Category Archives: Slice of Life – Two Writing Teachers

I Hope

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To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.
— “The Book of Joy” by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu  

I love this quote. The case for pessimism is hard to refute when we live in a very imperfect world, with various struggles and strife.

There has been this undercurrent of fear for many since November 8th. The tensions and animosities that marked the marked the election have only increased in the days between Election Day and Inauguration Day.  With January 20th only a few days behind us there is this sense for many that life is going to be faced with arduous trials, but that doesn’t mean we need to live in despair. We have to have optimism, to have hope.

Hope.

It is such an elusive word. How do you describe hope?

We all know what wrong is when we see it. We may not even have an exact name for it. Sometimes it is nothing more than gut feeling, but we know it. The same is true of the expectation that comes with hope, the trust the comes with optimism. We just know it.

Like pessimism, optimism is a feeling. Hope, however, is a conscious choice. It’s far too easy to wallow in the woe is me. We have to actively choose to have hope.

Hope makes us believe that things will be okay. It is a great support which makes us not give up easily, because it makes us believe that situations will eventually get better and can be solved. Hope finds out bright lines even in utmost darkness. It lets one to think miracles even in impossible situations. Someone who has hope will usually continue hoping. Hope makes our life have more motivation to continue and carry on in hard situations.

If one cuts off hope, it ultimately cuts off life. The desire to get involved in making the world a better place is not a bad instinct, it’s a necessary one.  It’s how we have survived. It’s how we will survive.

Having hope is an active, decisive mindset etched into every single moment. No matter the haze and fog that clouds our vision, hope cuts through, never losing sight of the stars behind the clouds.

Hope is not the promise that it will be easy, but the faith that we will get through it.

And we will.

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Writing Our Lives #52essays2017 challenge – Week 4
52essays2017
A year-long weekly personal essay/memoir/creative nonfiction writing challenge. To learn more about this challenge or to participate, check out Vanessa Martir’s website and learn about it.

And let’s see how others are slicing this week:
sol
Slice of Life Writing Challenge|Two Writing Teachers

And A House Is Not A Home…

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“But a chair is not a house, and a house is not a home…”
– Burt Bacharach and Hal David

Also with a respectful nod to both Dionne Warwick and Luther Vandross of course, I have to say – yes.

Until the age of twenty-three when I moved-out for good, I lived with my parents, more or less – that’s a very long story that can be summed up in a poem I wrote here.  It was my parents’ home yes, but not mine. I lived there as a child as all children do because, I had no choice.  Until I could afford to be on my own, I had no choice.  Most parents, at some point, will explain the finer points of home ownership. It almost always comes first in some form of My house. My Rules.  I had my bedroom, yes, but I never felt at home in my parents’ house. A stanza from the  above referenced poem…

Where do I go
This was my shelter
It was all I’ve ever known
I’m taught never to be where I’m not wanted
But what do I do when I’m a child
And where I’m not wanted is home

It was an intangible difference, but one I innately, if not completely, understood even as a young child.

“Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

When I moved out of my parent’s house, I moved into Bill’s parent’s house. They were both retired and aging, still for the first couple of years very much with us. Yes, it was technically the parents’ house and there was definite clashing of heads twixt all four of us adults from time-to-time, but there was a mutual respect companionship and love throughout those walls.  As his step-father’s health rapidly declining and his mother was showing the very first hints of Alzheimer’s I found myself in the role of partial caretaker of the elderly parents. Living with them taught me that home and family is are relative terms less defined by blood, more defined by relationships. Bill has cousins, the family of his mother’s best friend. People he was not related to by blood, but were very much his family. That was the first place I felt at home.

“When I think of home I think of a place where there’s love overflowing…”
Home – The Wiz Soundtrack

Whether in an apartment, but especially when we actually owned our own house I learned home was more than my four walls and the roof over my head. Home is an environment. It was my dog I could hear happily barking and doing what we dubbed the happy-happy-joy-joy dance as soon she sensed my approach to the door. It was the feeling that greeted me when I walked through the door. It was my sons and husband who waited for me to get home. It extended out of the walls and windows of my actual abode to those we welcomed within. My sons’ friends who knew they better “greet an adult first when coming through my door” before going to play video games in their bedroom. Our friends and family coming over for barbecue and the annual Superbowl party.   At long last I had found home.

