Hot Jury Love

Yesterday I had jury duty. I’ve avoided it my whole life up till now by using my parent’s sneaky and fool-proof tactic of throwing away all jury notices and pretending you never saw them. This served me well for years until I became an accountant and guilt overcame me. Plus, I found out that work pays for time off for jury duty. Dude, I’m there.
One perk of jury duty for me is that I live like 5 blocks from the courthouse. I live like 5 blocks from everything important: work, a 7-11, and a bar. So now I can add “courthouse” to that list, in case I’m ever annoyed about being arrested for something, I can now be like “Oh, well, it’s only down the street, I guess I’ll go for my court appearance.”

So I show up for jury duty and am ushered through metal detectors to go check in at the “jury lounge,” as though it’s some super cool place to be where you sip on tropical drinks with umbrellas in them and float in a pool on an inner tube. No, instead it’s got a staticy TV stuck on the soap opera network and about 200 smelly people. There was a woman sitting behind me who was coughing up a lung the entire time. Then a news story came on the TV that said that the first case of human avian flu had just been discovered. I subtly moved to the other side of the room, because the woman behind me clearly had it.

Like any normal 23 year old girl would do, I happened to notice a cute boy sitting near me reading Time magazine. He seemed particularly interested in the article about Dick Cheney, but I can see past that. I immediately got a strange sense that I would be talking to this kid, or that I had some connection with him. But I settled down to continue to pretend to read my CPA review book. People started getting called in groups to go to elusive court rooms on other floors. They were such herded cattle, they’d hear their name called and would wander off to where they were told. It dwindled down to a few jury rejects like myself. I swear, I think there’s some government file out there that prevents me from ever being picked for anything.

I have to admit, I did have jury duty once before. I was 18 and fresh out of high school and was pretty bummed at the prospect of having to get up before noon to do my civic duty. I literally showed up at 10:30, again, because my parents raised me to have no fear of authority. I sat there for like an hour, got dismissed on a two hour lunch, and came back at 1:30 when we were all summarily dismissed. So nothing exciting has every happened to me at jury duty.

So I honestly think there’s a file out that has all sorts of stuff about my uncle being in the M15 and all sorts of other shady things my family has done, like how many jury notices my parents have thrown out. So I was positive I wasn’t going to get called for anything and I would end up being the only person left in the cavernous jury room, only to be forced to split a peanut butter sandwich for lunch with Earl the security guard until everyone came back from their trials.

So I began planning my lunch get-away. I intended to leave for lunch and never return, citing “a stomach ache” if I were ever captured. But amazingly, I was finally called! I got so excited that I dropped my CPA review book. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever picked it up again. Oh well. CPA’s are over-rated.

But the best part is, guess who else was told to report to courtroom 38? The boy! The boy I’d been secretly spying on over the top of my book. I hope he didn’t notice I’d been on the same page for the last three hours.

So we file up to the courtroom where about 40 of us proceed to stand outside a dinky courtroom door for like twenty minutes, all looking a little lost and clearly in need of direction. Finally someone emerged from the courtroom and said we all had assigned seats and started calling off our named to be taken to our seats in the court room. Oh, it’s like grade school again! Will there be a place for my back-pack and Trapper Keeper?

So people start getting called off. My jury boy gets called and I learn his name. Then, as if destiny intervened, I was called next! So I burst through the crowd of people, and I’m like “I’m here! Right here! Heather.” So next to Jury Boy I proudly sat.

The rest of the courtroom stuff started to distract me and I started to get interested by it. There was a funny looking guy sitting at the defendant’s table with a clown-like ring of red hair who I learned was found with heroin and was pleading not guilty. Oh, sounds like a nail biter.

We then had to go around the room and say our name, occupation, the occupations of our children, our 3rd grade teacher’s name, what we had for breakfast, and the names of the thirteen original colonies. Jury boy next to me stands up and says he’s a Chief Accountant. Oh man, a boy after my own heart! It’s so meant to be!

