At exactly 7:35 am this morning, I turned on my computer and was reminded that I was to report for jury duty by 8:00 am. I’d forgotten all about it, and still had a small boy fast asleep in his bed. Get up, I told him, or I’ll be arrested for evading my civic duty. I may be paraphrasing.
Right before noon, I heard the judge say, Mr. Ecklund, you are excused, and I am not paraphrasing that.
Everything in between will have to wait until I catch back up with my lost half of day. But all in all, it’s been a fairly uneventful morning, although for the briefest of moments, I was juror number 4, and seated directly behind a self-confessed, Vietnam veteran, government trained, killing machine. And no, I’m not paraphrasing. I was that close to the real thing. I could have reached out and touched it if I’d wanted to, although, of course, I knew better. After all, the judge had told us not to throw away our common sense, just because we’d walked through the doors of his courtroom.