And then I lost it.

“Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.”
― Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project

Through a series of events I’m not going into here, when my husband died I was no longer able to keep living in our home and long story-short I wound up moving in with the one person who always had my back, and opened her home to me when I needed one, my best friend. Coming from a life of being an only child, living with Bill who was estranged from his living sibling and myself having the two boys, I had lived in relatively quiet homes. The realities of living with a large family was foreign to me. It was one thing to know, or rather know of, a string of siblings and nieces and nephews of her family, but I had very little interaction with them over the years. I understood them in the Hallmark card concept of everyone was around for Thanksgiving dinner in which we showed up for an hour or so and then left to visit elsewhere. Still very much walking the Path of Grieving at the time, plus a series of other mayhem that befell, I was grateful, to have a roof over my head. I was grateful it was with my best friend, whom I love dearly. After a twenty years of finally having a true feeling of home in my life, being in a home not my own again was especially stinging. The day-to-day of always having people who were not my family, always around, and as I felt in my business, was something to which I had much trouble adjusting. I quickly understood that none of them would ever really understand how I could be in my room, reading a book not wanting any interaction just as I would never understand the sound and fury and a constant stream of people coming and going that was their norm. Over time I was definitely more at home there. A couple of her siblings have claimed me as I have claimed her as my sister on all legal forms. Still, for all of that, I could never really make the apartment we shared feel like my home. Because I knew from the onset, no matter how long I stayed there, it was always a temporary thing and she would likely be the only person to miss my presence when I finally left.

“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there anymore.” – Robin Hobb, Fool’s Fate

Twice times I rode the train and went back to my old block, to “casually” pass by my old home. The first time was maybe a year or so after the boys and I left. The house was empty of tenants, the fence needed repair, the yard was overrun with weeds.  The second time was perhaps around the third year mark when I saw it in passing from a train.  The yard was cut, a car was in the driveway, the house was occupied by a family not my own. Both times I was still in grief, so all I saw in my heart were how the Christmas decorations would hang from the awning. The football shaped balloons we attached to the fence for Superbowl, where the grill stood in the yard. I saw it while passing by in a car a couple of summers ago. The building was almost out of my sight before I even realized where we were. I understood I would have been immediately in tune with it before, it did not register because it was no longer home to me anymore.

If there is one thing we humans all have in common, it is that we all want a place to call home.

After several years of living with my best friend I am under my own roof again. I am on totally on my own, no children, no romantic partners, just me, but I feel it. I still have some furniture I need to purchase, some décor I need to work out, deal with a host of other changes, big and small, in my life because of it, but I feel it. The views are very different than before, how I move around is very different than before, it is a very different feeling than before, but I feel it nonetheless.  And oh when I climb the stair and turn the key in the front door at the end of the day, yeah I feel it…

“Home is where the heart is.”
– Gaius Plinius Secundus

HOME.

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Writing Our Lives #52essays2017 challenge – Week 3
52essays2017
A year-long weekly personal essay/memoir/creative nonfiction writing challenge. To learn more about this challenge or to participate, check out Vanessa Martir’s website and learn about it.

And let’s see how others are slicing this week:
sol
Slice of Life Writing Challenge|Two Writing Teachers

 

You Must Remember This

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I find myself the owner of treasures of value to no one, but history and as the unofficial family historian – me.

My late-husband was a semi-hoarder, a trait well earned from his mother as I came to learn over the years. In a series of happenings in the two years after his passing that I will not go into here, things were put into storage for what I hoped would be for a few short years. Eight years later I in turn have inherited all of these things and have finally begun the arduous process of sorting through them.

