Dodged a bullet

Some while back I ranted about the absurdity of the Massachusetts "One Day/One Trial" jury system. The idea behind this was to spread the load of jury service equally. What has instead happened is that the same 20-25 percent of eligible jurors are called again and again and again, myself among them. After your first trial, there is little to it but repetition.

The hour cometh and now almost is. I was supposed to show up tomorrow, but all Thursday jurors are now supposed to show up next Monday, along with Monday's pool. I didn't like the sound of the last note of the message: "We'll need all the jurors we can get." Mind, this is for Superior Court, where the big felonies and the perpetual civil actions are heard (not necessarily in that order).

Apart from the narrowness of the actual pool, I'm annoyed by the ability of the system to glom onto people at the worst possible time. I'm at the end of my third month of part-time and fairly complex employment that could lead to better things. Had they come calling a year ago I would have been pleased to take a month or two out of my life for some show trial or other. Just now, it's extremely awkward, but not awkward enough to be an excuse.

I've been thinking over the jury questionnaire one must bring, in light of the troubling material on bullying and its aftermath in last Sunday's Boston Globe. That in turn followed much extensive coverage of the problem in the local media. Such coverage, today, begets the dirty trail of semi-literate drivel called comments.

The short of it is I believe I'll out myself as a survivor of teenage bullying on the questionnaire. I described it here once, and I'll link to it directly. My experience was in the higher percentiles of degree of violence. Degree of violence, I'm finding, is what separates the survivors and their baggage from two other, and equally despicable, sets of humans. One contains the "experts," who have persuaded themselves that bullying is merely taunting and teasing. The other contains the tough guys who think holding bullies accountable is bullshit, and that the bullied just have to toughen up. Those who experienced know better on the first count. As for the second, we're most of us tough enough to have worked out useful lives despite these shadows: tougher than you, tough guy.

I suppose the experts are in third-degree denial. But I am convinced that the "toughen up" crowd were all bullies as children and adolescents, and remain bullies as adults, co-workers, bosses, you name it. Were I placed on a jury and asked to deal impartial justice to such an individual, I would find it impossible. Resisting the chance to get even may be one toughness I don't have.