Jury Duty: Civic Responsibility or Inhumane Torture?

I started jury duty yesterday, and it's worse than I ever could have imagined. Basically you sit around hoping to lose consciousness, while a cop periodically selects a group of 20 potential jurors for a "panel." The panel is whisked upstairs to be vetted by a pair of lawyers who either select you for their jury or dismiss you, sending you back into the juror pool. I'm not especially concerned with how the panels are chosen; as far as I can tell it's random. What I am concerned about is leaving and never coming back, but I can't seem to figure out how to make that happen. My current best guess is that after being dismissed from a certain number of
panels, you're branded unfit to judge and sent home. If I'm right, I'm fucked. I found out this morning that of the hundred or so people who started jury duty yesterday, I am quite literally the ONLY one to have not been selected for a single panel. To put it another way, I spent 7.5 hours yesterday contemplating suicide in the waiting room while *every single other person* got a panel or two out of the way.

At about 11:30 this morning I finally made it upstairs, where I was confronted with two cringe-inducingly slimy trail lawyers, one of whom was in possession of a combover and a facial structure disarmingly similar to that of Eliot Spitzer. They were intentionally vague in describing the case, but from what I could gather it involved a car accident between two drivers, one of whom is seeking damages from the other. My goal from the get-go has been dismissal from all panels, and to that end I've been posing as a lesbian, hoping to appear dyke-y and altogether unappealing. Although I'm confident that my faux-lesbianism has thus far worked in my favor, my
trump card was an admission that I'm dubious that a car accident involving two people could be entirely the fault of one driver; even if one driver involved in an accident appears to be in flagrant violation of traffic laws and common sense, the other driver, more often than not, could have avoided the accident had he been more attentive. I was amped up and all set to inform them that personal injury lawsuits are almost invariably frivolous and a waste of tax-payer dollars, and that, as someone who once sustained a broken neck, I'm not easily impressed by injuries that don't result in death, but they'd heard enough from me already. I was tossed back into the juror pool within 20 minutes, accompanied by a fellow queer.

People are filtering back in from lunch, and the place smells overwhelmingly of liquor. I can't say I blame them.

I'm now of the opinion that jury duty is designed to be as painful as possible. This morning some decrepit judge came in to talk to us, and this old freak babbled inaudibly for almost an hour, during which time computers and ipods were off limits; this torture wasn't necessary, but they just couldn't resist. I didn't catch most of his unyieldingly tedious monologue, but here's a short list of the topics I know he touched on: junior high school, the draft, the Depression, Barbara Stanwyck (!) and Philadelphia.

Why, why, why are we not allowed to tell old people to stop talking? Is it out of concern that they'll die feeling shunned and alone? That's how they die as it is. Strangers may be superficially polite to the end, but their loved ones eventually lose patience. They can't bear to hear another story about eating ketchup soup in a dirt shack or making trips into town to visit the nickelodeon, so they toss their geriatric relations into homes where they can bore paid staff members until they eventually die. Wouldn't it be kinder if we leveled with them? I've compiled a brief list of statements (and one question) the elderly, particularly the long-winded elderly, need to hear. They're harsh, but I do believe they might just make the world a better place:

"Your old timey stories are bullshit, so if you can't think of anything
modern or relevant to say, don't say anything at all."

"Who the fuck is Barbara Stanwyck?"

"They're black people, not 'darkies'."

"Our present economy is disintegrating, so stop trying to impress people
with yarns about the 30's."

"You smell like pee."

Anyway, I've just been given my discharge papers, so I'm headed home to eat waffles!