Some things were easy to decide what to do with, such as the receipt from Sears & Roebuck. Think about it, I said Sears & Roebuck. The receipt is so faded, I could barely make out the date (06/01/68) and the cost ($27.00), but not the purchase item itself. I’m reasonably sure -were she alive now- Laura, my late mother-in-law, would not be too put out that I tossed it. Reasonably sure – I think. $27 was a hefty amount for a S&R purchase back then. A part of me sincerely feels that she could likely recall what the purchase was for – with the steel trap that was her mind before Alzheimer’s took its toll.

The birth certificate of a brother-in-law, deceased long before I met my husband, is another story. From the 1940s, I can still feel the raised seal of its stamp, letting me know it is official if not the true original. Marriage certificates, note the plural on that. My erstwhile mother-in-law was quite the dish, let me tell you! Old dog tags, family photos, more documents, family letters etc. were also unearthed. Two letters showing some serious animosity between sisters-in-law, shed a light on tensions I had sensed, but could never put name to back then. Letters from my late-husband to his mother while he was in the army nearly made me cry.  I am the only living person who can be the bearer of these captures in time for these specific people.  At least for the moment.

Bill was estranged from nearly every single person he was related to by blood. I know he has, (or knew he had?) a brother in San Diego. A falling out over twenty-five years ago has sealed the deal on my wanting to find him now. Some physical wounds heal, but the emotional scars can still fester. Somewhere out there is a niece with whom I did get along. Regrettably, as life has a way of doing, in with Bill’s passing I am ashamed to say we are no longer in contact. Her father’s birth certificate, among other items are things are rightfully hers and I would love to give them to her. Thus, I simply cannot let them go for I have hopes of finding her and being able to do such someday. But what do I do with this treasure trove now? Had I a private home with the ever useful basement or attic, there would be no question as where to put these in the meantime. However, the reality of living in an apartment where storage space is at a premium I find myself at a personal cross road.  For I also have my own treasures to add to the mix.

In a bin from storage I found the tops Bill and I wore for at our wedding. My best friend presented Bill and I with an heirloom clock. It has the traditional marriage vows printed on it, with our names and wedding date on a plaque attached to it. It is too obvious what it is, and after ten years of being a widow, now living in an apartment he is not a part of, I could not hang it on the wall. So it, the tops and a few other things I’ve deemed a part of “that time” yet feel should not be thrown away, has been stored up on a shelf in a closet. Out of sight, if not entirely out of mind.

As I am still sorting through the cache, currently all are boxed, taking up space on in front of a bookshelf in my living room. I fight the cleaning urge to just toss them and be done with it. It is treasures like these, mementos held onto and passed down are how people trace family. Not just the who someone was on the family tree, but who someone was as a person. The family tree can tell me Dorothy and Laura were sisters-in-law. Only finding those letters tells me that they were not fond of each other and how long that animosity ran between them. The letters tell me how much Bill loved his dogs. The family tree will tell you that Bill and I were married and when. Only the photos will give testament to the not exactly traditional aspects of the wedding itself.

In the interim, my not-so-immediate goal after the sort, is to scan and document everything I can. And perhaps laminate some of the older, more delicate paper items that are in danger of being lost forever. That is fine in and of itself, but while I can scan a photo of my three-year-old child wearing it, I cannot scan the “child-abuse” shirt itself.  Or scan the wedding clock, or the dog tags, or… or…

Most people can easily trace to their grandparents and perhaps back to at least one set of great-grandparents, but not much further.  One of the reasons sites like Ancestry.com and the television series “Who Do You Think You Are?” exist is because there are many who understand the importance of documenting these things, at least the paper things, while you can. In this throwaway society of new or nothing, it becomes harder and harder as people cannot or just don’t hold on to these pieces of the everyday anymore.

The thought that many years from now another family member will come across these previous timelines and enjoy these revelations as I have, fills me with joy. For while the photos and letters can be documented electronically, it is not the same feeling that raised seal or the texture of an old shirt under your fingertips. It is my wish that long after I’m gone, hopefully future great-grandchildren, will come across the old photos, the clock, the “child abuse t-shirt” and other treasures saved and smile just as fondly on them then as I am smiling now thinking of their stories.

