Jury duty

I favor throwing random folks together to perform a common task. This is why I support a mandatory draft, although I would include other than military service in the mix. Jury duty also does this, and today I reported for service as summoned. I had a blast. The three highlights:

• Jury duty is a great people-watching environment. This morning there was a very strange fellow among us: long white hair and long white beard, coke spectacles, tall and skinny, who kept fidgeting and walking in place. Couldn't keep still. Well, as soon as we were seated in the jury room, he went up to the honcho and told her he was a psychotic schizophrenic. Man, did the lady honcho do a double take! He looked like he was telling the truth, so she excused him. And I began to wonder: did he exit the courthouse, pull off his fake hair and beard, take off his coke glasses, and grin as he walked to Starbucks up the street?
  
• In the waiting room, I was sitting next to a talkative, rugged individualist, anti-government, right wing fellow, one of my favorite conversation companions in small doses. We found some common ground and I ignored all our uncommon ground, which meant we talked about sports, where we BOTH were conservatives. Then, tah dah!, I got called to report to a courtroom.
  
• I was one of six selected to serve on a jury in a criminal case. Go back to finish tomorrow, so I can't talk about it now, but it's a fascinating case, and better, my five colleagues are fun to hang with, another professor like myself, a real estate guy, a computer geek, and two students. The waiting time isn't boring but hilarious because we all have similar senses of humor, it appears. So I'm having a lot of fun and actually look forward to returning tomorrow to decide our case.
  

So even though I didn't get any editing done today, I had a terrific time.