SUNDAY
Dear Friend,
It’s Sunday evening, and I have jury duty tomorrow.
Or not.
I have the possibility of jury duty tomorrow, but I can’t confirm because I don’t have my 9-digit number to touch into my phone’s keypad
because I can’t find the summons.
When the summons arrived some months ago, I postponed my service dates. Since then, I have seen the document tucked between pages of a notebook, in a pile of papers. Around. Each time I’ve thought, oh, I should put this somewhere safe.
Did I put it somewhere safe? Or did it fall out of a notebook or get left behind on a stage or in a coffee shop? Did I accidentally throw it away?
My normal process for finding lost things is to clean—and by clean I mean declutter.
I think “mountains of paperwork” is the preferred metaphor, but do people also say, “a sea of papers?” This feels closer to it. Like I’m bailing out buckets of papers in an attempt not to drown in them. But, there’s too much that isn’t ready to be trash, so I’m mostly sorting and moving piles into differently organized piles, which is like dumping pails of ocean water into a different area of the ocean…I’m not seeing my efforts appreciably change the water level.
Adding insult to injury, Friday night, just as I was accepting that this weekend was destined to become a missing-summons-inspired de-cluttering/organizing marathon, I bent mere inches to open a waist-height drawer and felt something shift in my lower back and then a sharp pain.
Life Lesson: Don’t get too righteously annoyed with life, lest it suddenly get a little worse. Decluttering is less fun when you can’t bend over.
Two days later my back pain has lessened. Or it hasn’t and I’ve gotten used to it. The summons has not appeared despite my attempts to summon it
MONDAY MORNING
If you lose your jury summons, the internet advises you to call Jury Services between the hours of 8AM-4:30PM M-F.
At 8am sharp I call, navigate the phone tree and am told I’m 10th in line to speak to a representative. Not bad, I think. The hold music is chill and before long gives way to the sound of a ringing phone. But instead of a person, a “Cisco Systems message system” asks me to “enter an extension” if I have one. I don’t.
On my next attempt, I’m 39th in line — and again misrouted to Cisco Systems.
Some internet sleuthing uncovers a phone number for the assembly room, but its automated system informed me that calls are answered only between 11am-12pm.
I try the main number again, not expecting the third time to be a charm, but… a representative answers! After experimenting with a half-dozen permutations of my name, the representative reunites me with my long lost juror ID number.
At 9AM, I dial the same phone number and choose a different branch of the phone tree to learn that I do not need to report. The day furls out ahead of me like a winning lottery ticket!
TUESDAY NIGHT
Because I have several big projects on my list, any of which would realistically take between several hours and several weeks, I dial the jury services number very much hoping for another free day to tackle them, but ‘tis not to be. The Movie-phone voice instructs me to:
“Please report to the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, Department (blank pause, hopefully I don’t need to know this), at 8am tomorrow.”
WEDNESDAY MORNING
Due to a freeway entrance closure, I was a few minutes late. Due to it being LA, I was not even close to being the latest, and the woman at check-in didn’t bat an eye as she re-printed the badge that was attached my lost summons page:
I’m sitting in what feels like a very large DMV waiting area. All the seats face one direction. People are sleeping, reading, looking at their phones. No one is talking.
Coughs and sniffles pop up around the room like audio whack-a-moles. I’ve donned the mask I found in my purse. Every so often a voice on the loudspeaker recites some names and asks a group of people to come to the desk. I don’t know why. But after a while, they return and sit where they sat before.
I have forgotten all of the 1979 film, THE BLACK HOLE, except one thing: the way the ship only entered the black hole at the very end and the audience never got to see what was on the other side. As a kid, I recall being pretty irritated that I sat through an entire movie called THE BLACK HOLE without finding out what happens when you go through a black hole.
So at this point I should perhaps apologize for the misleading title, JURY DUTY. I didn’t predict how at publishing time I might be dwelling in this interstitial space, on the verge of what will come next. Will I enter a courtroom? Will I see a judge and answer questions about my biases? Will I be invited to witness an actual trial? Will the chairs in the courtroom be good or bad for my back? The future is unknown!
WEDNESDAY, ADDENDUM:
Sooner-than-expected, the future is no longer unknown. A lady came out to call some names for a case that they estimated might last 25 days. My name was not among them. Shortly thereafter, the rest of us were dismissed. Though the ending is anti-climactic, I am happy my civic duty is done.
Thanks for stopping by!
Barrington
Pro-tip from someone else who loses paperwork. Take a picture of it with your phone. I have a subfolder in my photos called "important stuff". It has saved me numerous times.