Well friends, I’ve recently been called upon to serve my country in the most noble way humanly possible, jury duty. Some people were pretty upset to be there, but I enjoyed the whole experience, mostly because I sat there and drew.  One old guy was super jazzed about the whole thing.  I was kind of half-ass pretending to be excited on Twitter because I thought that would be fun, but this guy really was super excited.

Even though we weren’t all excited, we all showed up.  It’s a very big deal that you show up for jury duty, so much so that if you don’t show up they just arrest you instead.

Here we are, we all showed up.  There was a bunch of us.

Actually, let me zoom out a little bit.

That’s better.  Still not all of us.  There was even more than I drew but I didn’t even manage to get arms on a few of the stragglers in the back, so I think this is about the maximum number of stick figures I can draw at one time.

We need to zoom out a little bit more because this picture doesn’t show my favorite juror- excited old guy.

 

Just look at him.  He was even more excited in real life than this makes him look.  Oh, right, I should probably label the main characters.  No disrespect to any of the jurors present, but for this article the main characters are myself and excited old guy.  Every one else was more or less interchangeable, myself included.

Eventually, a lady who we all assume works at the courthouse got up and started telling us all about how patriotic we were for being there under threat of arrest.

 

She was nice enough, if not a bit long-winded.  She also had some pre-holstered jokes you could tell she loved to say to each new group of potential jurors.  Most people could take or leave her stand-up routine, except excited old guy.  He couldn’t get enough.  You’d have thought he was watching a Netflix stand-up special.

His face looked like this most of the time as he nodded and laughed in agreement.

For comparison sake, here were a few other faces.

The first thing we did after her twenty-minute introduction was watch a twenty-minute video that went over basically the same thing she said, but at least it had inspirational music.

 

 

The inspirational music was a real kick, because it made it seem like us potential jury duty people were bonafide heroes right up there with firefighters and the military.

After we had all been there approximately an hour and a half, she informed us that 90% of us would soon be leaving through a randomly selected name generator.

Slowly people started to disappear from the drawing as she called names one by one.  In real life everybody just sat quietly, but it makes more sense for the cartoon if people disappear after they’re called.

Also, the people who were called actually stayed seated while the people who didn’t get called got up and left. Again, easier for the cartoon to make the picked people disappear.  You get the idea.

One by one people with weird names were randomly selected to be potential jurors.

I was pretty smiley about the whole thing.  I decided going in that I kind of hoped I’d get called because it was only like 10am and I planned on taking the whole day off work.

As the names continued to be called I started to get a little nervous.  Maybe they weren’t going to call my name at all.  But, it was fate.  I was live tweeting and everything.  Surely they were going to call my name.

Also, they hadn’t called excited old guys name either.  Man, I’d be moderately upset if I didn’t get called, but only because I didn’t want to go back to work.  Excited old guy would be devastated.  Then I started to get nervous for him.

Then, excited old guy got called.  He was so happy.  I had resigned myself to not getting called but I knew at least this old character of a guy got to have a little fun and make it to round two of his version of American Idol.

With only a couple names left, fate smiled down upon me.  I had made it to round two.  I’d never been so proud to be randomly selected based on nothing.

 

Everyone was pretty excited when they weren’t called except this one girl who was sitting next to me.  She looked like she didn’t get picked to play kickball at recess.  I tried to give her my spot, but that type of generosity is looked down upon in the criminal justice system.

Also of note, in the drawing it looks like most of the people were called, but this is misleading.  There were approximately two hundred potential jurors and only eighteen or so of us made it on to round two.

I’m not entirely sure why they made all two hundred of us sit through her jokes and the video only to let most of us leave.  Seemed like we could have saved everyones time if they’d have done the random name generator thing, like, I dunno, last week?  At least at the beginning of jury duty would be nice.  I’m just not used to government efficiency.

Next, we all got up and walked out of that room and headed upstairs.

Excited old guy led the way and- I’m not making this part up- made a thing about doing two steps at a time up the stairs.

I don’t know how he made it a thing, but he did.  He was bounding and skipping steps like a kid on a the playground at the first recess of the year. He’s super old though, so instead of bounding like a normal person he did this weird crouch lunge thing.

It was notable that he was somehow still only going the same speed as everyone else who was begrudgingly walking up the stairs one step at a time.  I didn’t draw a cartoon for it, but it’s the one image of today that sticks with me the most.

 

So then we all scrunched in one of two depressing, small rooms.  Naturally, I waited to see what room excited old guy was going to pick and went in that one.

I sat in the corner so nobody could see what I was doodling because I really didn’t want to get into a, “Hey, are you drawing us?” type situation.

At some point we learned that this courthouse only sees misdemeanors.  So, any chance of being jurors for the trial of the century were short-lived.

After an incredible amount of time, the first lady came in to tell us the judge was ready to see us.  At that point even excited old guy was starting to lose steam.  I think he fell asleep at one point, but I might just be assuming things. On the plus side, someone smelled like maple syrup. When people smell in a room that small, it’s usually super negative.  In this case, it was quite pleasant.

Keep in mind, we’re not jurors yet.

We are only on round two, which I can only assume was a survivor round.  Maybe they figured anyone who didn’t just ask to go to jail instead of waiting any longer in the tiny room was good enough to be a real juror.

Eventually, the first lady came back and told us we were being summoned by the judge.  It was pretty exciting to be summoned by a real judge.

So we all got up and filed into the judges room.  I don’t know if we were in the judges chambers or not.  I think it was just a room the judge happened to be in.

Since I was live tweeting this entire day, I sent one last cryptic tweet just to get everyone excited about the whole future jury duty article.

In real life it wasn’t all that exciting.  Here’s what actually happened.

The judge told us that both cases settled and there was really no need for anyone to have been there at all.  We didn’t even get to know what the cases were about. Everyone was real happy, except for the first time all day, excited old guy just looked like an old guy.

I had anticipated his gloom, so as soon as the judge said that both cases had settled, my eyes shot over to him so I could gauge his reaction.  He was understandably disappointed, but everyone else was super happy.

So the judge told us we could leave and that was that.

We essentially sat around for about four hours until they finally said none of us were needed.  Excited old guy was disappointed at first, but he sprang right back to life pretty quickly.  Can’t keep a good man down.

Maybe the judge gave him a coupon for a free ice cream or something.  I don’t know.  I think this might have been the best day of his life.  That, or he’s just a super good person who makes the most out of everyday.

I think a good lesson to take away from this whole thing is try to be like excited old guy.  We were all stuck at jury duty, but he experienced it through a completely different lens from everyone else.  He might have been senile. I like to think he was just happy.

I hope you enjoyed this article about my time as a potential juror.  Feel free to share it, if you want.  I think excited old guy would like that.