Jury Selection: Part II
Alarm blaring at me, I groggily crawl to the end of my bed and hammer the snooze button for a fifth time; it's Friday morning, before 8:00 and I don't want to get up. Mom pokes her head into my room a moment later to nag about me still being in bed and something about my brother screwing up the clocks--I decide to get up just so she'll stop talking so loudly. Finishing my morning routine hurriedly, I'm out of the house about 10 minutes later than I should be and headed for the good ol' subway station.

This time I manage to stay awake for most of the ride (whether it's out of fear for missing my stop again or out of fear for falling asleep on the sweaty and "big-boned" lady taking up half my seat next to me, I'll never really know) and fly up the stairs of the station once I reach my destination. I power-walk up University Avenue and slide through the courthouse doors, my bag all ready to be passed through the x-ray machine and I not holding anything metal, ready to be passed through the metal detector; I'm already a pro at this, but unfortunately the lady at the scanner doesn't know this:
    "Do you have anything in your pockets that you need to remove?"
    "I don't have any pockets."
And up the elevator to the sixth floor I rush once again--it's 9:35am; I'm only 5 minutes late.

A crowd of people are already up there, and there are three commissioners conveniently standing where I almost knock them over as I step out of the elevator. I check in with the lady who scans her attendance list 3 times over before she realizes I'm the first name there and then go and stand by the wall as they argue about whether or not they can proceed yet.
    "We can start now."
    "No, number 2 isn't here,"
    "No? I thought she was?"
    "She didn't check in with me,"
    "I thought she did,"
    "She did?"
    "I don't know, did she?"
    "I don't know..."
Just because I want to catch my breath, I let them debate over it a moment longer before I step up to them:
    "Um, excuse me: I'm number 2."
    "Oh, then we can start now,"
And so they start. It's only 9:45 by now and number 1 and myself are sitting outside the court room in the hot-seat and the warm-seat respectively. I can only imagine what the seat inside the court room is called; the "blisteringly torrid Inferno-seat" perhaps. It won't be long before I find out for myself. It's about 2 minutes after the 9 jurors that have already been selected walk by us (meaning there are only 3 spots left that I could possibly fill), number 1 is called in and I move into the hot-seat, leaving my comfortable warm-seat already comfortably warm for someone else to sit in. 3 more minutes after that--it's 9:53--the door to the court room opens and I'm called in.

I walk into the room and up the few steps to the inferno-seat, but I'm told not to sit yet. They need me to swear first--which I do--and before I sit down, Mr. Honourable himself is already addressing me so I don't sit afterall in order to keep eye-contact with the man, hoping he'll see the desperation to leave in my eyes.
    "Hello Miss. Chong, I see it says here that you're a student. And which school do you attend?"
    "I'm at U of T."
    "What do you study there?"
    "I'm an English Specialist,"
    "And which year are you in?"
    "I'm in my third year,"
    "Well I'm sure you're very anxious to get back to your studies, Miss Chong, and we won't keep you any longer--you're excused, thank you."
And with that I stepped down (without ever know what the inferno-seat's like) and head out the other set of doors to the court room, down the 6 flights of escalators, and through the one-at-a-time revolving doors into the before-10am sunlight.
...

ARGH!!! Aren't I happy that I didn't get picked for jury duty? Yes, I'm elated. But they could have told me I wasn't going to get picked TWO DAYS AGO!!! As a result, I spent a combined total of 3 hours on or waiting for the TTC today because right after I was released I headed to try to catch my one and only class left today that I had already missed on Wednesday... At least it's over. That much I can be glad for.