You Don't Know Hunger Like I Know Hunger

If you had attended the fundraiser Tell It Slant for the Lincoln Square Friendship Center Food Pantry like you should have, you would have heard this story during the open mike:

I have lived my life on the edges of survival. My husband and I were just barely able to scrape together enough money to buy a house in the whitest neighborhood in Chicago. Every other house on the block had their additions and dormers done months before we were able to take this step. The weary front lawn shows signs of insouciance, the garage door opener has been inoperable for years, and most days I don’t even know where my next minivan is going to come from.

I have experienced hunger and starvation almost every day—in the middle-class, western sense of the word, of course. I decided to keep a hunger journal to share my struggle with the world.

March 2. I first notice my hunger at 7:24 a.m. I immediately scan the bedroom for sustenance, but the Girl Scout cookie boxes are all empty. The cellophane sleeves are lying around like empty condom wrappers the morning after a fraternity party. They are the detritus of our own middle-aged version of a wild bacchanal—a night of watching the Agent Peggy Carter finale, eating overpriced, déclassé wafers with reckless abandon, and falling asleep by 9:30.

10:00 a.m. Eating my first satisfying meal in at least twelve hours—not including the Trefoils.  It’s been hell. This peanut butter and bacon on toast with Diet Coke might as well be prime rib and Chateau Margaux, that’s how good it tastes.

10:30 a.m. Medium Diet Coke, easy ice, from the Golden Arches. I know I already had a Diet Coke earlier, but every addict knows that McDonald’s has the good shit.

2:30 p.m. Store-bought tamales and leftover chateaubriand under glass fuel my waning energy early in the afternoon. When you’re dealing with this level of deprivation you don’t stop to think about food pairings.

7:30 p.m. Currently drinking domestic merlot from Trader Joe’s. Essentially I’m having fruit salad for dinner, only without the coring and chopping. The wine feels warm going down. I dig a Thin Mint and a dollar fifty-seven in change out of the couch cushions and thank the little baby Jesus for small blessings. Spending time with Simon Baker, Jason O’Mara, and my other pretend TV boyfriends will distract me from my suffering and sustain me through the night.

I hope. Sometimes I just want to give up.

March 3. I’ve noticed that I mostly feel hungry when I haven’t eaten. I decide that the easiest solution is to eat all the time, proactively, so that I can avoid the gnawing pangs of my body slowly consuming itself. It’s a desperate ploy, I know, but I’m starting to be able to see my own toes. I’m fading into a mere shadow of my formerly zaftig self.

March 4. Jury duty. This usually goes well for me. A couple hundred citizens sit through a video explaining the court process—as though we haven’t all watched seven thousand hours of Law and Order over the past twenty years.

The grandmotherly lady next to me wears her puffy coat indoors while I am seconds away from spontaneous combustion. Must be nice to be post-menopausal. She unzips her Spiderman vinyl lunchbox and pulls out two granola bars. The crunchy kind. I eye them longingly. I sense hunger lurking like a panther ready to pounce. Grandmom chews with an abundance of crunching and slurping.  She also mutters to herself and hums. Even with my earphones in I can hear her lips smacking. 

I want to kill her.

…

This hunger journal reminds me of something my unofficial foster son L. Peevie told me twenty-plus years ago. I’m about as white as a person can be. I had never been a parent before, let alone a parent of a teenager, let alone the temporary parent of a black teenager from the west side. It took some adjustment on both sides.

I soon figured out that teenage boys eat a lot. I could not keep food in the house. It disappeared within minutes after I got home from Dominick’s. Sometimes it didn’t even make it into the ‘fridge or pantry. He’d snatch it from my hands like a wildebeest on the plains and eat it without even removing the packaging.

One time L. Peevie was rummaging around looking for a tiny after-school snack of a few thousand calories. He rearranged margarine tubs containing a bit of chili mac, a dollop of chicken tetrazzini, and a serving of potato salad. The vegetable drawer held a few limp carrots and some sad-looking celery.

“There’s nothing in the ‘fridge,” I told him, “I’ll go to the store in a little bit.”

