It could have happened

I was standing in the backyard of my brick Georgian home on Kentucky Street in Chicago. It was wide and green, dotted with maple saplings. It looked exactly like the backyard of my parents' home in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. I looked over at my neighbor’s equally spacious backyard. I could see my neighbor Steve gathering equipment for a camping trip. People kept coming into his yard and stacking up their camping equipment near his—apparently a large group was headed out together.

As I was standing in my yard, near the house, I noticed a man going into my garage at the back of the property.

I walked across the yard and followed him into the garage. I saw the man and several other people, looking through boxes, sweeping, moving chairs and other garage materiel. The floor was clean and swept. A girl about eleven was asleep, wrapped in a blanket, near one wall.

Another little girl, about age seven, skinny and lithe, was climbing up on shelves built into the side of the garage. The shelves were as wide as the garage, and went up to the roof, which seemed to be two stories high. She was about halfway up, rummaging through plastic tubs and baskets, looking for something. The man on the floor was directing her. The tubs and baskets took up most of the room on the narrow shelves. There was barely room for the little girl’s feet on the edge of the shelf, but she seemed as surefooted as a mountain goat.

“What’s going on?” I asked the man. “She can’t be up there! it’s dangerous. I’m liable if she falls and gets hurt.”

He told her to get down. She climbed nimbly down and stood next to him.  

He was sincere and rugged, about forty years old, with dark hair and black eyes. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was mystified. A woman opened the side door of the garage and walked in. I couldn’t tell how old she was. Maybe she was his wife? His mother? She had some gray in her hair. She looked nervous.

“Are you part of the group that’s going camping with Steve?” I asked.

The man looked at me, his expression blank, and I realized I had it all wrong.

“Are you planning to live here?” I said. “In the garage?” I looked around. We never locked the service door of the garage, and rarely used it for the car. We mainly used it to store the lawnmower and lots of stuff we never used. Old paint cans and flower pots lined the lower shelves.

The man nodded. We watched as the rest of the family—there must have been six or seven kids and a couple of adults—continued to sweep and organize. They went in and out of the service door. The little one who had been asleep near the wall woke up, unwrapped herself from the blanket, and stood next to the nervous woman.

I was sad and confused. How could I kick them out? Clearly they were homeless, and trying to make the best of a terrible situation. I introduced myself, and shook his hand. I reached over to shake the woman's hand, too, and noticed that her eyes still looked anxious.

I left the garage and went back into the house. It was Easter, and the family had already sat down around the table and starting eating. My parents were both there, and my former brother in law, and my aunt and uncle. Others too, but I don’t remember their faces.

“There are twelve people living in our garage,” I announced.

The table was filled with food—ham, potatoes, salad, green beans, dinner rolls—and everyone was helping themselves and talking. The talking stopped as soon as I made my weird announcement. 

Then people started giving suggestions about what I should do about this unexpected development. Nobody seemed to be too surprised, and no one got up from the table. They just talked about it as if we were discussing something in the news.

I went outside and stood in front of my house. The sun shone brightly. Two white SUVs sped down the street and screeched to a stop in front of my neighbor’s house. The SUVs had INS logos on the side. Men piled out wearing body armor and carrying rifles. They huddled for a moment outside the vehicles. Somehow I knew they were planning their assault on the family in my garage.

I made an instant decision. I ran down the alley on the side of my house. I wanted to reach the family in the garage, to warn them. As I reached the edge of my house, I saw the man and a couple of the girls outside of the garage, in the alley.

I waved my arms frantically, telling them by incoherent semaphore to run! Run! The man saw me, and knew instantly what I was saying. He motioned to the girls to run, and then he raced inside the garage to warn the others. They started coming out of the garage and scattering down the alley.

Meanwhile, as I ran past the edge of my house, I could see an agent closing in, running down the gangway next to my neighbor’s house, holding his rifle. Other INS agents closed in from other angles. 

The family had not gotten far. The agents chased them and pointed guns at them. When they saw they were caught, they stopped and put their hands up. They looked scared.

...

And then I woke up, dammit.

I told my dream to Mr. Peevie and M. Peevie on the way home from Easter lunch. 

"Noooo!" M. Peevie yelled, when I got to the end. "What happened next?"