That alone tells me I will be holding on to these treasures for a little while longer – throwaway society be damned.

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Writing Our Lives #52essays2017 Challenge – Week 2

52essays2017

A year-long weekly personal essay/memoir/creative nonfiction writing challenge. To learn more about this challenge or to participate, check out Vanessa Martir’s website and learn about it.

And let’s see how others are slicing it up this week:

sol

Slice of Life Writing Challenge|Two Writing Teachers

As Long As You Believe…

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So this happened …

I am sitting on the train on my way to work, listening to my iPod, when a little hand pats me on the arm getting my attention.  I look to the adorable tyke standing in front me. I am bad at children’s ages because they are all so big now, but I was guessing about six years old. Colorful red and white barrettes peeking out from under a snow-white and purple knit hat that coordinated with the purple parka she wore.  The mother, fussing with a little boy in her lap -clearly her son- hadn’t realized her daughter had moved until the child in all her wide, pretty half-moon, long lashed, wonder filled brown eyes looks up at me and asks:

“Hi. Do you know Santa Claus? Is he real?”

I’ll take this moment to explain that, as I do each year the week or so before Christmas, weather permitting, I am wearing my bright red, double-breasted ¾ length wool coat with a wide black leather belt. I’m also wearing an off-white scarf wrapped around my neck and a bright red wool hat, with a nice snowy white fluffy pompom on top.  My nod to the holiday season as it were. Thus why she felt she could come to me with such a question.  The mother smiles apologetically, getting ready to tell her not to bother me, but I speak right over her in that voice we adults reserve for little children as I remove my ear buds.

“What in the candy canes makes you ask a question like that, sweetie?”  I smile.

Hey, dressed as I am, it does kind of require I toe the party line – don’t judge!

“Patty in my class says there’s no Santa Claus.” And I can see the plea in her eyes still wanting to believe.

“Oh honey, Santa Claus is magical. He’s only real to those who really believe he is. Someone mean probably told Patty that Santa isn’t real and she believes them.  And now because she really believes them, there is no Santa Claus for her anymore.  That doesn’t mean Santa won’t be there for you. And what do you believe?”

“I think he’s real, but now I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?”

Because we are on the train, I didn’t want her to be in the way as people enter and exit, so I look at the mother and ask if it’s okay, before I pick the child up and put her on my knee.

I know. I know. But really, where else was I going to put her?

“Well, Patty says I don’t have to be good for Santa because there ain’t one…”

“Say there isn’t one, not there ain’t one” I interrupt, correcting her without thinking.

“That’s what Miss Jackson says, too! But I keep forgetting.” She smiles, the veracity of her teacher now confirmed, as she keeps on going. “Patty says there isn’t one.  She says I have to be good and nice only because Mama won’t get me nothing if I don’t.”

I bite my lip, from correcting her again, but she’s a smart little cookie and sees my face.

“Oops! Mama won’t get me anything?”  She corrects herself unsure.  I grin giving her an approving squeeze.

“Well I can’t speak for your Mama. Mamas have their own rules separate from Santa’s that you should to listen to. I will say that you should be good, not just for Christmas or around your birthday, because you think you’re going to get a present.  You should try to be good always because it’s the right thing to do.  It makes everyone around feel nice when you do and don’t you feel nice when you do good things even when you know you’re not going to get a present for it?”

“Yes.”

“Well there you go!”

“But even nice to Nicky?” She whines, pointing at her younger brother still squirming in her mother’s lap.  I laugh.

“Nicky is going to get on your nerves a lot while you’re little, and you’re going to get on his. That’s what happens sometimes with siblings. I am sure he won’t seem quite so bad to you when you’re both much older.  Not even Santa expects kids to be perfect all the time. Still, you should do your very best to be good always, and be nice, even to him, okay? ”

“Okay,” She sighs reluctantly, “I’ll try.”

“Claudia, we have to go.” Her mother stands with Nicky, who starts whining loudly.

