Whole lotta' people

So this is how the whole jury duty thing went down yesterday.

It ended up bring pretty uneventful.

Once I got there.

As I got closer to downtown, traffic became more and more snarled.

And by snarled, I mean a ginormous traffic jam with cars not moving and police directing traffic through non-operating lights.

And then it started becoming real clear that I was going to be late.

And that's when my anxiety level started going off the chart.

So I did what I always do to calm down.

I called Bingmama.

"I'M GONNA BE LATE. TRAFFIC IS SO BAD. I'M NOT EVEN MOVING. I'M JUST SITTING HERE. THERE'S NO WAY I'LL BE THERE BY 12:30. THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE A WARRANT OUT FOR MY ARREST BECAUSE I DIDN'T SHOW UP FOR JURY DUTY. YOU HAVE GOT TO FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING ON DOWN HERE AND WHAT ON EARTH ALL THIS TRAFFIC IS ABOUT."

That's when she told me all the traffic was about me. And the other 3,000 people who were showing up for jury duty.

Yes, I said 3,000 people.

I literally got one of the last places in the big parking garage. And it wasn't even a sanctioned parking place. The Parking Garage Traffic Directing Guy told 10 of us to just "pull over right here and get out". Huh? Right here in this "non-place place"? OK.... Just don't chain a barrel on my car. (I've had a barrel chained to my car before and it's not an enjoyable experience. I really didn't think that "No Parking" sign in front of that hardware store was legit. But that's another story for another time...)

Anyhoo, after I made it through all that, I headed on up to the big ol' room filled with lots o' people.

And the jury duty guy said this was actually a "Jury Qualification Session" and apparently I'm still qualified. So I sat down.

And we took a fancy oath thing swearing to tell the truth and all that.

And listened to the judge tell us why it's so important to serve and all that.

And then they called out the dates that we can choose from to serve. (Apparently our county is one of the only ones in the country that allows jurors to pick the week they will be serving.)

And I picked a week in May.

And they made me promise to show up that week.

And then I went back to work.

The end.