Calling and not calling my name

A couple days ago, I attended the Moth StorySlam. For those of you who don't know, the Moth StorySlam is basically an extremely well-attended open mic for storytellers. It was my fifth time and the first time the producer recognized me and said, "You putting your name in the hat?" I thought this was a good sign. You put your name in the hat, and then immediately before each story is told, they call out the next storyteller.

The next morning, I had to go to grand jury duty. I had postponed twice and so it was the third time I heard the rules of their lottery system. You could say "serve," which meant if you were picked to serve, you had to serve, or you could say "application," meaning you were asking to postpone again. I had seen some people say "serve" and then not have their name picked, although they never tell you exactly how many slots there are or how many people are must-serves, so you don't really know your exact chances. All the "serve" people's names go into a big Bingo machine and the warden pulls out names one at a time until the juries are filled up. They don't even give you a chance to say, "I'm a racist" or "I don't believe in the judicial system because I think most people are too stupid to understand basic concepts of legality and ethics."

In both instances, I was filled with anxiety. Like Hunger Games level anxiety. With each name called, I knew my chances of being called were less likely. But my body still tensed up each time a name was drawn, and I still willed my name to be called in the first case and not called in the second. Every time they called out a name starting with S or Sa, my heartbeat quickened and I was sure it was me. It felt excruciating. And in both cases, I was unlucky. I did not get to tell my story and I was picked for jury duty.

In the end, neither of these things turned out to be monumentally important. 6 months from now, I probably won't miss these two weeks of work or bemoan the fact that that story remains untold. But during those moments, the anxiety of the lottery system and the element of chance really affected me. I read a study a while ago when they put in those NYC subway electronic alerts that tell you how far away your train is, that said that people's well-being was drastically improved just by knowing how far away the train is. Even if your wait is exactly the same length of time, you feel better knowing it will be 10 minutes than thinking there's a chance of it being 1 minute and then having it be 10 minutes.

I know I would have felt better in both cases not having believed that there was a chance things would go my way. If I had just gotten a letter saying I was definitely serving or if I was told at the beginning of the show exactly who the storytellers were. I was the kid in class who was always whining to the teacher, "But that's unfair." I wanted merit/effort/my pure and good heart/how annoying it was to listen to me whine to have an effect. A lottery system is probably the most "fair" system there is, but I would rather the system not be so publicly visible as a giant wheel where names were pulled out one at a time, leaving you to wonder, moment by moment, whether fate will spare you this time. The knowledge that through luck alone, someone else got the reward I was equally likely to get but unlucky enough not to receive always makes me feel deprived and frustrated. You might think I would feel deprived no matter what. But the time spent listening to other people's stories, the time in jury duty, those things don't bother me as much as the moments where I could see someone looking at a name and I didn't yet know whether it was mine.