Happy Holidays 2025, Part III: Civic Duties

Days until Christmas: 13
Days until my birthday: 8

 A few months ago, when we were in Canada, I was sitting in the sunroom in the family homestead one morning checking my email. I saw, through the USPS informed delivery email I'd gotten that day, that Daisy was being summoned for jury service. 

This in itself is nothing new or surprising; Omaha is a big place with a rather robust court system, and both Daisy and myself receive a summons approximately every 4-5 years. I've gotten multiples over the years and I have never even had to go into the courthouse for selection questioning -- I've always been chucked out with the first group, usually by number only -- with confirmation via email, text, or phone call. So far. My last summons was in 2023, so my next one is likely coming up sometime soon, and that train is never late. 

Daisy, however, is not usually this lucky, and has now had to go in for jury duty work two of the three times she's been called since we've been together. The first time was about a decade ago, and the second time was a few years ago (she was dismissed after a day or two). This time she called and was told she would need to come in, no question about it -- a letter had also been sent that arrived the same day that confirmed, yes, she needed to be there that next Monday morning no matter what.

So, the Monday morning after Thanksgiving -- after we'd gotten a snowstorm over the weekend that we'd just finished digging out of, Daisy was up and dressed in work clothes (sort of a shock for me as since we both got new jobs this year and we both work at home, I never see her wearing more formal clothes anymore unless we have to go to a wedding or a funeral). She left for the courthouse shortly after I got off work, Pete came and curled up in bed with me, and I passed out.

When I awoke in the afternoon, she was still gone and I therefore assumed that yes, she'd made it through the prescreening processes and she was indeed selected, as otherwise I likely would've heard something from her (or she would've been home already). About twenty minutes after I woke up, I got a text from her sending me a grocery total from Trader Joes, and then heard the garage door roll up. 

Daisy was not selected for that round, but this is a special trial jury selection process that runs from December 1 to January 1, and she must call in every Friday morning this month to see if her presence is requested again on the following Monday, throughout the end of the month -- even though she was not selected the first time around.

Do you understand how inconvenient that is? How stressful it must be to not know if you are going to have to dress up and brave the cold, leave the house and spend hours in a courtroom possibly for no reason once a week? Or, if selected, for as long as the trial goes? I can't imagine that.

Well, I can, I just haven't had to do it. Yet. That's a nightmare scenario for me -- it involves doing multiple things I want no part of, ever:

1. driving in the winter in the dark

2. driving downtown in the winter in the dark

3. driving downtown in the winter in the dark and needing to find a parking garage, then 

4. needing to walk in the cold, in the winter, to wherever the courthouse is in relation to said garage

5. being forced to wear respectable clothing

6. being forced to leave the house in general

7. being forced to wear respectable clothing, leave the house, and be questioned by law enforcement

8. sit somewhere in a courthouse for untold hours with nothing to occupy me

9. go through the selection process

10. be around people I don't know and won't necessarily like 

11. be around people in general

12. if selected, drive back home and do it all again day after day until the service ends

I am not a fan of any of that. A lot of it seems like a meeting that could've been an email or a Teams call. 

Well, this past week -- in addition to the stress of Pete dying, Daisy was called and a voicemail was left telling her that this coming Monday she would be required to come back in again for more screening. She didn't even have to check this time, she was being voluntold.

"So," I said, "did they like...not have anyone they liked the first time, and they're now down to the second stringers of people they thought were too opinionated for the first go-around, but not for the second?"

Daisy did have a week off in between; last Monday, she was told she did not have to report. This second time around seems more urgent in a sense, and I assume if they're calling her back in she's likely not going to be able to get out of serving a second time. That would put her in jury service all (or most) of next week, leading right up to my birthday next Saturday, and maybe then again all the way through Christmas week (with, likely, the exception of the holiday itself) and again during the dead week between Christmas and New Year's. Obviously, nobody wants this. But it is what it is.