L.P. looked at me and shook his head. “That’s the difference between black people and white people,” he said. “When white people say ‘there’s nothing in the ‘fridge,’ there’s still a ton of food in there.” He picked up the chili mac and shut the refrigerator door.

“When black people say there’s nothing in the fridge, the only thing in the fridge is mustard.”

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.

Jury Duty Fallout

What does it mean that someone from Burlington Northern and Sante Fe Railroad's offices in Texas visited The Green Room like ten times yesterday?

Do you think they like my post?

Do you think they want to hire me? I'm always looking for new clients, y'all. I'd totally work for them, even if I did just vote to sock them with a $5M judgment. Well, technically, the BNSF share was only $4.25M. But still.

It's more likely that they hate my post. I'm guessing that they're trying to find a way to protect their bottom line.

But in a perfect world, losing that case would cause them to really look closely at what went wrong on the day that Scott Eskew was killed by a BNSF train, and figure out what they could do to try to make sure it doesn't happen again. Even if they feel that they do not own 100 of the liability for negligence--and even the jury didn't assign them 100 percent--if they are honest with themselves, they will at least own some of it. And the portion of responsibility that they own should translate into changes.

I have an idea: they could hire one of Deratany's experts to consult with them on how to make changes at the Berwyn station that would reduce the likelihood of another tragedy. Or they can take a hard look at their Train Bible and decide if there's room for one more section that deals with communication about track switching.

Something. Anything. So that another Heidi does not lose another Scott.

How It All Went Down

Well, the Best Jury Ever picked a foreman, and it wasn't me. Wah.

I'll get over it. I just wish it had been a little less predictable than the only young white male in the room. (This paper refers to studies indicating that forepersons are more likely to be male, white, of higher socio-economic status, and better educated than others in the jury room. Even in 2007, at least one study found that 71 percent of forepersons were male.) So out of eight women and four men, we picked a man.

Just for the record, I voted for a white woman. I thought about voting for my buddy, Juror F, a young black man, who was also on the ballot for foreman, but I didn't think he had a chance; so I voted for me. The vote was six for Juror T, four for me, and two for JF.

Today we deliberated, and reached a verdict, which I will dish about. But first, I'm going to tell you all about the trial.

The case was the estate of Scott Eskew and his widow Heidi Eskew vs. Burlington Northern Sante Fe Railroad and Metra. Scott, age 34, was killed when he stepped in front of a BNSF train on January 22, 2004, and the trial centered around the question of whose negligence caused the accident--Scott's, or the railroad's, or a combination thereof.

It sounds simple, doesn't it? A guy isn't paying attention to the lights, bells, and whistles, and accidentally steps in front of a train. How can you fault the railroad company? Don't they take every possible precaution to prevent this type of thing, and aren't people who get hit by trains just taking unnecessary risks? It's just typical of our litigious society that the railroad gets blamed.

Or is it?

The mitigating circumstance--ONE of the mitigating circumstances--in this case is the fact that Scott Eskew was legally blind. On the day he died, he was heading downtown to his job as a security guard at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he checked the locks on doors and walked a slow, methodical route through the museum to make sure no one had stuffed a Monet under his sweatshirt.

He took the 1:14 train from Berwyn every day in order to punch in at the Art Institute by 3 p.m. Every day he left his home at the same time, walked the same route, stood on the same side of the platform, boarded the same train. He walked slowly and carefully, without a cane, looking down through thick glasses at the sidewalk to avoid bumps and cracks. Everyone--the ticket agent, the conductor, the engineer--testified they knew that a blind or nearly-blind guy regularly boarded the 1:14 at the Berwyn station.

On January 22, 2004, however, the 1:14 train switched from the south track, where it collected passengers 90 percent of the time, to the north track. The mercury dipped below zero, and it was what Winnie-the-Pooh would call a Blustery Day. A freight train approached the station just prior to the commuter train's arrival.

The station ticket agent called the commuter train conductor when she was belatedly notified about the track switch. "I've got passengers on the wrong side," she told the conductor.

"That's OK," the conductor said, "I'll wait." She did not indicate where she would wait, but she then told the engineer, "We've got passengers that need to cross to the north side. Stop short of Oak Park Avenue." The problem was, the station encompasses four crossings: two at Grove Avenue, and two at Oak Park Avenue. Passengers board and disembark the train along the entire platform, from west of Grove to east of Oak Park.

