Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

So even though I was called for jury duty I was ultimately not selected to serve. What I did do was spend the entire day in a courtroom with about fifty other people while lawyers questioned potential jurors, excusing one after another, never calling me. At one point a defense attorney asked the people in the jury box, “How many of you are familiar with Star Trek?” and they all looked baffled as though this was something they’d never heard of and I thought, oh please, if I’m ever charged with a crime please let there be at least one Trekkie in the jury. It was a pretty grueling process, or maybe it was oatmealing since it left me feeling pretty flat, or porridging since the jurors all seemed so thick, but that’s another story. Toward the end of the day, after more than five hours of questions and excuses, one of the clerks said, “Damn, I’ve never seen it go on this long!” Lucky us.
Getting to jury duty was easy–I went to where I normally work and caught a bus downtown. It was easy because I could catch any bus going downtown–they all go to the same bus depot. The buses departing the depot, on the other hand, all go in different directions so I had to catch the right one to get home. And normally that’s easy, but right now the Music City Central bus depot is being completely renovated and everything upstairs is completely shut down except for the donut shop because they have priorities.

Anyway this meant that the regular departure stations and times for the buses, especially the couple of buses that would get me home, are completely changed. I had to walk all around the block to try and figure out where to go. I couldn’t even get help at the temporary customer service kiosk which is designed with an oceanic theme even though Nashville is in the heart of a landlocked state.

At one point one of my buses stopped at a red light while I was standing on the corner. I waved to the driver and he shook his head because, you know, it’s not like bus drivers just go around picking up people.
I had no problem with doing my civic duty but once it was over it seemed like the difficulty getting out was just adding insult to jury.

When I got the notice to report for jury duty the first thing my wife asked was, “How will you get there?” which was better than the first thing I asked: “Will they give us legal pads?” because she’s more practical. But then it didn’t take much for me to figure out that I’d take the bus because the courthouse is somewhere downtown. Even though I’ve lived in Nashville most of my life I don’t know where a lot of things in the city are, a fact that was really brought home to me my freshman year in college in Indiana and a group of my friends suggested a day trip to Nashville and I said, “Sure, I’d really like to see it” and everyone stared at me. I assumed they meant Nashville, Indiana, which is where every person from Indiana I’ve ever met has assumed I’m talking about when I say I’m from Nashville. Anyway they meant Music City, which is a nickname for Nashville, Tennessee, not to be confused with Music City, Iowa, which, if you’ve ever been there, you’ll know is egregiously misnamed, but that’s another story. About midday while we were driving around downtown someone said, “We should get lunch,” and everyone agreed and looked at me, and I said, “Yeah, of course, I’m all for lunch, it’s the most important midday meal of the day,” and everyone kept staring at me because they expected me to know a place to go for lunch, but even though there were places I knew they were all in a completely different part of town, so we ended up going to Chinatown, which is not a specific neighborhood of Nashville the way it is in New York or San Francisco but a restaurant called Chinatown.
Anyway it occurred to me that I should do a test run and find out where exactly the courthouse I’m supposed to report to is, so I caught a bus downtown. And I had an advantage I didn’t have in college: Google Maps. According to it the building is just a five minute walk from the bus depot which is a terrible overestimate. The Justice A.A. Birch Building is a less than two minute walk and turned out to be pretty conspicuous.

I was able to make it down there, figure out where I was going, and get back all on my lunch break. And taking the bus is definitely the way to go because the parking downtown is terrible.
That’s something I’ve learned from having lived here most of my life.

I’m not sure how long exactly the bus had been stopped. It probably wasn’t more than a few minutes but I was lost in my usual afternoon commute reverie, probably listening to Jackie Kashian’s Dork Forest podcast and thinking that one of my life goals is to be a guest on it someday. Sometimes I’ll zone out so completely on the bus that when I finally snap to I’ll look around and say, Hey, I’m almost home, or, on occasion, This doesn’t look familiar at all, am I on the right bus? What brought me out of my delirium was the driver pulling the door shut. He sat down then got up and pushed it open and pulled it shut again. From what I gathered there was something wrong with the door mechanism so it wouldn’t close completely. And I realized something I should have noticed a long time ago: the doors on the bus are now completely automated. For the doors in the back this makes sense, but the doors in the front used to be operated by a hand-pulled lever. I remember the time I was on a school bus and trying to sit back with my Walkman and zone out to a mixtape but some jerk in the back thought it was funny to throw books at me. So I threw one back and the driver stopped the bus and came to yell at me. I said, Screw this, went up to the front of the bus, and pulled the door lever myself—it gave me a powerful feeling to take an action normally reserved only for the driver. And I needed that powerful feeling because I had a pretty long walk home, but that’s another story.
With all the changes to buses getting rid of the simple hand-cranked door opener seems pretty boneheaded. Not all upgrades are improvements which is why some don’t last. If you’re of a certain age you may remember talking cars–and I don’t mean Kit from Knight Rider, although if you’re old enough to remember that you may also remember that some car models would tell you “Door is ajar” when the door was open. Or sometimes when it wasn’t open. Talking technology has its advantages but potential downsides too.

Source: XKCD

I went on a test drive with a friend in a car that insisted on telling us “Door is ajar”. I don’t remember what kind of car it was, just that it was well out of the price range of a guy who had to use a rope to keep the trunk shut of his current ride shut, but somehow we talked the dealer into letting us take it for a spin, maybe because it was early Wednesday morning in early summer and he was bored and knew he wasn’t going to sell anything anyway. While we were tooling around we stopped at a mini-mart to get some drinks. When we got in and closed the doors the car said, “Door is ajar.”
He opened his door and shut it.
“Door is ajar.”
He opened and shut his door harder this time.
“Door is ajar.”
He opened his door and slammed it.
“Watch it,” I said. “Prettyto look at, nice to hold, but if it breaks consider it sold.”
He glared at me. Then we drove back to the dealership with the car still occasionally telling us, “Door is ajar.”
When we got back we made sure to leave before the dealer could close the door.