I’ve been summoned for jury duty — jury “service,” the good people at the county courthouse call it — and I expect to be in some courtroom today, doing my civic duty, er, service.

I say they caught up with me because a somewhat threatening postcard arrived at my home about a week before I was to report. This was no “Wish You Were Here” postcard, with a deeply tanned, bewigged judge, black robes over bathing suit, smiling and waving from a sunny sandy shore.

No, the court hadn’t received my juror qualification form, the postcard said icily, and my failure to report may — MAY — mean a contempt-of-court citation, 10 days in jail and/or a $500 fine. I gulped.

But I had never received the form in question, and the follow-up postcard had been sent first to my previous address, where I last lived 10 months ago, before being forwarded to the right place.

When I called the courthouse, a pleasant woman directed me to the county court Web site. There I could fill out the required form. I also would be reminded that jury service is a “Privilege” (although, it is safe to say, that isn’t a widely shared view).

I asked the woman what would have happened if the reminder never got to me, what if it got lost in the mail, and thus unaware, I never reported to the courthouse? Would I have been punished anyway?

No, she explained, the reminder would have been returned to the court, stamped “undeliverable.” I would’ve been in the clear.

I was relieved. I had suffered a day of Soviet-style waking nightmares in which I was rousted from bed in the middle of the night, detained and interrogated by masked policemen waving my blank juror qualification form in front of my sweat-beaded face.

I am not a scofflaw, perhaps you can tell. I am not an outlaw. I try to stay very much within the law. Criminality seems like a major headache — all the schemes, the secrets, etc. It is the wrong line of work for a nervous guy with a stern conscience.

I seldom even jaywalk and never within sight of crossing guards. I can see them bleating, and some mounted policeman running me down. I would die. Not from being trampled, but, as the coroner would note, from “embarrassment.”

***

The last time, and only other time, I was called to serve on a jury was early September 2001. It was in Arlington County, Va., just outside of Washington.

I was happy to do my duty because summers can be agonizingly slow in the news business, we were in a slow time, and I needed a break.

On the morning of Sept. 11, I was on one of the upper floors of the courthouse, waiting to be called for a case, in a lounge with a fine view of a treeline beyond which lay the Pentagon. Soon, black smoke rose above the treeline. In the lounge, cell phones chirped like a flock of birds. There was much confusion in the courthouse — there were rumors it was a target — and we were ordered to evacuate calmly down the stairs.

We were not asked to return, even though technically we still had time left in our service. That was good, because my coworkers needed me. Suddenly, we had more news — unfortunately of the most tragic kind — than we might have wished for, and in my memory the next few months especially are an unbroken blur of work. It was exhilarating, numbing and sad.

This is not how you want to get out of jury duty. In such times, the normalcy of such a thing is neither a nuisance nor a hardship but a “Privilege,” indeed, the least you can do.

———

The Voices column is written by a rotating team of New Era staffers. It appears Mondays.

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