The ticket agent made two announcements instructing passengers to cross to the north platform to catch the east-bound train. She also told two late-arriving passengers to cross the tracks at the Oak Park crossing in order to catch the train--but she did not mention Oak Park Avenue when she made the announcement over the PA.

It is not clear whether Scott Eskew, who was already standing on the north platform, heard the announcements and was confused; heard bits and pieces of the announcements; or heard nothing at all and was crossing to the south platform as he always did.

It is very clear that the PA system at the Berwyn station could use some improvements. Plaintiff's counsel played a tape of an announcement being made from those south side speakers as it would be heard from the north platform. It was difficult to hear, and almost impossible to understand. Then they overlaid the sound of a passing freight train on top of the announcement, to more closely approximate the conditions of at least one of the announcements. It was completely unintelligible.

I still don't know why the conductor would assume that stopping the train at Oak Park would be sufficient. One point that the attorney for the plaintiff, Jay Paul Deratany, effectively hammered home was that in all of its instruction manuals and rule books, BNSF Railroad does not have any rules to guide conductors on what to do if two trains are going through the station at the same time, or if a train is switching from its usual track, or if they are aware that passengers need to cross the tracks.

The conductor and the engineer both saw Scott standing on the platform as the train approached the station. There was some debate about whether or not he was in a place of safety--the conductor contradicted her own deposition testimony and insisted at trial that he was not in a place of safety, but she also admits that she did not instruct the engineer to blow the horn--but everyone agrees that if he had not moved, the train would not have hit him.

Many factors contributed to the death of Scott Eskew, including, perhaps, his own negligence. He was not completely blind; did he look both ways before he stepped out in front of the train? If he did, would he even have seen the train? Did he ignore the bells and flashing lights because he believed he would have enough time to cross?

Many on the jury believed Scott's contributory negligence to be zero, or minimal at most. In the end, after fierce debate, we agreed to assess five percent of the negligence contributing to the accident to him. We allotted ten percent of the negligence to Metra, who employs the train dispatcher who did not communicate the change in schedules and tracks adequately; and we assigned the bulk of blame to BNSF.

We fiercely debated the amount of the award as well. We started with a range of $800,000 at the low end to $18 million at the high end. In the end we agreed upon $5 million as the total pecuniary loss, which includes Heidi's loss of Scott's "society"--an unquantifiable loss. Subtract five percent for Scott's estimated liability, and the widow takes home $4.75 million, minus her attorney's fees.

Heidi has both physical and mental disabilities. (In opening statements, Deratany said of Scott and Heidi, "She was his eyes, and he was her reason.") She met Scott through an expensive dating service. They became best friends, attended the same church, fell in love, and got married. She had found love, companionship, security, help and support. They were married for less than two years when Scott died.

Was the award too high? How do you calculate the value of "society"? I think the Best Jury Ever came up with the best possible verdict.

The BNSF attorneys disagree, and will be appealing. Short of producing a suicide note, I think they're doomed.

NOTE: I should have added this: Even though I was peeved by the tiredness of our foreman selection, our foreman, Juror MDaddy (formerly known as Juror T) did an excellent job. He was thorough in presenting us with all the instructions and procedures; he facilitated without dominating the process; and he kept us on point.

I told him later that he did a great job as foreman, and he gave a humble reply: "Everyone in this room did a great job."

Jury Tales

We could be done on Monday, the judge said on Friday. We could be deliberating by Tuesday. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to tell you the whole story on Wednesday. If I live that long. The secrecy is killing me, as I have mentioned before.

But I can tell you some stuff. At one point on Friday, in the privacy of the jury room, one of the jurors said, "Well, all that's left now is deciding how much."

I looked at her in disbelief. "Lalalalalalala!" I singsonged, holding my fingers in my ears. "You cannot talk that way, Juror L," I said, "You have to wait until ALL the evidence is in and we've heard from ALL the witnesses."

"How come?" she said, crunching down on a malted milk ball. "It's clear to me who's at fault."

