It's Official: I Am a Tip Top Laaw-yuhr

I've been on hiatus quite a bit recently. Truth be told, I just haven't felt the funny. The glass is half empty as of late. Even watching "Kitchen Nightmares" stresses me out. But I've decided to write in the hopes of cheering myself up at the very least. So without further ado, I bring you the crap I've been up to lately.

Two weeks ago we had to go to our professionalism course required by the bar. It's the bar's last ditch effort to teach adults to play nice with each other. I believe that all of this is done out of a selfish desire to change society's perception of lawyers and ultimately bring about the end of lawyer jokes. This project is as futile as trying to bring an end to Aggie or Pollack jokes (apologies to aggies and poles, I use you merely as reference).

The course was held in Baltimore with a check in time of 8:30. Because the gods of timing hate us, that was also the weekend of the army/navy game. Two days before the course, the bar officials called everyone to let us know that parking would be non-existent, so we got up at 5am on Saturday, dressed in our suits, and drove to Baltimore to make sure we'd have adequate time to find parking.

What scares me is that when we got there at 7:15 a.m. the place was crawling with army/navy people. Let me just tell you, nothing short of saving my life could have me out of bed at that hour for tailgating.

Now I had decided to wear a skirt suit because my pantsuit is a tad snug to wear for an hour and a half drive plus a day long session of who knows what. However, since I had no pantyhose - a requirement for a professional appearance - I was forced to buy a pair from CVS which not only felt like sandpaper, but fit like a sack. By the time we arrived to check in, my pantyhose were falling in folds around my ankles making me look like I have like elephant legs.

In what I thought was a stroke of genius, I went to the bathroom, and put my underwear on OUTSIDE my pantyhose to act sort of like suspenders. Still no dice - the pantyhose continued their southernly evacuation. After about ten minutes I was like F it, and went and threw them in the trashcan.

After an introduction, we were broken up into smaller groups with different facilitators for to learn about different aspects of professionalism. One session was a sort of "what to expect in the courtroom" sort of thing, with one very polite lady judge and one, shall we say, sassy lady judge. Sassy lady judge starts by having everyone go around and say his or her name and something interesting about themselves. So people go around with their boring shit "I take ballet" or "I do belly dancing" and the judge is ohhhh and ahhhing and it gets to me and I say "I used to work for an art museum" and was met with complete silence. So somehow that's less cool than belly dancing, sassy judge?

After the introductions, Sassy judge then goes onto to talk about profession dress for the courtroom. "I don't like ladies without stockings in my court...now if there's a good reason, one time I had a lawyer come tell me she had a rash on her leg and her doctor told her not to wear them until she healed and I was like ok, that's fine, you gotta talk to your judge...". The whole time she's saying I'm attempting to hide my pantyhose-less legs under the table so as not to be made an example of before the class.

Sassy judge continues "...and ladies don't think that you can be wearing spaghetti straps in my courtroom and take off your jacket. That is a no no." And it is at this exact moment that I look down and notice that a button, in fact the critical button, the one that holds my shirt closed across my chest - is open. Say hello to my boobs class.

This may be why I don't own many button down shirts.

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The title of this post is taken from an awesome interview with Madonna that was originally printed in Hungarian and then translated back to English. The result is awesome.


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