An impossible Monday. Jury duty, followed by my discovery that high-speed internet is closed in Salem on Mondays. Who would have guessed. The first cafe - system down. Second cafe - closed on Mondays. Library - closed on Mondays. Parked outside the Apple store - more battery required then I had, plus the sun was way too low and the reflection was impossible.
So I’ve retreated to the living room couch to watch Napolean Dynamite, relax, and laugh a little. Supposedly the movie was made by some boy right here in Salem. I can believe it, although I highly doubt he got much of anything shot on a Monday.
I’ve been thinking about the things that might have gotten me dismissed from jury duty. My best guess is my reply to the question: List the jobs you’ve had in the past. Good lord, I thought, an essay question for jury duty? I wrote Too many to list, but never an attorney. In hindsight, I suppose this might have been taken as a jab at the legal profession and gotten me the boot. But at the time, I wasn’t even trying to be funny, let alone a smart ass. Oh well. I guess I’ll never know the real reason, but then, didn’t I just say the other day that life should be full of mystery?
I’ve also been thinking what it feels like to go through life calling yourself a killing machine. How can you take yourself serious? Or is that the problem, you’re already taking yourself too serious? Another guy on the jury claimed an overall distrust of the whole court system. He’d had his own run-ins, but no one elaborated. Two people claimed they didn’t want to stand in judgment over anyone else because when they got to heaven they would be judged tenfold over, or something like that. I’ve actually forgotten the number of fold overs.
But like I said earlier, I made it to juror chair number four but no higher. Maybe the judge saw I’d brought Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and thought I was there to challenge him or was just all wound up tight about injustice. But like everything else about today, it too shall remain a mystery.