I wish I knew. I hate it when I'm having an interesting, adventurous dream, and I wake up before I find out the end.

We were headed home through our old neighborhood, where we lived in the brick Georgian. We drove slowly past the house, and turned down the alley. 

"I can see the family trying to get away!" M. Peevie said, looking at the garage and peering down the alley.

Why are some dreams so vivid? Where do these details come from--INS? people living in my garage? My former BIL?

It's all so very mysterious.

Accidental Felon

I'm thinking about changing the name of my blog to The Accidental Felon. I keep breaking the law, sort of accidentally, and just barely missing being sent to the Big House.

You might remember that I blogged about my experiences on jury duty a couple of years ago. Well, apparently, that was a Gigantic Potentially Felonious Mistake (GPFM). Even though I did not give away any details about the case, and did not consult any outside sources, once the case was over, the defense used my blog as one of their reasons for appeal. They wanted to interview the jurors to see if my blogging had in any way tainted them. The judge said no. They appealed, and the appeals court said no.

I got a call from a reporter at the Chicago Tribune wanting to talk to me about the case and my blog. I said, sure, dude, just call me back over my lunch hour. Meanwhile, being completely ignorant about what had been happening on the case, I started googling it.

Holy friggin' crap. I discovered my name and the name of my blog and quotes from my blog in the appeals court documents. They used words like "juror misconduct" and "tainted" and "contempt." I immediately called a friend of mine who is a lawyer, and said, Perry Mason, I think I might be in trouble. I explained the sitch to him, and he said, "Do not talk to any reporters. Do not talk about the case. Do not mention my name. Just shut up." He also told me that, had the judge found out about the blogging during the case, he could have cited me for contempt and tossed me in the clink for six months without a trial. "You put your fellow jurors at risk," he said ominously.

Crap.

The story appeared in the Trib that weekend. "E. Peevie, freelance writer and mother of three, ..." it read--only it was my real name, thank you very much.

A couple of weeks later, I got a direct message on Twitter from Channel Five asking me to call or email Phil Rogers. I ignored it. The next day, they DMed me again, saying that Phil wanted to talk to me about the Metra case. I ignored it. Perry Mason would have been proud.

But then I got a phone call on my office phone from...wait for it...Phil Rogers. "E. Peevie," he said in a friendly voice, "This is Phil Rogers from Channel Five News. I've been trying to reach you."

"Um, yeah, Phil, I know who you are. I can't talk to you."

 

"Well," he said, "I'm doing a story on the Metra case, and I'm going to be mentioning your name and talking about your blog, and I wanted to give you a chance to respond."

"Thank you," I said. "You've given me a chance to respond, and I have declined it. I can't talk to you."

 

"But E. Peevie," he said, "We both went to Oklahoma State! Isn't that worth something? I just want to ask you a few questions." He had done his homework.

"Yeah," I said, "I knew that. But I still can't talk to you."

 

He asked me a couple more questions which I declined to answer, and finally I steeled myself to do the right thing. "I don't like to be rude, Phil," I said, "But I am going to have to hang up on you now." And I did. Perry Mason reminded me later that I should have just said "No comment" and hung up.

That night, on the five o'clock news, there was my giant face on the small blue screen. They had taken my photo from my Twitter account--which BTW is not a lovely photo AT ALL--and attached it to the story. And they showed still shots of my blog, and highlighted key portions where I had written about the trial. My friend Phil Rogers used phrases like "in defiance of a judge's admonitions not to discuss the case."

It went to the Supreme Court of Illinois, who thankfully decided that my blogging did not influence the outcome of the case.

Now that the Supremes have finished exonerating me, I am finally able to say that there was no intentional defiance or contempt. I thought I was being very careful to obey the judge's instructions--I was not discussing the case, just writing in general terms. Phil Rogers inaccurately said that I discussed specific testimony--but I only discussed the effect of the testimony on the witness, and did not quote specific testimony on the blog.

I am a story-teller, and I told a story. Yes, it's true that we occasionally lapsed into very brief discussions of the case while we were in the jury room--but every time, one of us would remind the group that we were not supposed to be doing it, and we stopped. I am confident that this happens in every single trial--and most importantly, my blog described it, but did not cause it.

