Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Life and trials

Tonight we are experiencing the bliss of having A surprise us at home with an 18 hour, between trips visit. Thanks to timing out last night and a delayed flight this morning, his schedule got changed up enough for him to fly home and brighten our day. I found out as I was leaving work and let him come home and surprise our boys. They were beside themselves and talked him into taking them to the pool at 8pm for a treat. It's been a rough year for A and I, so we are blessed when little respites like this fall into place.

Last week I had jury duty and was picked to be on a trial jury. It was an interesting and surreal experience. So many people complain about having to go to jury duty, but I would totally do it again given the opportunity. They started with a pool of 60+ randomly selected people and weeded us down to 14. It must have been my (supposed) bleeding heart social workerness, countered by my familiarity with guns, tempered by my complete lack of interest in our local news that made me the ideal candidate. For three days we sat and heard evidence and proceedings on an armed robbery and murder case. The entire time I sat there thinking "wow, this is really happening. I am in a courtroom and a lawyer, right there(!), is addressing ME. And I have to make a decision that will affect the life of that guy sitting right there." Every so often the gravity of the situation would hit me again- we were sending a 21 year old to prison for life; he'd already been in jail since arrested at age 18. Our group of jurors got along well and it was a bit like the end of summer camp where you are randomly thrown together with a bunch of people that you totally bond with because you spend so much concentrated time together and then bam, end of the week you all go home and never see one another again. We ended up finding the guy guilty of both counts and it continues to haunt me in some ways. We were at the pool and I had a flash about how that guy will probably never swim in a swimming pool again. Or eat barbequed chicken off the grill. Or snuggle with kids in bed in the morning. Little things like that that you don't think about when you are 18. Or killing someone over $650 and some ounces of marijuana.

Hopefully I will be able to stay focused and get more of our life written down. As always, its just so hard to find the time...

1 comment:

Joanna said...

That is great that your pilot surprised the boys like that...what a great memory to make!

I have gone jury duty before, and like you, loved the experience and would do it again in a second. I just had a civil case, so there wasn't as much weight as you had. I speak out when people complain about jury duty...it really is a very neat experience!