Providence jury duty cometh and goeth away

I, along with a hundred other common folk from Rhode Island, had to return to the superior court house in Providence at 9:30am Thursday to await the "call" to serve. We were among a select few to sit in judgment on another human being and spent the morning sequestered in a series of rooms on the 4th floor. Many were reading, some watching television, a few of us had brought laptops and were working.

But no call came and about 11:45am our head "drover" called us together to inform us that the two civil cases then underway had been settled out of court and the two criminal cases pending had been postponed until next week.

We were free to go.

We had served our time and were good for the next three years. I walked the 10 minutes or so it took me to get to Davol Square and back to work as if nothing had happened.

And of course that was it precisely: nothing happened.