All rise for the honourable ronniecat...

God, I'm loving this. Guess what I got in the mail yesterday?

A summons for jury duty.

Seriously.

Never been called before in the 21 years I've been on the voter's list. This year, they call me.

Now, the irony is, I am a huge crime and legal buff, and I have always wanted to be on a jury.

I have a mental image of our good friends the Irony Gods, sitting around in their long white robes with their feet on the coffee table having a cup of tea, all trying to think up something to annoy me. One of them says, "Wait a minute! You know all those cheap true-crime paperbacks about notorious trials she buys at second-hand bookstores? I have an idea..."

I kind of balked at the thought of having to stand up in a room in the jury pool and announce that I am as deaf as a fence post, but fortunately there is a form you can send in asking to be declared "ineligible or exempted". Ineligible means that by merit of your occupation (cop, clergyman, etc.) you can't be a juror; exempted means that you're otherwise qualified but can't serve for one of a series of reasons. The pertinent one for me would be: "a person who suffers from a physical, mental or other infirmity that is incompatible with the discharge of the duties of a juror". Or maybe "a person who is unable to understand, speak or read the official language in which the trial is to be conducted". Toss-up. Exemption salad. Anyway, coincidentally I got a copy of my audiogram for my files on Monday so I can photocopy that and send it along with the form. That - a graph which reads flatter than a dead skunk on the 401 - should do it.

Just as well. With my luck the case would turn out to be some snoozer about a loser of a town clerk who embezzled $2500 from the Council coffers.

At least, that's what I will keep telling myself as I cry myself to sleep every night over this lost dream, (SFX: racking sobs)...

ronnie