I have been selected to fulfill my part of the social contract and have been seated on a jury. You can be certain that I will be writing about it at some point, but of course fully sanitized of identifiers and not until the trial is over.
I did notice something funny during the Voir Dire part of the process (Questioning to make the jury selection). Right off the bat they take attendance. They asked us to say “Here,” or “Present” when our name was called. About the first 19 of us said “Here.” Then someone said “Present.” I wondered about the psychology of that. I don’t even know how to articulate the question I’m asking myself really, other than “Why say present when everybody up until that point has said ‘Here’?” Why choose one word over another? Why make the conscious choice to say something different? Would you have said “Here” if everyone up until that point had said “Present?”
Weird.
So… I’m gonna get back to work on the travel entries. Watch this space.
Take good care.
© 2012 Roy Guill, The Naked Investigator
the same thing happened to me this fall when I was on jury duty, one person said present and everybody laughed. Voir dire is pretty interesting in the smaller Ky counties where everybody is related to or knows half the people in the area.
I wound up in court in KY about 20 years ago. I found the whole process fascinating and very entertaining (Right up until the point where I had to pay $90 for my expired license plate).
I have family in KY still. I can only imagine how far afield they would have to go to find someone not related to/acquainted with one of my uncles!