O, the Jury

I had jury duty on Valentine's Day. I thought I would be able to get a lot of reading time throughtout the day but events conspired against me. I had to be there way too early and I'm a wreck if I don't get my eight hours a night - which I didn't. And it was too warm inside. And crowded. All of which meant I was too drowsy to read much. I did manage to finish Jim Kelly's The Fire Baby. Which I enjoyed.

I was worried about what to take to read. I saw a lot of James Patterson at the courthouse. The guy in front of me was reading a biography of John Paul Jones. A girl next to me was reading Off Ramp by Hank Stuever. Some weird, bearded guy had When God Weeps. I almost brought a brand new copy of The Science of False Memory - thinking they wouldn't want me on a jury if they saw me with it. Which got me to thinking about what books would lead to an automatic dismissal. Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries - but quite frankly I don't have the balls for a stunt like that. Verso, I think, just published the collected works of Osama bin Laden. That would do. But then I'd have to buy a copy and then never be able to fly on an airplane ever again. Children's pop-up books - no one would pick me for a jury if they saw me reading pop-up books. I suppose I could let them see me reading Kafka's The Trial and they'd think I was more trouble than I was worth. I wound up taking a nice copy of the Story of O but the only one who noticed was a little old lady who told me that she, too, was a big fan of Oprah and read all the books as well.