jury duty
i think that the worst part of this whole jury duty situation was the fact that i indeed had to go to jury duty. ever since i was 18 i had been getting the jury duty notices and simply throwing them in the trash. i would look at my mail, and see that jury duty summons, laugh at it, and toss it right away. in my opinion, jury duty was for suckers and chumps, and in my opinion, i was neither.
that was until a few weeks ago. i was drunk and got into a huge bar fight at one of those jock frat boy college bars in fullerton. i dont really remember that much of it, since i was so drunk. but i do remember that i was kicking major ass and apparently i am a huge racsist and gay basher when i am drunk. the cops said i was calling everyone a faggot and a nigger, who knew? the cops said that there was a warrant out for me. i told them they were full of shite and asked them what the warrant was for, and they told me it was for unsuccessfully showing up to jury duty.
my lawyer made a deal with the assistant district attorney's office that involved me doing a shite load of community service and to finally go to jury duty.
i had to go on tuesday, december 6th. the day that will forever live in infamy. it was at the santa ana courts off of main street. i had to be there at 7:30am. i showed up early, cause, i have this thing about being late, so i am always at least 10-15 minutes early. so, i was there at 7:15am. as you walked in, you had to go thru a metal detector, like at the airport. i walked thru and set off the alarm, of course. the balif's (court police) told me to take off my shoes and belt and keys and cell phone and anything metalic and put it on the table. i did as i was told and went thru the metal detector again, this time without any bells and whistles going off. one of the balif's was looking thru my things on the table and picked up my keys and saw a small little swiss army knife attached to my keychain. when he saw this his eyes bulged and he immediately got on his walkie talkie and declared, "we have a situation, we have a knife here!" saying this to god's knows who. i asked him what was the problem and he told me to shut the fuck up and to step away from him and go against the wall. i went to the wall like he told me to. i was standing there for a some time while the balif was no in a huddle with a group of other balifs. they were all examining my swiss army knife and my keychain, they were holding it up and looking at it like it was a fucking alien fossil or something. finally, one of the balifs came up to me and asked me if i knew why they took my keys away. i told the balif not to fucking patronize me or treat me like a fucking 5 year old. he said that i had just brought in a conceiled weapon into the court and that i was under arrest.
i told him that was bullshite. i told him that i had a little swiss army knife. we started arguing and yelling, it was getting pretty intense actually. in the middle of us yelling he asked me if i was muslim (translation = are you a terrorist?). i asked him what the fuck did that have to do with anything, then i told him that was none of his business. i asked him why he was making such a big fucking deal about my little swiss army knife key chain when he was walking around with a fucking gun, then i pointed down to his gun. and that was when all hell broke loose.
when i pointed to his gun he yelled, screamed "HE'S GOING FOR MY GUN!". and it was at this point, that time actually stood still for me. everything stopped, like when you put a dvd or vhs movie on pause. i knew i had fucked up, i knew i was in deep shite, and i knew i was in for a lot of pain.
the next thing i knew, i was swarmed on by balifs, i felt someone grab my neck, someone push on my waist, someone push on my legs. it was like a huge painfull dog pile. my cheek and forehead meet the floor, and they didnt get along very well. they handcuffed me and took me to this small room next to the front entrance.
i thought i was royally fucked at this point. but they didnt pat me down, they didnt empty out my pockets and they uncuffed me and told me to sit down in this little doctor like waiting room. the room was small, but the seats were super fucking comfy. there was this other dude in there with me, this old kinda crazy looking asian guy. he was wearing this blue hoody and he had the hoody on. i was just sitting in the comfy seat, waiting, and i kept feeling the asian guy starring at me. you know how when someone is starring at you, and you can just feel it, you can sense someone looking at you? well, i was feeling this for about 15 minutes and i just couldnt take it anymore, and i turned around to give him an ugly look. but he just kept starring at me. it took e a while to figure out that he was in fact sleeping with his eyes open. so, i took a picture of him with my camera phone
so, to make a long story hopefully shorter. the balif came back and told me that they were going to arrest me for carrying a concealed weapon. i told him that they couldnt do that because in order for it to be considered a concealed weapon, the blade length has to be over 2 1/2 inches long, and my blade was no wear near that length. he left again, and came back in about an hour and told me i was free to leave.