Jury Duty

Every single time there’s a trial, my neighborhood’s loyal carrier pigeon, Gareth, delivers a summons for me to go to the courthouse. 

Last year, I deferred my first summons because it was set for the day Dave Mathews Band came to Acorn Valley and I’d scored VIP tickets. I figured I’d hear back in like two years or something, but I got another summons the next month, and they haven’t stopped since. 

I went and served on a jury, thinking that would sort things out, but the next week I got ANOTHER request to come back. I thought that if I went to the courthouse and explained my situation we could sort everything out, but they seemed completely indifferent to the whole thing and I’ve gotten twice as many summons since. 

A few people have told me to try and get out of it by making up an excuse or saying something to make me seem biased. You think I haven’t tried that? I’ve been doing it since case 3. No matter what I say, they end up twisting it to make me the perfect fit for the case. One time, I told them that I thought juries should be biased and they made me the foreman. I think I must have made Judge Jim mad or something, because unless the trails are happening at the same time, no excuse is good enough. Not work, not my graduation, not winning tickets to meet Katy Perry pre-space flight. 

I’ve even tried to be disruptive during the trial so that I get dismissed. Last month, I delayed a trial for about two weeks by refusing to agree with the group, even though I thought the decision was obvious. It turns out during that time, they’d found new evidence and I’d actually ended up saving an innocent man from jail. I thought maybe that would’ve earned me my escape, but a summons came again the next morning. They won’t let me get out of it.

I don’t have the time to serve on all these juries, I have a family. This year so far alone I’ve been on eighteen. It’s taking a massive toll on my life. My boss is not nearly as understanding as she used to be. She passed me up for a promotion because I miss so much work. I keep flaking on plans because I have to go to the court house and my buddies won’t ask me to hang out anymore. In December, I missed my brother’s wedding and he hasn’t talked to me since. No one else I know has even been called for jury duty. They don’t believe me when I tell them I got summoned again, because it sounds like I’m making excuses to get out of things.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s only one way for me to escape being a juror until I die: the constant suing in this town has got to stop. When’s the last time you approached your uncle or your neighbor to talk about an issue instead of just slapping a lawsuit on them? You’re spending so much money on legal fees and never earning more than a net of twenty dollars. I was on a case where some guy counter sued for a handheld at Stevie’s. I know they’re expensive, but they’re not worth this much carnage. Please, try to talk to each other and work things out in a respectful manner without litigation, for my sake. I cannot do any more jury duty.