Then it was my turn. There was one last question which was “Do you have any relatives in the legal profession?” So I stand up all haughtily and say proudly “My name is Heather. I’m an accountant. I have no children. And my sister’s in law school.” Then I go to sit down and the judge is all “What year is your sister? Has she had a clerkships or jobs in the summer?” Crap. She did something this summer. Something to do with law. And criminals. And going to work. “Um yeah I think she worked for a government attorney this summer.” The defense lawyer girl started furiously writing. Hm, that doesn’t seem good.

After hearing about every Joe Bloe in the courtrooms life history, we then get dismissed for lunch. Here’s my chance. “So you’re an accountant?” I said to jury boy next to me. “Yeah! I saw you’re studying for the CPA.” He responded. I’m so in. “yeah I am!” followed by flirty laughter on both sides. We walked out of the courtroom and silently walk in a big pack out the door. “So what are you doing for lunch?” he asked. “Oh I don’t’ know.” I said. I pretended to not know the neighborhood and looked around all confused. In reality, I had planned on walking the five blocks home, and eating some chocolate for lunch while watching the Daily Show with my feet up before returning to the courtroom. Then jury boy said, “Well, can I have lunch with you? Do you want to have lunch?” I almost fell over.

Long story short we giddily walked over to a nearby restaurant and had a nearly 3 hour meal. You get a really long lunch break at jury duty. We talked about everything: families, life, jobs, how we got here, where we’re going, the order of the universe, the transience of life, Paris Hilton’s latest hairstyle. It was great.

We kept talking as we walked back to the courtroom. He mentioned we should try to get together again. We were a little late and quickly took our seats. When suddenly I realized that we were back in jury selection and that people were probably going to start getting dismissed! It was all very quiet and somehow I found it a little rude to be whispering to the cute boy next to me about getting his number when the defense attorney was asking us questions about “our ability to be fair and reasonable.” Jury boy whispered to me that he hoped we got on the jury together and I agreed. But then the judge announced that they had narrowed the pool down to 15 people and if your name was not called, you must leave the courtroom in a quiet and orderly fashion. Oh no! And guess who’s name was called? Jury boy! And guess who’s name wasn’t? Curse you, sister in law school! I hope she knows she killed my jury romance. So Jury boy’s name was called and the rest of us start shuffling out. He stands up a little and whispers to me in an awkward moment, “It was really nice meeting you.” And before I could say a thing, I was asked to leave by the bailiff! I didn’t even get to say goodbye!

My friends now say I should have hung out outside and waited for him. No thank you, I’m not a stalker, and this is a courtroom, not gym class. But one of my guy friends, who’s always good at giving advice, even helped me by googling the kid’s name and workplace and has his number. So I could call him up. But he’s on a jury trial right now! So what do you guys think? I shouldn’t exactly be pursuing random guys right now, considering my circumstances, but I think I’m going for it.

Homeowner's Dissociation

Next week is my first annual homeowner's association meeting. I’m oddly excited. I went to one a few months ago and was so exciting to be pretending to be involved in where all my exorbitant home owner fees go that I spent most of the time patting myself of the back and planning what kind of selfish things I would now allow myself to do after making the effort to go to this meeting.

There’s like 400 units in my complex, so I had wrongly assumed the meeting would be well attended by yuppie downtowners like me, who burst through the doors in fur coats with little cocker spaniels in matching sweaters, who would discretely find a place to sit with an open seat next to it for all their tiaras and diamonds. These are always the type of people I assume live in my building, and that’s only because of the crazy blinged out cars I see parked in our structure. We have valet parking in my building. (Ok before you start groaning, it’s mandatory because of how tight the parking is and we pay up the wazoo for it. Did I just say “up the wazoo?”) The little 18 year old valets have apparently been instructed to park all the fancy cars in the front. Maybe for the intimidation factor, maybe so you’re put in your proper place when you drive up in your Ford Focus. But the cars in the front area are crazy. There are a couple Corvettes and Porches and probably plenty of other fancy pants cars that I don’t even know the names of. You can imagine how it goes when I roll up in my dirty Civic. Whichever acne-prone valet kid comes to park my car always looks a little sad because he knows he’s going to have to go park my car on the bottom floor in the corner, just to the left of the dumpster, back where no one will see it.

