsemen of Rohan did to the wildmen in the Lord of the Rings. I quickly tell the Readers about the TV watchers plan to socialize access to laptops and current newspapers and prepared for an epic battle. I'm pretty sure Mrs. Hawking got wind of this because my lot number was immediately called and I was whisked away to participate in America's judicial system.

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Unfortunately, court order requires me to keep silent about anything happening outside the waiting room. Even after I directed a poor “yo mamma” joke at the judge and referred to the lawyers as pettifoggers and charlatans, they deemed me competent enough to serve as a juror. I knew I should've worn my favorite t-shirt. 

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Tomorrow: Part two of my harrowing experience in the courtroom, unless I'm (hopefully) sequestered in a hotel with a hot tub and room service.