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Jury duty: part two...
Posted by The one and only "B"...
on
10:39 AM
Hello world!
Oh the joys of Jury Duty. Yesterday I spent most of the day griping on Facebook about being here, playing solitaire, or dozing off in these uncomfortable folding chairs. It's freezing in the "Jury Room", where they had a hundred or so of us captive. I was able to escape for an hour for lunch. Then spent most of the afternoon sitting at a table talking to three older women about life, school, friends, books, segregation, how jury duty seems to a waste of time, and eventually relapsing into silence.
I didn't mind it when we all lapsed into silence, I had found a book I hadn't read since 5th grade. "Walk two moons"... I'm considering taking it with me, even though I finished reading it when I had to return again this morning. It's a good story with valuable life lessons. Like how sometimes people have to leave to get perspective on their own lives. You can't keep people in cages. Sometimes you have to let them go.
One thing I hate and love about books is the fact that I always seem to feel what the characters feel. It makes me feel like I'm easily influenced. Plus its a little embarrassing when a book brings you to tears and you're surrounded by a sea of people who don't know you. An older woman was staring at me from across the table, watching me take deep breaths trying to hold back tears that were trying to escape my eyes.
My mom says it's because I'm soft hearted. I don't know if she means that as a good thing or a bad thing. She's always said things like that to me though. She'd say that I feel everything so strongly, and that I needed to control that part of me. Then she would pat me on the head and walk away. Whenever she said these things to me, it was like she was hinting to me that I should be stronger. That I should learn how to be unaffected.
The book made me think of all this. The book, and there's a lawyer pacing the hall in front of me, talking to his client about child support and visitation rights on the phone. I want to hit him. He keeps talking about the child like it's a car or a lamp or something. With no feelings or emotions. It makes me think that, not too long ago, lawyers used to talk about me that way. It's amazing that with all the time my parents spent in court suing each other, neither of them ever bothered to ask me what I wanted.
I sometimes think that divorced parents spend so much time fighting in courts over their children as a way to punish their ex-spouses, not for the actual benefit of their children. I'm sure my own parents wished well, but sometimes I wish they had spent less time fighting each other, and more time with me. Maybe they realized this in hindsight, if they did though, they'd probably would have made more of an effort to know me. I'm a stranger to my own parents.
I feel like reading that book over again was a mistake, because it's like I can feel all the things my ten or eleven year old self felt, and then some.
My mom was right, I am soft. I'm a marshmallow. Even though I'm feeling melancholy now, this too shall pass.
Love from,
"Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins."... I used to love wearing moccasins.
B
|
Oh the joys of Jury Duty. Yesterday I spent most of the day griping on Facebook about being here, playing solitaire, or dozing off in these uncomfortable folding chairs. It's freezing in the "Jury Room", where they had a hundred or so of us captive. I was able to escape for an hour for lunch. Then spent most of the afternoon sitting at a table talking to three older women about life, school, friends, books, segregation, how jury duty seems to a waste of time, and eventually relapsing into silence.
I didn't mind it when we all lapsed into silence, I had found a book I hadn't read since 5th grade. "Walk two moons"... I'm considering taking it with me, even though I finished reading it when I had to return again this morning. It's a good story with valuable life lessons. Like how sometimes people have to leave to get perspective on their own lives. You can't keep people in cages. Sometimes you have to let them go.
One thing I hate and love about books is the fact that I always seem to feel what the characters feel. It makes me feel like I'm easily influenced. Plus its a little embarrassing when a book brings you to tears and you're surrounded by a sea of people who don't know you. An older woman was staring at me from across the table, watching me take deep breaths trying to hold back tears that were trying to escape my eyes.
My mom says it's because I'm soft hearted. I don't know if she means that as a good thing or a bad thing. She's always said things like that to me though. She'd say that I feel everything so strongly, and that I needed to control that part of me. Then she would pat me on the head and walk away. Whenever she said these things to me, it was like she was hinting to me that I should be stronger. That I should learn how to be unaffected.
The book made me think of all this. The book, and there's a lawyer pacing the hall in front of me, talking to his client about child support and visitation rights on the phone. I want to hit him. He keeps talking about the child like it's a car or a lamp or something. With no feelings or emotions. It makes me think that, not too long ago, lawyers used to talk about me that way. It's amazing that with all the time my parents spent in court suing each other, neither of them ever bothered to ask me what I wanted.
I sometimes think that divorced parents spend so much time fighting in courts over their children as a way to punish their ex-spouses, not for the actual benefit of their children. I'm sure my own parents wished well, but sometimes I wish they had spent less time fighting each other, and more time with me. Maybe they realized this in hindsight, if they did though, they'd probably would have made more of an effort to know me. I'm a stranger to my own parents.
I feel like reading that book over again was a mistake, because it's like I can feel all the things my ten or eleven year old self felt, and then some.
My mom was right, I am soft. I'm a marshmallow. Even though I'm feeling melancholy now, this too shall pass.
Love from,
"Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins."... I used to love wearing moccasins.
B
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