And guess what? Sometime after the verdict against Metra was reached, the instructions that judges give to jurors were revised to include specific references to social media. That tells me that they are admitting that their instructions were previously inadequate. (My friend Officer Friendly likes to call this The Peevie Rule. I am not amused.)

I guess the state won't be calling me to jury duty again any time soon. Rats.

A Tender, Private Moment. Not.

I'll get right to the point. It's hard to find the time and privacy for sex when there are what seems like dozens of kids running around at all hours of the day and night. The other night we thought we had dispatched them securely, and Mr. Peevie and I retired to our boudoir and locked the door. It was after 10 p.m.--what should be a safe hour for conjugal activities. But no.

Minutes after I climbed between the sheets (and started watching a M*A*S*H rerun), a knock came on the door. I got up, unlocked the door, and opened it to find C. Peevie. He looked at me, and an expression of horror began to gather on his face.

"You...," he started, "you...you...had the...door locked?!"

"Yes," I said. "What do you want?"

"Well, I just came up to get money," he said, taking a step back as though I was contagious, "but YOU HAD THE DOOR LOCKED and now I want to THROW UP" He collapsed in a heap on the hallway floor, moaning loudly. "You had the door locked," he groaned, "AAARRRGGHH!"

C. Peevie's moans got the attention of A. Peevie, who wandered out of his bedroom to find out what the hoopla was about. C. Peevie obliged.

"Mom and Dad had. The. Door. Locked!" he said, tossing in a groan for good measure. "AAARRRGGHH!"

A. Peevie let out his own horrified noise, and also collapsed on the hallway floor. "ACK!" he said. "Ack, ack!"

"I just came up for some money," C. Peevie moaned. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to have your DOOR LOCKED?!"

"That's just stupid," I said. "I'll get you some money. Next time, could you ask for money before 10 p.m.?"

"Ack, ack!" A. Peevie groaned lugubriously. "I want some money, too!"

By this time, the cacophony of lament had attracted M. Peevie's attention, and she wandered into the hallway.

"What's going on?" she said, watching A. Peevie and C. Peevie writhing on the floor, weeping and gnashing their teeth.

"Aarrgghh!" said C. Peevie. "I have to have my brain scrubbed!"

"Ack! Ack!" said A. Peevie. "Mom and Dad had their DOOR LOCKED!"

M. Peevie is only ten, but is no slacker when it comes to interpreting innuendo. She dropped like a bag of rocks, and clutched her stomach.

"AAIIIEEE!" she keened. "Aaaiiieeee! Door...locked! Gross!"

I stood at the door and looked down at my three spawn, none of whom had been immaculately conceived. I decided to take a hard-line approach.

"Yes," I said firmly. "We had the door locked because we were going to HAVE SEX."

"AAARRRGGHH! Ack, ack! AAIIIEEE!" they groaned/moaned/keened.

"And now," I said, "I am going to LOCK MY DOOR again. I think you know what that means--so please disperse."

They dispersed--but not without another five minutes of anguished caterwauling and requests for money.

Jury Duty Drama

Jury duty has been filled with drama--just like on Law and Order!

Every day there is crying, yelling, confronting, accusing, and lots of objecting, sustaining and over-ruling. I can't wait to give you all the specific details--in fact, it's killing me to be discreet.

But I can tell you this much: It's a wrongful death civil lawsuit. When the MIL of the deceased looked at a photo of her daughter and her dead SIL, she wept. She wept again when she told how she heard about the accident.

The lawyers object all over each other. "Will you let me finish my question?!" the attorney for the plaintiff hollered recently, when opposing counsel objected prematurely. They are constantly objecting, and I am learning all the acceptable reasons for objections: lack of foundation, asked and answered, argumentative, no basis for impeachment, beyond the scope, calls for speculation, hearsay, form the question, and leading. I think we've heard them all.

"Let him finish his question," the judge said mildly. He finished the question; opposing counsel reiterated his objection, and the judge immediately and hilariously sustained.

"Your honor, can you instruct the jury to disregard the highly inflammatory line of questioning from the plaintiff's counsel?" said defense.

"Disregard the last sentence," instructed the judge. "I'm not saying it's inflammatory; just disregard it."

