Barrier Island Girl in court

By jury summons, of course!

You may be seeing less of me [my photos] for a few days since I have been chosen for a trial this week and dutifully sworn to mention nary a detail to friend or foe. Neither am I to watch the news, or read the newspaper, or research the name of the individual on the computer or by any electronic device before that date. I'm not technologically savvy enough to know what other electronic devices that may include, but I won't try, I promise.

I sat through three rounds of Voir Dire today -- which I had always pronounced as Vwah deer, yet all but one attorney pronounced it as Vor dire or Vwar dire. Am I talking fancy or is it a regional thing? One thing for sure is that I am exhausted after eight hours at the Escambia County Courthouse. I longed to be back taking beautiful photographs of the island instead of wearing a dress and real shoes, listening to personal life details of fellow jury pool members and any unfortunate life experiences or connections they may have in their past to influence their ability to remain unbiased in any given case. {{{sigh}}}

I had the horrible fate to be the first (and last) person in court to let their cell phone ring. To make matters worse, I was sitting in the front row and could not find the darn thing which was blaring out Mozart's darkly dramatic Symphony No. 40. The judge's eyes peered over his glasses, his right eyebrow rose dangerously close to his hairline as he focused his gaze directly on me. In frustration, I turned my handbag upside down and dumped the entire contents on the bench next to me while a kind-hearted fellow juror helped me paw through the mess to shut the darn thing off before it went to the next movement.

In my defense, I had forgotten to turn my cell phone back off only after the 2:15 p.m. break when I called home, was tired, and momentarily distracted afterwards. Perhaps that's similar to what they all say. From this point on I shall leave it in my car, packed in a cooler, of course, during our 95+ degree heatwave.

Thankfully the judge was lenient, saying that at that point of the day perhaps we needed a bit of comedic relief and he felt I was chastised enough by my obvious embarrassment. Bless you, Judge Terrell. I thought I'd experienced my first ever hot-flash, but it was just my Scots-Irish heritage topping out its DNA barometer of humiliation. Me, the first person to grumble about cell phones in public. Me, the phone-o-phobic. Me, the proclaimer "people should turn those darn things off in public", finally received her karmic comeuppance.

Nevertheless, blog viewers, please forgive my slower pace this week as I honor one of the three requirements of U.S. citizens (remember, I'm exempt from one), and excuse me while I go check to see what else is on besides the 10:00 o'clock news.