The Light Side: Do the duty

YARMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Like many people who get summoned to jury duty, Jacob Clark didn’t want to go.

But unlike most people, he had a legitimate excuse — he’s 9 years old.

“I was like, ‘What’s a jury duty?”’ Jacob told the Cape Cod Times in response to his summons to appear in Orleans District Court in Massachusetts on April 18.

His grandmother told him it was a good excuse to miss a day of school.

His dad called the jury commission office to find out what happened. It turns out that someone apparently had typed 1982 for the Yarmouth third-grader’s birth year instead of 2002.

The mistake was quickly corrected.

Massachusetts Jury Commissioner Pamela Wood says a child gets called for jury duty once or twice a year.