The attorneys demanded sidebar after sidebar, to shut down a particular line of questioning; to decide whether a witness is being fairly represented; to debate a point of evidence. Sometimes we can hear them yelling in the judge's chambers while we sit in awkward silence in the jury box, with the witness still on the stand and the plaintiff listening from his side of the courtroom.

We have even heard testimony from beyond the grave. A man who had been directly involved in the accidental death had given a sworn deposition a few months before his own death. The plaintiff's attorney had hired an actor to read the witness' answers from his deposition, while the attorneys read their own questions. It was a little strange and creepy.

The last witness for the plaintiff was the plaintiff herself, the widow of the allegedly wrongfully dead guy. At times during her testimony, there were tears rolling down the face of the juror sitting in front of me, and I don't think she was alone. Sympathy won't win their case--but it sure doesn't hurt.

When the widow was asked to read from page 86 of deposition testimony, we waited and waited while she looked for the page in question. Finally, confused, she handed the document to the judge. "It's not there," she told him.

The judge took the document and paged through to the end, and held the document up in the air toward the attorney. "This document ends at page 63!" he said. There were audible snorts from the jurors--who are theoretically supposed to suppress their emotions and reactions.

The first witness for the defense was an expert who essentially testified that [large company] could not have done anything different in order to prevent the accident. The plaintiff's attorney, IMHO, ripped his testimony apart. If the guy had a tail, it would have been between his legs as he stepped down from the stand.

Of course, it ain't over 'til it's over. After four full days of plaintiff-side witnesses, we've only heard one witness for the defense. The other jurors and I are guarding our objectivity fiercely until the last syllable of testimony has been uttered and the last molecule of evidence has been presented.

Because we are the Best. Jury. Ever.

Voir Dire

You know the expression--I think perhaps Dave Barry coined it--"too stupid to get out of jury duty"? Well, I think a more accurate description is "too honest to get out of jury duty."

As you know, I have the honor of serving on a jury for a Very Big Trial for the next two or three weeks. I'm totally going to lobby to be the jury foreman, because I love 12 Angry Men (both versions, although the original is the best) and my middle name is Process--and of course, process is what reaching a verdict is all about.

During voir dire, it was very clear to me when someone was lying or scamming to get out of service.

One guy was rambling and not answering direct questions about whether or not he could award the plaintiff a reasonable amount of money if the evidence showed that the plaintiff, a large company, was at fault. He was blathering about the scales of justice and how the whole thing is a crapshoot, and how people sue big companies to make easy money, and I thought to myself, "Scales of justice, my ass. More like scales of bullshit." He knew if he seemed biased against large monetary awards, he'd be excused; and he was.

Another woman, a suburban grandmother, was telling the judge that she cares for her granddaughter while her daughter works, so she really can't be available for jury duty. "Your daughter will have to make other arrangements, ma'am," the judge told her.

"Well, your honor," she tried again, "I'm just really uncomfortable taking the train downtown and getting around in the city. I live in the suburbs, and I never travel to the city, and I'm just really uncomfortable with it." Aww, poor thing.

"Ma'am," the judge said patiently, "I'm guessing many people in the jury pool feel the same way. I understand that it's uncomfortable for you, and inconvenient, but everyone has to do it."

Then they asked her questions about her ability to find in favor of the large corporation, sending the widow home with nothing. She saw her opening, and she took it. "I just don't think I could send a widow home with nothing," she said.

"Even if the evidence shows that [big corporation] had no fault?" the judge pursued.

"No, your honor," she said, shaking her head. "It's hard not to feel sympathy for the widow." The judge rolled his eyes.

"Your honor!" the plaintiff's attorney squawked.

"Dismissed," said the judge, and the bailiff walked Lying Grandma Liar out of the courtroom.

Why is it so easy for some people to lie? How do they justify lying to get out of doing something that they don't want to do? This really, really bugs me.

In the jury room we were talking about the voir dire process, and how we could tell when folks were lying, and one woman said, "I thought I could lie to get out of it, but when it was my turn, I just couldn't do it."

So our jury consists of a fireman, a dressmaker, a bar manager, a guy who just finished college, two office managers, a special education teacher, a trader, a freelance writer (me!), and five others, including two alternates. We have ten women and four men; ten white and four black.

We are going to be very tight by the time this is over. I can see a reunion in our future.