Adversarial relationships

That's what Darwin has with the squirrels, and that's what the U.S. legal system is based on, which I should know, having devoted 18 months of my life to a misguided stint in law school more than 20 years ago. And that's what I'll get reacquainted with tomorrow when I've been summoned to jury duty in my new county.

Because of my trip to Puerto Rico in early March, I was excused for the first two weeks, but for the past three I've had to call a number each Monday evening to find out if we're summoned. The dreaded message came in today's recording, which said all jurors had to be at the court by 9 a.m. tomorrow.

"It's your civic duty," I've been reminded when I've complained of being summoned as a juror in almost every place I've lived in when neither my husband nor most of my friends have been chosen, ever.

I was first summoned while I was a senior at Harvard and remember having to plead my excuse in front of the judge, who listened to my reasons (I was finishing my honor's thesis and studying for my honor's comps) and dismissed me without a single question or hesitation. Then I was summoned in 2005, when we lived in the big city near my small college on the hill, right before I was to do my Ph.D. candidacy exam. I wrote a pleading letter, requesting an excuse and was promptly granted one.

Here in this farm county, though, I only got excused for 2 weeks of the 5 weeks of jury duty I was summoned for in March, and only because I was in Puerto Rico dealing with my father's illness. Now that I'm back here, I'll have to see whether I can persuade the judge tomorrow that serving as an actual juror would be simply too disruptive in too many ways. We'll see.

I think there's something odd about the fact that I, a Latina, have been summoned so many times when, again, none of my closest friends (except for my wonderful friend KG) have been. I've never been summoned in Puerto Rico and I wasn't called when I lived in Washington, D.C. But this is the third time in 30 years or so that I've come up in the juror pool.

I'm not one to believe much in coincidences and would likely tend to believe that someone somewhere is thinking that, as a Latina, I fulfill some kind of quota, but I'm not sure why I should have to bear more of a civic burden than most everyone else.

While it is a very important service, and I would be glad to do my duty under less stressful circumstances, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that I'm the one who gets repeatedly selected to serve.

And, now, with my father's illness and a difficult semester that is still five weeks away from completion, this just becomes one more thing to worry about. At any rate, enough whining. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. I'll let you know!