"You don't know that," chimed in my buddy, Juror F. "What if they show us a suicide letter?"

"There's a suicide letter?!" she screamed.

"No, no, no!" we said in unison, and then JF continued, "but you don't know what else they might tell us or show us. You have to wait to make up your mind!"

JF and I both want to be the jury foreman, and he is positioning himself quite well for the job. He is young, smart, and determined, but also sweet, funny and friendly. He's had a tough life, and yet somehow, he has envisioned a future for himself that is quite different from the one his circumstances might have predicted. I have no doubt that he will get there; and along the way he might write a best-selling memoir that I will buy and ask him to autograph.

"'Jury Foreman' would look good on my resume," said JF optimistically.

"Sweetie, a hiring manager would not care," I refrained from saying.

"You'll get my vote," said Juror L.

"What?!" I objected. "What about me? Why won't I get your vote!"

"You'll get my vote, too!" she said, proving herself to be a true Chicagoan.

The rest of the jury has not indicated any interest in being foreman. They might be too polite, or maybe they really don't care for the job. Or maybe they are biding their time, waiting for the right moment to present their credentials.

We spend our time in the jury room trying--but not succeeding--to NOT talk about the case. When Deputy D. pokes her head in, she looks around suspiciously. "You're not talking about the case, are you?" she says.

"Oh, no," we all say, "We're just talking about the lawyers." We have fond names for them. The lead counsel for the defense has a very pink face and pure white hair. Juror B nicknamed him "Oompah-Loompah," although I don't think the colors are exactly right, and he's not short.

Juror J., or possibly Juror K., suggested, extremely charitably, that the lead counsel for the plaintiff looked a bit like George Clooney, so that's what we call him. He would be very flattered, I'm sure. He's good looking, but not THAT good looking. I could see him being played by Greg Kinnear or Craig Bierko, except Bierko is too tall.

He's fierce in the courtroom, for sure; and I would certainly put him on my short list if I needed a personal injury attorney. I think the plaintiff, the widow, has a little crush on him.

One more thing: I tell Mr. Peevie things about the case, but I'm very careful not to give away any details that might let him know what case it is. (Even if I did, he wouldn't pursue it. He has too much integrity and character to do so. He is packed with all sorts of annoying ethics.) But the other night, as we were talking, I almost--ALMOST--let the name of [large company] slip out. In fact, I did let the first syllable slip out. Twice. Oops.

But here's what I think: a likely scenario is that the defendant originally tried to settle the case with the plaintiff, but the plaintiff (and/or her lawyers) were not willing to settle for the amount the defendant offered. Perhaps the defendants knew they did not have a strong enough case to actually WIN the lawsuit, but they are taking a chance that the jury will award less money than what the plaintiff's lawyers are holding out for.

Hmmm. We shall see. Maybe Monday's testimony will turn things on its head, and render these speculations sheer idiocy.

I can't wait to find out.

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.

Jury Duty and Homeless People

Today I got selected to serve on a jury, and the judge said the case could last two to three weeks. I am in heaven.

I tried to get out of it, as everyone does, for the sake of my family and Mr. Peevie’s sanity—even though I LOVE jury duty. I’m probably the only person in North America that actually enjoys serving on a jury. If anyone else is out there, please let me know. We can form a support group.

I told the judge that I have three kids at home, and who was going to take care of them if I have to be gone every day for two or three weeks? He said, "I’m sorry, ma’am, but probably half the people in the jury pool today have the same situation. Who is taking care of them now?"

"I recruited friends to take them," I said; "and the 14-year-old is home alone."

"Well," he said, not unkindly, "I understand it’s difficult and inconvenient, but you’ll have to figure out some combination of those arrangements for the duration of the trial. I’ll try to keep it as short as possible."

He excused us for lunch and I called Mr. Peevie, who freaked out.

“WHAT?!” he screamed. “Three weeks?! That’s insane! You HAVE to get out of it.” Like if I just said hey, judge, my freaked-out husband can’t handle this, so can you please excuse me from jury duty, he’d roll over and say, why of course, ma’am, God knows we don’t want any more freaked out husbands than society is already dealing with.

