Leftovers

Whew! Where was I?

Back for jury duty the next afternoon. The day before when we entered the courtroom there was the judge, two defense lawyers, a prosecuting attorney, the bailiff, the court reporter and a woman who explained things to us. On the other side of the court room there was a young man and two other people. We all imagined this might be the defendant.

So the next day we arrived in the afternoon and sat in the jury room until they called us down to the courtroom. This time the young man, the bailiff, the lawyers, the explainer woman were no where to be found. Just the judge seated at the bench and the rest of us all filing in.

"There's good news and bad news, " he said. "The bad news is the there is no trial. The good news is that there is no trial."

So we were off the hook. I guess the first bad news was about us wasting a couple of hours to show up. For some people that was okay news as well, I suspect, as they took a day off from work.

After that the judge gave the most eloquent speech, worthy of the end of a movie or something, about how everyone is very busy and yet WE took the time to do our duty and our justice system would just collapse without people like us. He brought us all very close to the sin of pride. I'm not doing the speech any justice. Perhaps if I had music. Sing the theme song to "Patton" in your head while you tell yourself how you answered the call of duty and you might get the feeling we had when we left.

We had another feeling, though, the nagging one that the young man we saw in the courtroom, who was indeed the defendant, had fought tooth and nail to go to trial and yet had accepted a plea. We don't know what really happened. His lawyers could have been pleading with him to take the plea. They could have been pleading with him to go to trial. He could have been guilty. He could have been innocent.

But now he was going to jail, no matter what. We were discussing this in the elevator on the way down. I say, "we". I hadn't said word one over the day and a half I was there. Watching my "p's" and "q's", I was. Finally, as we got out of the elevator, one woman said, "Oh, well, he must have done something or he wouldn't have been in a courtroom."

Boy, does that frost my cookies when I hear that type of thing. I finally piped up.
"That's what the Dutch said about the Jews, " I said. Everyone heard me. I heard the slight gasp. Point taken.

Happy Thanksgiving! The rest of us are not in jail! There's something to be thankful for, right there!

We haven't had our Thanksgiving dinner yet. We've been too busy. Don't worry. We were thankful. We just didn't have the dinner. We'll have it this week sometime. Sister St. Aloysius has picked out the most marvelous sounding pie. Apple with caramel. She actually laid eyes on such a pie in the freezer section of the store. Thank you, Sara Lee. Another thing for which to give thanks. Anyhow, Sister St. Aloysius decided she could come up with her own version.

I think we'll have our dinner on Saturday after we dust the pews while everyone else is going to Saturday evening Mass. The next question is....what shall we have? When people found out we didn't have time to make a turkey dinner, what with me taking the car to jury duty and getting the church ready for Thanksgiving and no time to go shopping even though we always go on Wednesdays, they brought us dinner (for which we are truly thankful). We've had turkey with all the trimmings for three days now. I'm thinking lasagna. Pot Roast. Beef Stroganoff.

Tomorrow I'll answer some questions. Here's an easy one for starters.

OK, here's a question to mull over. When the priest consecrates the bread and wine, how far (geographically) does that go?

The answer is three feet seven inches,depending on how tall Father is.

More or less.

The priest consecrates all the hosts he is consecrating no matter where they are, but they are pretty much right in front of him.

Maybe four feet, tops.