Livid Cai Emmons by Cai Emmons 9781636280769, 1636280765 instant download after payment.

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The summons to jury duty came as a surprise because I’d only been back in this small Northwestern town for a few months. I thought I’d slipped in unobtrusively, pulling a “geographical” as some therapists like to call it, a false belief that a change of location will change one’s state of mind. I knew better, but one always hopes. Initially I was annoyed by the nasty legal tone of the summons, and I cast about for a legitimate reason to be excused, but there was none—or none that would stand up in the eyes of the law. No dependents. No financial hardship. As a self-employed accountant my work is flexible. So, I resigned myself—the odds were I wouldn’t be chosen anyway.

The appointed day, just shy of the summer solstice, was absurdly sunny and likely to be hot, hardly the kind of day one wants to be stuck in a courtroom. I made my way through the labyrinthian courthouse to a large windowless anteroom where I sat with a slew of other potential jurors—well over a hundred of us—escaping into one of my Thinkathons in which I meander around the serpentine pathways of my brain. My father kept coming to mind, though I wished he wouldn’t. He had been on all sides of the law—and would have plenty of opinions about me serving on a jury. Not that I would listen.