As she slides from my lap, Claudia looks at me as if to say See?

“I know little brothers can be such doo-doo heads sometimes, right?” I whisper making her giggle in surprise, winking as she returns to her mother.

“Say Merry Christmas to the nice lady, Claudia.” The mother also mouths a grateful thank you to me.

Claudia runs to back to me with her arms open, so I lean forward for the hug.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas, Claudia.”  I give her a quick squeeze and send her to her mother.

Ladies and gentlemen that is my last good deed of this crazy year. I now aim to misbehave and reserve the right to be as much of a pain in the ass as I want to be for these last few days of 2016.

Merry! Happy! Joyous!

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Let’s see how others are slicing it up as we race toward Christmas and Hanukkah.

sol

Slice of Life Challenge – Two Writing Teachers

A Recipe for Hygge

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A large dose of merriment in the holidays that herald the coming of winter, regardless of hemisphere.

Delight in the dashes of Joy that are the a blanc beauty of fresh fallen snow.

Dollops of peace in enjoying the solitude of a good book or movie, new or old.

On a snowbound night – nothing re-hydrates like hot cocoa if cold; a chilled chardonnay if warm.

Dole heaps of compassion and goodwill for humanity’s less fortunate.

Whisk together friendship where the pot luck results in a smorgasbord of laughter and love.

Keep an extra roux of wisdom and strength on hand for rejuvenation to reduce the doldrums that may appear. Serve yourself and others liberally as needed in remembering it is only a season, and like all seasons, this too shall pass.

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What is Hygge? If you were to try to translate it, hygge (pronounced hoo-guh), like duende, it is more of a feeling than a word. It’s sort of a full-on embrace of all things toasty, cozy, and restorative to the soul, especially in wintertime.

Today at dVerse Michelle (Mish) tends the pub for Poetics and challenges us to create our own “recipe poem”, but not of the culinary kind. To instead, write about something more abstract such as “a recipe for love”.  Thus, for those of us, like myself – who are not major fans of cold weather –  I present my recipe for getting through the winter season quickly encroaching on the northern hemisphere.

dverse
dVerse ~Poets Pub | Poetics | Recipe Poems

 

We are in the first full week of December and several of my northern friends are already facing snow. It seemed a good time to get this recipe going.

 

sol

Slice of Life Tuesday Writing Challenge : Two Writing Teachers

real-toads-buton

Imaginary Garden – The Tuesday Platform

 

Decked Out

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After eight years of living with a roommate I am under my own roof again. It was a long hard climb to get myself back into a solid enough financial stability to do so and I am so happy! It was almost like Christmas as I unearthed the things from storage that I had not seen in all that time.

Some of it was bittersweet: The clock with the traditional wedding vows and our wedding date – a wedding gift from my best-friend. The shadow box containing last flowers and card he sent me, that were received after he was gone (you can read that story here). My late-husband’s folded flag in its wood case. Of those three items, only the flag is out to be seen. I decided other than a picture, it was the only other physical reminder of him that was needed – even the kitchen magnets agreed.

My eldest was placing kitchen magnets of our astrological signs on the new refrigerator the way they were on the old one. When he placed Aquarius, Bill’s sign, on the door it fell to the floor and broke. He looked crestfallen showing it to me, worried about my reaction. I shrugged and explained, it’s been ten years and this is a new space. He was not supposed to be here prominently like this. My sign and my sons’ respective signs were the only ones needed.

Most of the unpacking was long, but happy: getting my king-sized bed back after years of sleeping on a full-size. My barely used pots & pans before everything happened just soap and water away from use again. Seeing my favorite books back on shelves and seeing the artwork I loved displayed again – squeeeee! What brought a huge smile to my face was uncovering all of my holiday decorations. I now have a closet that is full of nothing but holiday cheer. I was determined that my place would be free of any unnecessary boxes by Thanksgiving so I can spread that cheer.