But anyway, back to this Homeowner meeting. I’ll fill all you non-homeowning kids in on our cool lingo now so I don’t have to keep writing our Homeowners. All us home-owning, too-cool-for-school types call home owner associations your “HOA.” “How’s the HOA doing, Bob?” “Oh, it’s going.” Or my personal favorite: “How about the SOB who runs our HOA?” “I know. WTF is his deal?” Then you’re super cool because you’ve just used like three acronyms and sound like a total dork.

The only reason I went to the HOA meeting last time was because I somehow got blind carbon copied on an angry email from an irate neighbor of mine, who I’ve never met and don’t plan to. His use of grammar was appalling (this coming from a girl who just ended her last sentence with a preposition) and he sounded completely stupid in his list of grievances to our HOA president, who was apparently out to lunch and never responded, which only made Johnny McNeedstoTakeaGrammarCourse even madder. This guy was using run-on sentences and commas like they were going out of style. He complained about our mail room, a chipped tile outside the elevator, the girl who drives the dirty Civic (oh crap), the dogs who poops on his doormat, and, to quote, “the unfortunate number of young people who have decided upon the horrific institution of marriage in our building.” Whoa! Someone had some Bitter-O’s for breakfast. He claimed that people are receiving too many packages because there are too many married couples in the building and then our mail room looks ugly. He finished by pointedly assuring our HOA president that he will be present at that night’s meeting to talk about the issues.

When I finished reading this email, I blinked a few times, closed my jaw from the agape pose, and quickly cleared that night’s schedule so I could attend the meeting of all meetings. This meeting was going to make the other meetings look like 4th Grade student senate. This would be a smack-down meeting that I would be telling my children about. There was going to be some HOA ass-kicking tonight! And I had ring-side seats.

So I show up to the meeting, way too eager and early, only to find that it is in our North Lobby, and involved about a dozen folding chairs and about six total attendees. I was appalled. The infamous mail room (defendant #408) was right next to our meeting site, along with the elevators, the doors to the street, and a few people’s condo doors. And some mastermind on the HOA decided to plan this meeting at 5:30. So basically the entire condo walked through the meeting while coming home from work, slamming doors, getting in elevators, coming back to check their mail, walk their dogs, or pick up their pizza that was being delivered. Some guy actually walked through the meeting to go on a date and came back two hours later with the same girl, and had the awkward first date goodbye two feet away from our meeting. Most of the people were looking at our sad little gathering as though it were some type of new club that was trying to get its footing.

The HOA board looked very un-menacing and included a skinny tall guy who shook noticeably throughout the whole meeting, a woman who was shaped like a squash and a wiry little girl who looked like she could be the squash girl’s snack. One of them mentioned that our illustrious HOA president, whom I had yet to meet, was going to be late because he had class. Class? Excuse me? Is this kid in high school? Is he going to be studying for his chemistry final when we need to be negotiating on Earthquake insurance? Is he going to blow our HOA bank account on Pokemon cards and chewing gum? I have clearly been out of the HOA loop for too long.

The meeting dragged on about nothing for like an hour and I realized Johnny Email-Complainer wasn’t saying a word! I was so disappointed. I recognized who he was right away because he looked nerdy and bitter and sat in the corner.

After like 90 minutes of boringness, the president finally arrived. I think he came in on a Razor scooter and he had a backpack on when he sat down. Holy Crap, he really is like my age. Turns out he’s in law school, but still he’s like 24 at most. How weird is that? I immediately judged him and assumed he was only our HOA president so he could put it on his resume or something, but he actually was regulating during the meeting and by the end of it, I was wondering in what unit this studly young leader parks his scooter.

The meeting as a whole was pretty disappointing though. Nothing was thrown, no one threatened to move out or call in their lawyers. And all the pizza being delivered just made me hungry. The HOA president didn’t ask me out, he must be gay. Although I decided it was for the best because if I started getting the nice parking, got my windows washed more then twice a year, and the carpet outside my door was vacuumed twice a day, people might start talking.