A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.
- Herbert Spencer
Today is the second day of my two-day obligation to the State of Oregon. I’m sitting in a jury room with about 200 fellow residents of Multnomah County, each of us here only because we received a jury summons and either couldn’t or decided not to wriggle out of our civic duty.
In my defense, I’ll begin by admitting to being sleep-deprived on account of a torn meniscus in my knee (I’m having surgery next week), so my viewpoint is somewhat less charitable than it might otherwise be. The pain is constant, it’s impacted my sleep, and it’s turned my normally sweet and sunny disposition into something far less…pleasant. Yeah, I’m a little crabby.
I should also own up to the fact that I hate people- not as individuals, mind you; I have friends and loved ones in my life like anyone else and I’m grateful for them. What I hate is PEOPLE, the concept…especially when I find myself surrounded by large numbers of them. As Erin will no doubt attest to, I’m incredibly, intensely, and yes, sometimes unreasonably tense and uncomfortable in large crowds. Being holed up in a room with a couple hundred people is, as you might imagine, something close to my own personal Seventh Circle of Hell.
There’s the guy sitting next to me drinking kombucha and eating…only it’s not the fact that he’s eating that’s driving me nuts. It’s the smacking and slurping…oh, and the loud music on his headphones. Sure, I’d move…if there was anywhere else I could sit. There’s not an empty seat to be found, and so I’m next to Kombucha Boy as I’m mentally cataloguing the ways in which I’d creatively use duct tape to render him less objectionable. It’s not a pretty picture.
Then there’s the amalgam of multiple varieties of body odor, cologne, perfume, soap, and a few scents whose origin I’d rather not ponder for any length of time. Putting 200+ humans in a room with sealed windows is an effective way to determine very quickly whose idea of personal hygiene doesn’t rise above running a comb through their hair in the morning and calling it good. Ugh; it’s just WAY too…human in here.
We’re not allowed to leave the jury room except on assigned breaks or if we’re selected for a trial, which means being afforded all manner of opportunity to be involved in the private, personal business of others. This happens regardless of any preference for avoiding such unpleasant exposure to WAY too much information. There are those who clearly have no problem employing their cell phone to loudly and very publicly conduct their very private business. I now know almost as much about someone else’s knee injury and its prognosis as I do my own. I know this because he painstakingly (and volubly) discussed seemingly every aspect of his injury, prognosis, and treatment options. I’d sooner ignore a phone call than openly discuss personal and/or private issues while surrounded by more than 200 of my not so closest friends.
The woman sitting next to me just quietly freaked out over what turned out to be a spider. I feared she might be having a seizure of some sort, but, as she explained once the moment had passed, she was merely trying to determine how to dispatch the offending arachnid without asking for my assistance. While I had no problem with the whole knight in shining armor thing, I was not disappointed to avoid rescuing a damsel in distress when all I really wanted was to be left alone.
Yesterday I sat in Purgatory the jury room from 8:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. without being called. I’m hoping the same thing happens today. More than anything I just want to be done and in a place where I’m not surrounded by an overabundance of humanity and its associated peccadilloes and odors. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be fighting off sleep shortly after lunch and on a train home before 5 p.m., my civic duty having been finally, blessedly completed and my freedom secured.
Until then, I’m reduced to hoping the woman who’s been coughing and hacking since she arrived doesn’t decide to project her viral load in my direction. Or that Kombucha Boy doesn’t once again bless me with his presence (and his traveling deli). Or that those who arrived sans the minimum daily requirement of personal hygiene manage to stay well downwind.
Yeah, it’s going to be a long day….
