CHICAGO — Former President Barack Obama, free of a job that forced him to move to Washington for eight years, showed up to a downtown Chicago courthouse for jury duty on Wednesday morning. Then he heard the words most prospective jurors pray for: You’re dismissed.

The 44th president’s motorcade — considerably shorter than the one when he lived in the White House — arrived at the Richard J. Daley Center about 10 a.m.

Obama waved to people who gathered outside.

Shortly before noon, Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans told reporters that the former president had not been selected for jury duty. But Obama was ready to serve if told to do so, Evans said.

In fact, Obama was also summoned in 2010 but that was during his most powerful leader in the world period, and he was able to postpone reporting, according to his spokeswoman, Katie Hill.

On Wednesday, Obama did get the prospective juror experience of sitting through a decades-old, 20-minute video in which Lester Holt— now the anchor of NBC Nightly News but back then on local news —explained the ins-and-outs of jury duty.

Obama’s experience was a bit different than the others who watched the video. When he arrived there was a feeding frenzy as crowds of people inside the courthouse took photos and videos of the former president.  As happens most days, would-be jurors brought books, but on Wednesday some people brought books Obama had authored in hopes he might sign them. He obliged them and posed for photographs, Evans said.

Obama is the highest-ranking former public official to be called to jury duty in Chicago. But he is not the first former president to be called to jury duty. In 2015, former President George W. Bush answered the jury duty call in Dallas. He was not selected to sit on a jury.