civic doodie

In fourth grade our gifted and talented program debuted a dramatic rendition of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. I was Juror #3 and the jury had two lines; rapping "Here comes the judge" as she entered stage left (sometimes we'd say here comes the fudge in rehearsal) and the last lines of the play "We've heard the story but we don't know, lock him up or let him go? YOU be the jury and YOU decide!" I still remember. Gifted AND talented.

That was my only time to serve on a jury until this Tuesday.

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a terrible, very bad, no good, horrible day. I came home and actually bent down to get the mail and saw an official looking letter. Earlier that week, my coworker had received a refund from HCAD saying she had overpaid on property taxes. Could it be?! Money?!!

No.

It was a jury summons.

I crumpled it up and threw it with all my might to the gound, flung my flip flops of my feet, tossed my purse an alarming distance and ran crying to the bedroom. Straw meet camels back.

I wasn't sad or frustrated I was ANGRY. Furious. And spare me the civic duty speech, dp tried that and was almost murdered. To make matters worse, I was not summoned to the nice, new, fancy downtown jury facility with wifi and new holding area... I wish.

Instead, I was summoned to Justice of the Peace Court 7 Place 1. My fancy jury holding room was in a building called Place 1. hmmmm and they shared the building with a teen health clinic. hmmmmmm. And there was zip information on this random place online.



Place 1

So Tuesday I packed up early from work (downtown) and hauled my butt to the UofH area and there was no one in the parking lot. Not another car, not even a bird picking at trash. Eventually a couple other cars started to show up, and employees parked in their reserved spots. I reluctantly left the happy solitary quiet of my car and walked into Place 1.

There was no office, no information window, no doors leading to sad government offices, nope. Just the court room. Just.the.courtroom. hmmmmm. So I went inside, turned in my summons, sat down on an unoccupied pew and waited. Some people were reading, some were chatting about their kids and standardized tests. I brought a book... but there was some pretty dang choice people watching opportunities... I couldn't focus.

We sat there for an hour. Then the clerk told us there all the cases scheduled for today settled and we could go home when the judge released us. Judges must be busy people cause we waiting forever for her to come talk to us. When she did she gave me a speech about my civi duty (bla bla bla) and officially released us.

Before we left she said
Aren't you glad you didn't have to come all the way downtown?

Thrilled.