I noticed her immediately, it was not in the way that you notice someone that you could admire. There was something the way she walked, not that it was a take notice or own the room type of walk. It was the way that she walked without swinging her arms that caught my attention. That, and the fact that she wore a black headband that covered the top of her left eye.
My attention turned to my thoughts, "Could they have included the defendants in the same room as the jurors?" As she sauntered into the room with her none swinging arms, I thought, "please do not stop here" because I crave a drama free life. Welp! you probably guessed with my luck, she chose the seat across the table and to the left of my seat.
She was a relatively young lady. I would guess late twenties. She had a fashion magazine that she was reading. To be fair, she wasn't really reading aloud but she had a sort of hiss as she read each word. The sound was that of the snake vernacular, if you will. "sss-sssss-sssss", she hissed. I kept looking up and across the table because it was distracting and concerning and extremely unusual, even for the hood. As I looked up, she caught my glance with the one exposed eye with a sideways glance. It was Silence of the Lambs scary. I think this may have been the strangest thing that I have experienced all year, and it's December. It was an eerie kind of glance made without fully raising her head kind of lizard like strangeness. Definitely, nightmare worthy. I was spooked.
Before I could even wonder what would happen if, heaven forbid she was selected for a jury; I was forced to deal with the fact that she was apparently hungry. She opened the first bag of chips, and proceeded to smack her lips, crunch really loud and lick her fingers. I've been through a lot, I thought
"this will be over soon, I can do this". (You know they only fill the chip bag halfway anyway) and then she pulled up a second bag and here we go. I tried to busy myself and I asked God to fix it. She went back to the hissing and silently chuckling to herself and then she stood up. She left the table and came back with, you guessed it, bag number three. In case you didn't know, God has a sense of humor.
I'm just curious, have you ever seen someone talk without moving their lips? Well, some woman came and sat at the table. She apparently knew the robot walker. She started asking her questions like what time are you done? What have you been doing and Mumbalina said, "ssssm the woman understood the vernacular..I did not. The woman said, why are you sitting over here? Did they call you yet? Mumbalina slowly lifted her panel number and showed it to her. My thoughts turned to who is this woman? How did she get in here. Is this room safe? I began to run through my active shooter training in my mind and identify potential escape routes.
I slid my iPad off the table and held my phone in my lap, don't judge me. I was suddenly on full alert. I could not focus on the work that I was doing because I needed to pay attention to my surroundings. In doing so, I noticed that my table mate, directly to my left had a nice laptop cover in pink ( I digress). I was speaking to her about it and she said, "amazon" . At that moment, Mumbalina looked up, without moving her neck and mumbled in a decrescendo, "that's really nice.......that's really.... nice...that's... really... nice". I began to feel that I had inspired Mumbalina. My work was done here. Mumbalina's number was called, "Panel 2". The woman who apparently was her caregiver/guardian asked, "Do you want me to go for you?" Mumbalina stood, said no and walked off without moving one arm. I pray that she was not selected.
No comments:
Post a Comment