For the last six months I've really tried hard to get out of it, but tomorrow morning I am due bright and early for jury duty. I haven't mentioned it here because I have been in denial about it until the last minute.

I know I may not be selected, and it may be over in one day's trip to the court house. I just don't like being in places like that. I love the US judicial system and don't fear US police.

Trigger Warning
But I was raised in Uruguay when there was a dictatorship there, and courts and police were cruel and corrupt. I was arrested for no reason 3 times, and ended up getting tortured to the edge of death the third time. The officer presiding over my interrogation actually did have me kneel to shoot me in front of my teen friends. He then pulled his side arm, put it to my temple, and pulled the trigger. It jammed. He pulled it again. Miraculously, it jammed again. He made a wisecrack to his troops, and they laughed uproariously. In both fear and relief at being alive I wet myself in front of him, his troops, and all of my teen friends.

It's both a terrifying and a humiliating memory. Along with it comes the memory of the mother of my best friend in high school. When we were in 10th grade, she was arrested under the dictatorship's rules. We spent 3 years going to visit her in prison every week. She was kept in a filthy cell deep underground behind stone walls, it was like those dungeon scenes in movies, it was just horrible. It tore him to pieces every week, but we went. It was his mom.

And on and on for 12 years, my youth. Like I said, I live here because I ran away from that in Uruguay. I love the US court system and find the police to be nice compared to that. Uruguay's a democracy, too, now, and the police are nice to me there, too, when I got back and visit. All of that is gone, but it's still in me in my PTSD DNA, so to speak.

So I'm just not really as eager to go to the courthouse as other people might me, even for jury duty.