For being back on my own meant I could return to doing what I could not do for eight years. My annual tradition of putting up the Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving was back and I could not wait! I have a lot of decor. Enough that I can do color various themes. Oh, what to choose! I literally opened boxes and whatever three colors captured my eyes first were what went up.

Now, I am not going to lie, 2016 has been one doozey of year. Still, with journeys to Dubai & Abu Dhabi, Cuba and Italy now under my belt, I cannot claim it was all bad when I can walk in MY door and for the next few weeks I get see this:

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!! Happy Holidays !!

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sol

Slice of Life Tuesday Writing Challenge  – Two Writing Teachers

A Mile In… 

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It has been a couple of days now since we’ve made Donald Trump the new president-elect. Between the various camps of who voted for whom or berating/thanking those who did not vote at all and what it all means,it has been a shit storm of a week. In the midst of it are those saying it won’t be as bad as others are making it out to be. And that is the thing that has probably bugged me the most.

The majority of those who have touted unity, to pull ourselves together, have predominantly been white cis and yes, male. Now,to a point they are correct. It won’t be bad for them with Trump as preident, for it was not bad for most of them to begin with regardless of who held the title of POTUS. Their privilege comes with rose colored glasses that not nearly enough have chosen to at least lower them enough to view how things are for others whose shoes walk a different path. And those shoes coverd many different paths during the campaign – Blacks, Hispanics, women, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, gays..

Muslim women who have had their hajibs snatched from their heads. American born Mexican children being tauted by classmates they will be deported. A black man being called nigger and spat upon. A gay man being told he will soon be executed straight or to death. All of these events, perpetrated by whites, happened within the first 48 hours of Trump being elected. This is not to say any of these could not have happened at any other time, it could, and likely has, many times before. But it has ratched up considerably in just three days. This daily fear and unfortunate reality for many of us -for as a black woman in America I do feel those  crosshairs- is not going to be abated because many chose to push those rose colored glasses higher to hide the ugly.

Anyone denying that the climate has changed enough that the more hateful among us feel not just free, but justified, to behave this way since Trump’s election are accessories to the perpetrators, for silence is consent. Armchair tut-tutting after the fact is empty lip service to those who hurt. For while I do not believe the entire country will completely fall into the dark ages racially and socially, if the past couple of days have proven nothing else, I do believe the day to day social climate is going to be a rougher path to travel. 

In all honesty, I have no idea what kind of president Trump will be. I have no idea how a Republican led House, Senate and presidency will effect this nation as a whole. They may yet shock us all. Not holding my breath on it,  though. I have lived through several presidents now in my adult life. Some were given my vote and I lived through them, some were not and I lived through them. Like it or not, and I don’t, the nation has elected Donald J Trump, President of the United States of America and I am an American. I will respect the Office of the President of the United States, for I know it is bigger than the man who serves in it, and I will live through this president as well.

As I explained to an erstwhile colleague I ran into on the subway, just because it’s not your reality doesn’t mean the reasons for my fear are not real. Telling me it won’t be that bad is in fact saying it will be bad. Don’t you dare then belittle and dismiss my fears as unjustified.

And This Too…

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I came across this old comic Calvin and Hobbs strip on the internet a while back. It broke my heart.
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It’s not that Calvin is growing up which makes me sigh, for that is the natural way of things. It is through the use of pills (Ritalin?) that stymies his imagination and thus reduces Hobbs to his stuffed animal reality that saddens me.

Please note – this is not a post for or against the use of such medications for children. I understand that. Every child, every need is different and we can all tell stories siting the pros and cons for its need. This is more a bittersweet acknowledgement of this too shall pass in the time of imaginary friends however that passing occurs.
sol
Slice of Life Writing Challenge : Two Writing Teachers

I Want To Know

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I was minded of Foreigner’s power ballad “I Want To Know What Love Is” when I read this post and while the bastion of nonsense that is the world of Tumblr every now and again someone gets a clue. This is not an end all-be all answer, for every love is different, but it is one that gets  the core of all long lasting loves it right.

(Click each one to enlarge it)

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This is what lasting love is.

