Voir dire of inevitability

I should have known. I really should have. It's just the way my luck runs. And yet I never seem to take the lesson to heart; instead I continue to test the fates, hoping the winds will blow differently to shift the raincloud out from over my fortune, drowned as it is in absurdities and mixed metaphors.

They say lightning never strikes twice, but I sometimes feel that it continues to zap me repeatedly, figuratively defying the odds in singling me out and leaving me stunned and bewildered but missing any marks as proof that something strange and ridiculous and hellishly divine may have just occurred to me alone, just as it quite literally did nine years ago while I was out for a solitary stroll along the empty shoreline with a borrowed umbrella for a lightning rod.

Anyway, this week was nothing nearly that improbable. Instead, rather than postpone to a future and, quite possibly, equally bad time, I answered my call to Jury Duty in the hope that, as a purely numbers game, I would walk away unselected. And that was clearly my first mistake.

Naturally my number came up Monday, so I reported to the Jury Room at the Hall of Justice on Tuesday at 1pm, still hoping for a reprieve. Of the several hundred people sitting around bored, reading, napping, and trying to conduct business in absentia, surely the majority of us would walk away without getting called into a courtroom. And my confidence grew as first one, then two, then three courts were filled or canceled without me. Several hours passed and the end of the day drew near and one court remained, and obviously my confidence was mistake number two.

Of course, among the 75 or so people ultimately assigned to courtroom 17, I was still sure that I would walk away. And in fact, all afternoon on Wednesday, I sat in the back of the room, uncalled, as the jury box seats were filled and reshuffled. 24 people whittled down to 12. Come back Thursday at 1:30. Seats 13-23 are refilled with the computer's random selections - a wave of relief washes over me as it becomes clear that they can't let all those people go. Even when I was called to fill that very last seat, #24, I still thought I would get to go home at the end of the day. I'd seen who they let go, I knew how to answer the questions to be excused: Guns are bad, that hypothetical question is pointless, it's difficult to set aside emotion to consider just the facts.

And yet, one by one, the seats in front of me emptied and I was left to occupy seat 13. And despite going through the motions with another 11 people, the counsel finally had no objections and I was sworn in as Alternate Juror #1. Seriously?! Seriously! Not only do I have to sit through the whole trial, but I likely won't even get to deliberate! I know this because it's precisely what happened the last time I was called to Jury Duty three years ago.
Oh the suckage.

This is why I don't gamble with money.