You have been summoned for jury service. You are required to respond to this notice within 10 days at www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/jury

Appearance Date: Thursday, October 24, 2013 Your group number: 4002 Jury ID: 101906931

My response was more “AWESOME!” than “Aw, man.” I am one of those throwbacks that enjoys voting in person at my designated polling place on Election Day… even for primary elections, bond issues and school-district overrides that will increase my property taxes to fund schools I don’t even use. (We have no kids. They don’t allow dogs on the playground. It’s a small price to pay to ensure the our next generation of policy makers is not led by feral ingrates who believe the earth is 6,000 years old and can’t find Russia on a map – even from Alaska).

So for me, going to the mailbox to find a jury summons postcard is akin to having Ed McMahon show up at my door with an envelope from Publishers Clearing House. Jury duty is AWESOME, because I get to perform one of my Constitutionally designated civic duties which include writing my elected officials, testifying before legislative committees, voting, attending political fundraisers where I can’t “max out” and generally getting all up in the democratic-process grill.

Plus, at jury duty, I’m getting paid to judge ($12 per day, plus mileage – that’s two bottles of wine and a jar of pickles). It’s not like I’m just standing in downtown Scottsdale being catty or flinging pooh on Twitter: I get to pass authoritative judgment in a court of law. Actions have consequences, bitches, and littering is a hanging offense in my courtroom, while truancy warrants breaking rocks in the morning and washing my car in the afternoon… in Arizona… in July… and don’t even ask what I would do to loiterers, jaywalkers, malingerers and the like.

I circled the date in red on the calendar – Thursday, October 24, 2013. I immediately logged in to the online juror registration system and completed the form to the best of my ability. On the appointed date, I packed my iPad, a snack (dark chocolate-covered almonds), a bottle of smartwater (pick me! pick me!), and a carefully curated book: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans will Survive a Mass Extinction by Annalee Newitz. I wore my favorite green corduroy dress, sensible clogs and my progressive-lens reading glasses – basically the uniform of a slightly nerdy, pre-menstrual, registered Republican, middle-aged woman who is more than a little paranoid.

WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT IN A JUROR? Apparently, the answer is more neck tattoos.

I arrived, as instructed, at 8:30 AM at the parking garage and took the shuttle with my fellow aspiring jurors to the Superior Court-South Court Tower – the very same tower that sparked Sheriff Joe’s and disbarred former county attorney Andy Thomas’s corruption investigations into county supervisors, private citizens and judges resulting in more than $5 million in settlements in favor of the picked-on parties. It’s a nice court complex with excellent WiFi, and Sheriff Joe’s office is right across the courtyard, so he gets to look at our incorruptible taxpayer dollars at work… every… single… day.

About 100 of us gathered in the Jury Assembly room, confirmed our online registration via the barcode readers at the handy kiosks, helped ourselves to complementary Starbucks (!) coffee and cinnamon rolls (courtesy of those altruistic souls who decided to forgo their jury payments and donate the proceeds to the snack bar), logged our devices on to the excellent (free!) WiFi and took our seats for 30 minutes’ worth of orientation videos: Summoned, Summoned Again (from the producers of the hit, Summoned) and Summoned-ALTF (from the people that brought you Summoned and Summoned Again – a fresh new look into the Arizona Lengthy Trial Fund).

My old friend (Arizona icon and National Treasure™) Justice Sandra Day O’Connor even made a cameo. I sat up straight, smiled winningly and began live-tweeting the experience as I waited for my chance to shine in the realm of good jurisprudence. Upon the conclusion of our orientation film-strips, our gracious host informed us that there were no capital cases on the docket so the majority of cases we might be hearing would be closer to the 3-to-5 day average – which was a good thing for the universe and my job performance but bad for my ulterior motives.

Yes, I hate Nancy Grace. Why? Because you can’t get that bag to sniff your courthouse without a middle-class-white-baby murder by a middle-class pretty white mama; a tawdry, attractive-white-people crime of passion; or this week’s garden variety “Trial of the Century” involving white people. Meanwhile the holocaust of poor people and people of color continues apace, and for those reasons, I need to karate chop Nancy Grace.

The powers that were must have seen my dismay, because at 10:20 AM, they broadcasted about 50 names up on the HD screens and instructed those prospective jurors to go to the special area where they would be assigned to their respective courtrooms for further consideration by the attorneys. My name was not among them.

The rest of us were told that we had not yet been excused – we had two (2!) more chances – but we could go to lunch… at 10:32 AM. I went to work – what else was I supposed to do? The Arizona State Fair had not yet announced free admission at noon, so it’s not like I could have eaten a hot dog while catching up with my old pal Ron Jeremy. They didn’t want us back until 1 PM, at which point we veterans of the morning shift would be joined by the afternoon pool of prospects. I returned at 12:50, caught the last five minutes of Summoned-ALTF, and waited for my moment to shine. At 1:10, the screens lit up again… and again, my name was not among them.

Fifteen minutes later with the 40 or so dregs of the morning and afternoon jury pools swanning listlessly around the assembly, they announced the final cut. Everyone but five pathetic souls marched off to the magical room where they would be assigned a courtroom. I was not among them… but the guy with the symmetrical neck tattoos was.

It wasn’t like being picked last for Dodgeball: They didn’t even let me in the gates of the playground. I just got to stand outside hanging on the fence watching everyone else have fun. I didn’t even get to dazzle the attorneys with my vicious hatred of non-signaling high-occupancy-vehicle-lane abusers (and don’t think I haven’t used my hands-free headset to call the non-emergency line to report them during my morning commute).

“I’m feeling kind of rejected,” I told the clerk as I gathered my paperwork to present to my employer assuring I wouldn’t be summoned for at least another year (as seen in the hit filmstrip Summoned).

“You didn’t get picked? Most people are happy about that,” he said. “Well, I’ve been here since this morning.” He did a double take… actually a quintuple take, since there were only five of us remaining in the cavernous room.

“Well, you’re not the only one. I think there was one other lady left from this morning… Have a nice day!”

I trudged out of the Jury Assembly room and into an afternoon of ignominy. Friends kept saying, “It’s a sign of your intelligence that you did not get chosen.”

As if that would make me feel better… but I never even got a chance to show the attorneys how bright I was: All I managed to do was complete an online survey about my demographic characteristics, and it didn’t ask much beyond my highest level of education (bachelor’s degree) which lumps me in with 22% of the Phoenix population (Scarborough, 2013).

The dude with the double neck tattoos got picked to sit on a jury of his peers. I did not. I believe this makes me “peerless” but instead, I’m just disappointed. And no, I’m not gonna donate my jury pay to the cinnamon bun fund – I earned that bun, and that $12, dammit.