Jury Duty

I tried to console myself. I really tried to think noble thoughts about my solemn duty as a citizen. I tried to think of Stephen Biko, beaten to death in a South African prison ... of women in the Middle East getting stoned to death for adultery, or beaten if they make accidental eye contact with a man to whom they are not related ... of the Disappeared in South America ... all people who dearly wish they lived in a nation where they could have some semblance of a fair trial.

But in reality, I was thinking of only three things:

1. How far behind I would get with work...

2. Being subjected to profoundly bad coffee** and being crammed into a room with 152 people and 96 hard plastic chairs...

3. Thoughts of hours of uninterrupted knitting prior to being called into the courtroom for voir dire.

**(The three worst places to find coffee in the United States are: the Nashville airport, the Texaco station in Snow, Oklahoma and the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge)

So, I brought my summons, parked in the big concrete garage, and presented myself for duty. There was a slightly befuddled young sheriff's deputy who had never seen knitting before, but no problem with the plastic needles at security. I even brought my own coffee. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, instead of contending for orange plastic chairs in the Hideous 1970s Waiting Room From Hell, jurors can now wait to be called in the public library immediately adjacent to the courthouse, a much more pleasant prospect than my previous experiences with the jury pool. Life looked good.

But, after three whole days of knitting in the jury pool, and not getting called, all I accomplished was about three square feet of a simple Old Shale stole. Here's a peek at the unblocked fabric:

Yarn consumed: about four skiens of vintage Unger Plantation Cotton generously given to me by Diann Lippman. When she gave me this yarn, she of course did not know that I made a "hippie shawl" out of Plantation Cotton many aeons ago in a very similar color, so this is a fun deja shawl experience for me. Thanks, Diann!

Working with cotton sometimes makes my hands ache, so I also cast on for a pair of socks.

This round of jury duty has taught me not to bring an interesting-looking knitted object into a situation with a high density of non-knitters who haven't brought anything to read or otherwise occupy themselves and who, desperate for conversation, want to regale you with all kinds of questions about why you would knit something you could buy at WalMart.

Best of all, they think they are clever, and that they are the first person ever to confront you with the fact (get ready for a shock) that ready-made socks and sweaters are commonly available in retail stores.

(((***... IF ONLY I'D KNOWN ... ***)))

This I promise to myself -- next time I have jury duty, I won't shower or comb my hair, and I will wear my ratty old Aqualung raincoat, and bring socks to mend. Smelly ones, even. That'll keep 'em at arm's length. That will be way too weird to even ask about. In fact, it might even get me out of jury duty for good..

On the bright side, I found myself filling the role of "yarn magnet" quite nicely. As I sat in the library waiting for my name to be called by Der Jurymeister, I soon found myself accompanied by a crocheter, who asked "may I sit with you? It's great to sit with someone else doing needlework." She was soon followed by a seasoned knitter working on a cabled scarf and then by a brand-new collegiate knitter who was floundering in deep water because her mother's friend had decided to teach her how to knit socks on two circular needles as her very first project (at least she had a copy of Cat Bordhi's book).

This made for a total of four public knitters out of a group of about 200 potential jurors. This means that two percent of the pool was emotionally comfortable enough to do needlework in public. A few other people admitted that they wished they had brought their needlework, and there were probably a few more silent knitters out there in the pool, wishing they had brought their WIP, but who had left it at home, perhaps out of fear of having their work snatched away by a sheriff's deputy.

Here is what I learned from the non-needlework, non-book-reading jury pool members:

I was reminded -- as I often am -- that non-knitters rarely consider bringing along something to occupy their hands and minds on those occasions when they are certain to spend a good deal of time waiting for their name to be called.

I was reminded -- as I often am -- that the vast majority of such people will make every effort to quantify the degree of the boredom they are enduring, and to relay this infomation to the person seated closest to them.

I was reminded -- as, once more, I often am -- that the real Alphas of this group, the most vociferous of the Truly Bored, are unable to comprehend that, in these situations, one is powerless to do anything except wait. It is entirely out of our hands. We no more know when our name will be called at the dentist, the gastroenterologist or at jury duty, than we know when our name will be called when the Great Night Clerk In The Sky decides that it's check-out time for us at Hotel Earth.

Your name being called is a matter of Fate. This is a cosmic thing. A Zen thing. And it requires calm, focused meditation and simple acceptance.

Om.

So, I have concluded the following....

If you know you're going to be cooling your heels all day and you don't bring a book, magazine or even the morning paper to read, you don't have enough sense to be on a jury.

If, after being told by the Official Juror Wrangler, that you are allowed to wait in the library across the plaza from the courthouse for your group to be called, and you go hang around in the library but still don't even pick up a book, you don't have enough sense to be on a jury.

If you get upset because you didn't bring anything to do, refuse to pick up a book, and spend the entire day pacing back and forth along the plaza, smoking and cussing about how hot it is and how bored you are, you don't belong on a jury.

If you ask for, but cannot comprehend, a slow, simple explanation of the difference between knitting and crochet -- just the basic principle that one involves a single hook and results in a firm fabric, while the other involves a minimum of two needles and results in an elastic fabric -- then you most certainly will not understand mitochondrial DNA in a murder case, and therefore have no business on a jury.

If, after denying yourself books and ruining all attempts at small talk with your fellow jurors, you continue to talk at people who clearly would prefer to discuss something besides the magnitude of your boredom, you don't belong on a jury.

In short, if I were the defendant, I would rather haul in three winos from the alley behind the courthouse and allow them to decide my fate over a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors than have you on a jury.

On the bright side, if you are such a person, you are almost certainly not reading this blog.

Or any other knitting blog.

Or any book reviews, either.

--Mambocat