"Boredom: The state of being weary and restless through lack of interest". In French, the word is "ennui' which is derived from Old French enui - annoyance.
A short while ago, I mentioned that I’m on Grand Jury Duty
and did a post explaining what that means. When I wrote that post, I had just
learned what a Grand Jury is and does, and I won’t repeat those basics here. What I had no appreciation for at the time was how much “down
time” there is when you’re serving on a Grand Jury. The Grand Jury is an
arm of the court and needs to be available to the District Attorney’s office to
further the process of juris prudence. When the Assistant District Attorneys (ADAs) are ready, so must the Grand Jury be, BUT until
they’re ready, the Grand Jury must wait.
There have been days in the last three weeks that we were in court no more than 31 minutes! The rest of the day we 23 jurors are sequestered in a long, narrow room in the center of which are two tables end-to-end. Together they are probably 2.5 feet by 14 feet in
dimension and accommodate 14 of us at any point in time. Six more chairs line an
inside wall and straddle a water cooler, and there are ten chairs lining the
outside wall with windows. Thankfully, there’s plenty of light because without
it, this would feel much like a dungeon of sorts. There's a micro wave oven but no fridge, and a bookcase full of magazines and games.
The 23 of us range between the ages of 19 and 69 (or so) and
have varied backgrounds. The one thing we all seem to have brought to this service
is a sense of humor – thank goodness! As we sit here waiting to be called in to
hear the next case, we muster all our resources to fight the boredom.
Boredom, in the adult form of our species, is quite interesting to watch day after day. It appears to be mildly uncomfortable at best, spawning some entertaining behavior, and painful at its worse, truly testing patience and common courtesy. Some fight off the boredom by reading, others listen to music on their iPods or play games on their PCs. Some play solitaire or poker, another teaches cribbage, several assemble jigsaw puzzles, and others sleep.
In the past three weeks, I've even seen boredom reduce grown men to lads once more coloring car characters with crayola crayons. Small circles chat about everything from tugboats to T.J.Maxx, and jokes pepper the conversations more and more each day.
But, as the days and weeks pass, it takes more and more effort to be patient with the process and each other. By now we know the Grand Jury process and are more than familiar with most of the law that we need to consider for the crimes being brought before us, but read it they must "for the record". And, every day we get to know one another a little more. What we found entertaining in someone one day may become mildly annoying another day. St. Augustine wrote in the 5th century, "It is a common proverb that too much familiarity breeds contempt”. Let me not mislead you, it certainly has not come to that but frustrations ebb and flow depending on the day, the hour, and the case load.
Our group is a good group, a favorite of the ADAs and court staff - our collective good nature, and sense of fun and humor, gets us all through. Despite our exhausted patience, our naturally good intentions show their faces nearly daily ..... when one of us sneezes, in unison 22 others say "God bless you"!