“Honey,” I said, “I tried. I asked the judge who was going to watch my kids, and he said I’d have to figure something out.”

“Well,” continued Captain Overreaction, “I cannot take the next three weeks off of work. I just can’t. I’m buried.”

“Hey,” I said, with a bit of an edge, “No one is asking you to take time off of work. This is actually not about you. I’ll figure it out.”

He brought his affect down a couple of notches on the Panic Meter. “Well, I suppose we can talk about it,” he said. “I did a case that was three days long, but three weeks?! That’s just crazy.”

As I walked to lunch, I passed a homeless lady with no legs, sitting in a wheelchair. "Do you want a sandwich?" I asked her. "Sure," she said. So I brought her a roast beef sandwich. Her name was Hope.

I went back to the restaurant to eat my own lunch. I opened up the laptop and started writing about jury duty, and a minute later a homeless guy sat down at my table and introduced himself. His name was Roland. He asked me to buy him a sandwich.

"I can’t," I said, "I just bought a sandwich for the lady outside in the wheelchair. But I’ll give you a couple of bucks," I said, relenting a bit. I’m not sure why. Maybe because he was sitting at my table looking me in the eye.

"Thank you," he said. "A sandwich costs $4.50. Can you spare any more?"

"No," I said. “Go somewhere cheaper,” I didn’t say.

"Have you tried a soup kitchen or a shelter or agency?" I asked.

"I got raped in a shelter," he said. TMI, Roland. "I can’t go back there. I been sleeping on the street. Got six hours of sleep in the last four days ‘cause I can’t sleep outside. I have colon cancer and stomach cancer and my mom just died."

An employee of the restaurant came over and stood next to my table and looked pointedly at Roland. “We’re just talkin',” he said. The guy looked at me. “It’s OK,” I said. “He’s not bothering me.” Yet, I didn’t say.

“The cops will put me in jail for talking to you,” Roland said. “Just for sitting here having a conversation!”

“No, Roland,” I said, “They’ll put you in jail for panhandling. There are laws against panhandling, not against sitting and having conversations.” He looked at me for a moment, and started talking again, repeating his pitch and adding in new requests to keep it fresh.

“I got six hours of sleep in the last four days. Trying to sleep outside—I can’t do it. Can you give me $14 for a hotel room?”

“No, Roland, I can’t,” I said. "Have you tried some of the social service agencies?"

"They won’t give me money for a hotel room," he said. "No, probably not," I said, "but they can help you find a job, help you find a place to stay, help you find meals."

"I was just there at Christian Industrial League," he said. "They can’t help me."

“Honestly, Roland,” I said, “If Christian Industrial League can’t help you, then I can’t really help you much more than I have.”

“ Can you give me $7.50 for the train to Waukegan?” he pursued. “There’s a shelter there that’s safe.”

"No, I can’t, Roland."

“Will you pray with me? Do you believe in the ocean of forgiveness? I did some bad things when I was younger, went to prison…God forgives me, but society doesn’t,” he said. He held his hand out across the table for me to hold it. I took it, feeling a bit foolish, a bit embarrassed, a bit trapped. But also? I believe in prayer, and if you can’t pray with homeless guy, then what good does believing in prayer do?

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘ocean of forgiveness,’” I said, “But I do believe in prayer. Do you want me to pray for you?”

“You pray, then I’ll pray,” he said. So I prayed a short prayer, asking God’s blessing on Roland, asking God to help him find shelter, find work, and stay safe. Then Roland prayed a long prayer filled with fragments of Bible verses and pleas to the Almighty to put his hand on us and bless us. I think Jesus might understand my feeling of relief when the prayer meeting was finally over.

I turned back to my laptop, but Roland wasn’t done. “Are you sure you can’t help me out with $14 for a hotel room? he said. “I’ve only slept six hours…”

“No, Roland,” I said, “I really can’t help you any more. I’m sorry, but I can’t.” He looked me in the eyes, and I looked back. Finally, he turned away. He sat at my table for another couple of minutes, while I started to write this story; and then he walked over to another table and asked a guy for money. The guy brushed him off, as I’m sure 99 percent of people do.

And that’s just Day One!