A small part of me wanted the ‘new thing’ experience of serving on a jury so I’d have something meaty to write about.

But I’m actually quite happy not to have to go through it.

So, real quick, here’s the way this happens in Massachusetts: you get a summons for jury duty, when you respond you get a group number, and then after 3pm on the business day before your jury duty date, you call the number to see if your group has to report.

Since today, Tuesday, February 18, was my jury duty day, I called after 3pm on Friday (because yesterday was a holiday, so Friday was the last business day), and the recording said they were taking numbers 1-51. All other numbers were dismissed. As you can see at the right, I was 72. Dismissed.

So it’ll probably be another 3 years or so before I have to worry about this again.

I am pretty sure it was 2022 the last time I had to do this - I remember needing to call on the weekend of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.

Before that I don’t remember many other jury duty experiences - it had been a while since I had actually reported to a courthouse. That happened once and I did not like it.

I ended up being dismissed - I think maybe they filled the jury before they got to me? - but I was feeling very nervous and sweaty and uncomfortable about the experience after they brought us in to tell us about the case.

I’d be a bad juror. I think they’d figure that out in the interview part - or I’d just blurt out something like “I don’t know if I can do this!” (I got super anxious just calling the voice recording to find out if I had to come in.)

The funny thing about this summons was mine came a few weeks after Kathy’s, so she did everything in January as a preview of what I could expect in February.

She was called in to the courthouse, spent the day there, and just narrowly missed being assigned to a pretty intense case.

Mine was in superior court, so I don’t mean to brag, but it probably would have been a big deal if there was a case.

Luckily, I won’t need to find out.

I wonder if, because I reported that first time and wasn’t picked, that’s why there was such a gap before my next summons, or if that was just a coincidence and it was another coincidence that I was summonsed 3 years after not being called in.

We’ll find out in about 3 years, I guess.

*Update: I got an email late on Monday that said jury duty was canceled on Tuesday. So all of that for nothing anyway. Also, it appears that maybe because I wasn’t called in I could be summonsed again as early as next year.