So I had my first real adult assignment this week, I got called for Jury Duty. Now jury duty has a bad reputation--for being boring, slow, a waste of time. However, I'm here to report that I found it great. Yesterday when I arrived, the guy running it couldn't have been nicer and more polite. He explained the ins and outs, apologized we were missing work, even gave us a half hour coffee break within the first hour of being there! Already I'm sold, trying to imagine getting half hour coffee breaks while I'm teaching. But the fun doesn't end there.... the girl next to me nudges me about half way through the guy's speech and points across from where we're sitting and says, "Hey, isn't that Ethan Hawke?" She was right. Now where else in America are you going to be sitting in jury duty on a Monday morning with Ethan Hawke but in New York City? This is also great because my all-time favorite movie is Reality Bites (a sad but true trivia fact about me).
All in all, I'm always kind of entertained by scenarios where you're lumped together with a random group of people in a room. The dynamics are just fascinating, watching the nervous New Yorkers scrolling through their Blackberries and flipping through their Posts. Getting to spend two days with the Ethanater was probably my first and only brush with celebrity (they don't frequent Harlem as often as the Village). For a people-watcher like me, it was great--and hey, missing two days of work doesn't hurt either.
