Jury Duty

• I got fired from a job and I'm completely broke. When do you think they'll send our checks for serving?
• I got a girl pregnant and my girlfriend's pissed off
• My brother's been in court enough times to know how the system works
• Do you think Budweiser is allowed during our lunch break, and if so, do you think being drunk will get you out of coming back?

What, you ask, in the world is this? Well, those are the comments made by a fellow potential juror standing behind me in the Cobb County Superior Courthouse this morning as I dutifully reported for jury duty (again. mind you, I've been called 3 times in the past 5 years. not sure what kind of list I'm on, but apparently I'm "their kind."). We couldn't have been in line more than about 2-3 minutes and I learned all of that information in that short timespan. I thought to myself, aren't there just some things that aren't really a shining moment in your life and really shouldn't be discussed in public like that? I couldn't figure out if he was proud of these things or oblivious to the fact that perhaps not all of us have been guests on Jerry Springer, too.

I'm on a 2-hour lunch break from sitting in the juror room waiting for my panel number to be called. I'm sure I'll have at least one or two more fun stories to tell when I get back home tonight after returning to the random gene pool microcosm of Cobb County that our government's thrown together.