Email To My Brother: Who Needs The Exercise? Not Me!

I was at jury duty today.
    I parked on the sixth level of the parking garage and decided to take the stairs down to the ground floor instead of the elevator.
    From the ground floor you exit to the street and walk around the building to Liberty Hall where all the potential jurors gather. It was a cold morning and downtown always seems to be ten degrees colder than the rest of the city.
    There was a long line to enter Liberty Hall, so I took my place at the end of it. One of the judges who is running for re-election was standing near the entrance handing out plastic water bottles with a picture of her and her two young boys on it. No husband. I guess she wasn’t married. She was making small talk with us as we walked past, telling some of us that if we don’t want to be picked to give long answers to any questions the lawyers may ask us and to ask a lot of questions in return.
    “The lawyers don’t like that,” she said.
    When I got to the juror check-in, they told me, “Didn’t you get our letter?”
    Um... no.
    Turns out they postponed my jury duty until Monday.
    “Usually I’ll get a call when my jury service is changed or canceled,” I told the clerk who was helping me.
    “Oh, we do that too,” she told me. “You didn’t get a call?”
    Um... no.
    So she gave me a work excuse for the day and printed out the letter I should have gotten in the mail. 
    “See you Monday,” I told her, sarcastically.
    “See you Monday,” she said, not getting it.
    This is the point of my email:
    When I got back to the parking garage, I decided to skip the elevator and climb the stairs back up. Not that I need the exercise, but why not?
    I climbed the first set of stairs at a brisk pace.
    The second set of stairs... not so brisk.
    The third set I walked.

    Slowly.    The fourth, I started breathing heavy.
    When I got to the fifth set of stairs, my legs were about to give out. I thought about exiting there and taking the elevator one floor up to the sixth parking level, but a young girl passed me on the way up so I decided to soldier on.
    By the time I got to the sixth level I was breathing hard and I could feel all six floors of stairs in my legs. I was glad I had a bit of a walk to my truck because it helped me catch my breath, and gave my heartbeat a chance to slow back down to normal.

     Well, almost.     Maybe I do need the exercise.

  

  

RaisingDad

JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

@JimDuchene