The prospective jurors got called in for orientation and I said good-bye to my new friend the criminal/hero/citizen. There were probably a hundred people shuffling in, so I took a seat at the very back of the room. So far so good. We watched a video of former jurors talking about their “rewarding experience” with such forced enthusiasm that I suspect their loved ones were being held at gunpoint just off camera. Then a woman in a business suit and orthopedic shoes gave us a speech about how as long as there wasn’t any nonsense, we’d get along fine. I was starting to feel so anonymous that I got that lovely, familiar “alone in a crowd” sensation. She continued, “There is no photography in the courthouse. Now, you might want to take a photo because maybe you see a famous attorney, or a famous defendant, or maybe . . .” She raised her hand and pointed to the back of the room. “. . . even a famous juror.” Was she pointing at me? Dude, for real, are you pointing at me?? I’m being so stealthy! I’m all the way in the back of the room! You said “no nonsense”! This is definitely “nonsense”!
“Well”—she put her hand down—“I guess she’s not gonna say anything, but . . . anyway, she’s just a juror today, so don’t bother her.” Lady! I was doing fine before you did that! Luckily, the other jurors were paying about as much attention as plane passengers during in-flight safety announcements, so almost no one turned around.
The rest of the day we waited in the orientation room to find out if we’d be put on a case. I sat in a corner and read some Philip K. Dick and tried to be inconspicuous—and ate vegan for lunch because it turns out Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is WAY more about empathy for animals than the Blade Runner movie. In spite of Whistleblower McGee, no one seemed to notice me. I didn’t end up on a trial that day—perhaps Whistleblower had spared me to atone for her earlier “nonsense” transgression—but outside of that, the only incident that reminded me I was famous was when a sweet older gentleman asked if I was reading my book for research, to be in the movie version.
“No, this is actually already a movie. They changed the title to Blade Runner but they made it in the eighties.”
“Oh,” he said, “I thought that Frenchman who did Sicario was remaking it. You know, the one who always works with Roger Deakins.”
Oh shit, Grandpa. That’ll teach me to underestimate a fellow Los Angeleno.
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There are plenty of places in the world where I am correctly treated like I ain’t shit. My personal favorite is my hometown. While I was in the middle of writing this, I went home to see my parents. I turned off my phone, stopped checking my email, and hung around Maine long enough that I pushed through the awkward small-talk phase with my dad and managed to get him talking about Sergei Prokofiev fleeing Stalin’s regime, which is his version of deep chat. I slept on my mom’s sofa even though she kept offering to make up the bed in the basement, because I liked waking up to bright snowy mornings. We took long walks around her neighborhood, each time stopping by her favorite neighbor’s house to say hello. The two young boys whom she often babysits were always thrilled to see her and could not have been less interested in me. It felt like how the world should be.
Being around my family and the place I grew up reminded me of my fear that I was getting too comfortable, that I was letting myself atrophy. When the apocalypse comes, my total lack of practical use in the world will make me a first-round draft pick to be cannibalized. How did I become so useless? Everyone else in my family is resourceful, brilliant, a problem solver by nature. I recently tried to kill a spider by chasing it around with a saucepan. There are several holes in my bedroom wall now. The spider lives on. You see what I mean?
During the visit I went through some childhood photos. After four shoeboxes of winter camping and historical fort pics (I didn’t find out until I moved away from home that other families went to Disneyland for vacation), I found this little doozy.
This picture proved that my entire personality was fully formed by the time I was three. I was an obstinate, determined little ball of anxiety.
I’d thought of myself as fearful and shrinking in childhood, but I was often single-minded and pugnacious. From age three onward I have been practical and skeptical and occasionally more courageous than I have any right to be. At age three I’d decided those were the tools I needed to get through this life in one piece, and those tools aren’t going away.
It was a wonderful discovery. It would make me so sad if naturally happy, open, kind children could be changed by their experiences and lose those qualities. My particular personality traits seem less worthy of preservation, but they are my own and I love them. I hate them a lot, too, but I can rely on them.
I shouldn’t be so worried about “changing” as an adult. As an adult you get to turn to your boyfriend and say things like “I’ve always found the obligation to say ‘god bless you’ after a sneeze really arbitrary and mannered. When we’re at home, can we stop saying it?” And then you get to stop! You have all this agency! You get to decide what kind of a person you want to be! And yet, you are still the person you were at three years old. Isn’t that kind of great? I think three-year-old you would be proud.