This is not to say that sparks won’t happen anymore, they do, but lovers tend to forget a spark is designed to be a temporary thing.

A spark is what gets the fire started, not the fire itself. And it’s that fire you want to build.

Now and again a new spark causes a flare-up to help keep those fires burning, but again it is not the fire itself. It’s not the spark, but the fire of the heart/h that gets you past the first year, the first decade, the fifth decade and beyond.

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sol

Slice of Life Writing Challenge – Two Writing Teachers

To Serve With Loath…

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Ah jury duty!

While I can’t speak for the rest of the country, or even the rest of the state for that matter, here in New York City a summons to jury duty seems to fall into 3 major camps:

  • Yay! I get out of work!
  • Damn! This shit again!
  • Whatever!

Then there is the subset cross twixt the Yays and teh Whatevers in which I fall. I do not relish jury duty, with glee, nor do I find it abhorrent or am apathetic to it.  I get the whole “what if it were happening to me” aspect of it and that it’s my civic duty. If I think myself to have the wherewithal to decide whether a candidate is worthy to be president surely I have the same to decide whether the average Joe is innocent or guilty. I merely hope if sellected for a case, I can serve with as little interruption to my life as possible, but I serve. Believe me when I tell you most NYCers report for jury duty with less joy than going to the gallows.

After herding us cattle, I mean joining us prospective jurors together in to  one large hall, the court clerk begins to read the rules and expectations of serving on jury duty. Clearly she s reading from a script so memorized that the sheets of paper in front of her is just a mere formality – it’s akin to watching a flight attendant who has done the Y M C A of flight safety nth times too many. Moreso, the clerk delivers her instructions with a monotone that would make a Ben Stein monologue seem lively and engaging by comparison.

Luckily, being allowed to use our phones as long as we were quiet I gratefully distracted myself from the acute boredom by snarking on facebook. Commentary from yesterday:

“Anyone who has a letter from their boss, explaining why you cannot serve jury jury, please bring the letter to the front so we can stamp it “Denied” to return to to your boss. You will not be excused.”

The “Aw fuck!” disappointed expressions around me are hilarious.

There was a woman a few seats from me who nicely took the tri-folded paper in her hand, put it in her purse, then not so nicely swore under her breath. Whoops. I can’t swear on it, but I am reasonaby sure I saw her get it stamped at the front desk later. Sometimes it bes liket dat – as the old folks say.

For the first couple of hours a max of ten names were called. For a bunch of peope who clearly did not wish to b there, I was surprised by the general chatter around me from those who names were yet to be called. It became repetetaive and annoying quickly. There were four or five people conversing around me being really whiny about the whole thing. I actually said to a guy trying to draw me in to the madness “Look. Very few of you actually want to be here. But you are here. You can’t get out of it. Constantly bitching isn’t going to get you out any sooner. Grow the hell up and shut the hell up.” 

I don’t think they are going to let me sit with them during lunch. I’m truly heartbroken over it.Speakng of lunch – another facebook comment:

The alacrity with which people hauled-ass out the juror waiting room for lunch is only going to be beat in humor by the comparative lethargy of these same folks upon reentry when the break is over. I could be grossly wrong in my assessment, but I don’t think my fellow jurors-in-waiting want to be here.

Suffice to say my facebook friends were amused.

Now we were warned from onset that if our name are not called, we may be realsed as early as 3pm, however, we may indeed be there until 5pm. When I looked uo at the clock at the front of the hall and saw 3:20pm, I prepared myself for the long haul. Minutes later Lady Ben Stein cle at the front desk announced “Ladies and gentlemen your service for today is concluded. Please return at 9:30am tomorrow…”. 

 Going by the speed with which many bee-lined for the doors. What was heard was:

“RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!!!”

As nearly all headed out as though the buildng were on fire. I say nearly beause some of us remained seated clearly observing this mad dash with bemusement. Then there was the cutie-pie who had not move at all because he was lightly snoring, about to drool asleep. His complete look of bewilderment as woke him to a near empty hall was priceless.

Today is day two – Let the games begin…

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