Persiflage

Love & Memories

These are the things I remember.

I remember when, after my junior-high-nightmare of a cafeteria wipeout resulted in a hand reconstructed with stitches and glue, you pulled together an impromptu care package featuring two issues of the Economist and a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats.

I remember Valentine's Day, when you demonstrated your undercover culinary genius and whipped up a delicious, romantic, homemade dinner.  Since I was scantily clad for February in Michigan, you cordially offered to venture out alone into the cold to rent a movie.  And ended up making me watch "Ghostbusters" by candlelight in between the entree and the dessert.

I remember your intricate yet misguided theory that your ConLaw difficulties stemmed from our professor's clandestine love for me.  I remember your habit of leaving me notes in the Civil Procedure study guide we passed back and forth.  I remember your ritual staking-out of your cherished spot in the library.  I remember your obsessive laundry habit, to the extent that when we threw a load of clean and folded laundry off my bed in the middle of the afternoon to get into it, you demonstrated repeated concern over how my freshly washed gym clothes were faring on the floor.  I remember teaching you that not only did you know how to gossip, but that you in fact excelled at it.  I remember how you made me laugh harder than anyone I've ever known, so hard that my stomach would clench and my back would ache and I'd break into hysterical, hyena-like, hiccuping coughing spasms.

I remember the nights when I would have the good fortune of extricating you from the library before PM became AM.  You'd sink into the couch, I'd curl up on your lap, and you'd say, "this is the best part of my week." 

I remember realizing how easy it can be to continue loving someone long after you've fallen out of love with them.

Momentary Hiatus

Apologies for the recent dearth of posting.  I lost someone very dear to me this week and haven't yet quite remembered how to laugh.  It seems that even smiling a real smile- rather than the "no, sure, I'm all right" smiles which have recently become the primary component of the expressional repertoire- might shatter my face, leaving me somehow more exposed and raw than I already am.  I had no idea a non-pregnant human being was capable of riding this precipitous an emotional rollercoaster.

Perhaps by next week, being trying to be funny won't seem so exhausting.  Selfishly, at least a part of me hopes the desire to shower and get out of the sweats returns first.  As, I'm sure, do my co-workers.

Quote O' The Night

"I don't really dislike him.  I just find him thoroughly odious."

Ah, men of the law.  For you, we regularly redefine the subtle boundaries of our species of repulsion

Doctor in the Headlights

There was a melee in the coffee shop, and I was only peripherally involved.

Not long after Jen and I settled in, the blandly blond future yacht club member- the sort who likely calls his friends "old chap" after he's had a few- studying at the table to my left was joined by a swarthier and less pleasingly symmetrical cohort.  In a conspicuously pompous status display of which male lawyers can only dream, both Swarthy and Blondie were wearing scrub shirts.  In Starbucks.

(It amazes me that male lawyers haven't utilized their familiarity with collective action to band together to petition the bar to develop a similarly distinctive lawyer uniform that would facilitate trophy wife pickups.  It would almost certainly incorporate the bonding of a Crackberry to one's palm by means of industrial-strength epoxy.)

In a truly epic display of suavity, Swarthy, only minutes after his arrival, accidentally poured almost the entirety of a steaming hot milky coffee beverage with unidentifiable creamy lumps across the table, into eddys around Blondie's computer, through his notes, and into a waterfall culminating in a pool on his lap.  I could hardly believe that someone had done that, and that that someone, was, somehow, not I.  A moment later my erratic and misguided sense of sympathy kicked in, and I got up to relieve the condiment bar of a year's worth of rainforest undergrowth in napkins to clumsily assist in the mopping process.

To diffuse embarrassment, Jen and I turned our attention away from Blondie's crotch and back to the business at hand.  Prior to the deluge, we had been discussing a friend who has had, for several years, a chronic (as opposed to acute) crush on me, with attendant ebbs and flows in the extent of his Laris appreciation.

"In the end," I said, "I think he's too nice for me.  That sounds horrible.  But...all the snarking would be one-sided.  And he would never stand up to me.  And I don't think I'm attracted to him, so I'd be dating him just because he's so nice.  And we all know what happens when I date nice guys just because they're nice."

At that, I felt a hand on my shoulder.  As I looked up to find Blondie standing over me, Jen, not noticing the intrusion, leapt to the plate with the (admittedly correct) response to my presumedly rhetorical question.

"Well, sure.  You crush their souls."

It's been quite awhile since someone has, quite literally, run away from me.

 

John, Tom, Katie, & Mom

As a child, I always suspected that my mother was a secret devotee of a Christian Science-like cultish religious organization.  It wasn't so much an aversion to medication or to physicians, but more of a denial of the existence of illness itself, or a refusal to acknowledge that not feeling well might rationally have any observable impact on the execution of one's daily duties.  In grade school, I was the only child in Academy history to five-peat the perfect attendance award, but did so at the cost of being that bane of janitorial existence, the kid who annually pukes in a corridor.  By high school, bronchitis was my weakness of choice, and I suspect that the nuns in the front office kept penguin-adapted orange Hazmat suits in the lost-and-found closet, since I would regularly be removed from class and entrusted to their care for coughing phlegmily to the extent that my teachers claimed that the noise, paired with the visual stimulation of my lungs ricocheting off the walls, distracted others from their learning.  It always took Mom awhile to work off enough anger at my alleged malingering to come to pick me up.

I'd assumed- God alone knows why- that she'd extricated herself from the cult in recent years.  I was wrong.

Mom: I don't feel so well.  I'm getting a headache.  A bad, bad headache.

Me: Oooh.  Ouch.  Take some Advil now; maybe you can stave it off.

Mom: Nah.

Me: So it can turn into a migraine, because you'll also refuse to sit down, and in fact will insist upon, like, deep-cleaning all the shutters on the house?

Mom: Good idea!  They're disgusting.  I think I might have the flu...

Me: ...and you can use it as an excuse for snarking at us all day and eventually working your way up to a full-scale shrieking tantrum, since you're so exhausted from trying to be a Molly Maid while you're under the weather?

Mom: Pretty much.

Still not at the top of her game, she left at 5 AM this morning to set out on the ten-hour drive to visit her family.  Good luck, Grandma!

The Responsibility of a Professional

This weekend, several of my friends are taking the MPRE.  For the uninitiated, that's the "Multi-state Professional Responsibility Examination" (I think.)  It's a two-hour multiple choice test required by most states for admission to the bar.  Insert "is that the test to determine whether you're sufficiently amoral to practice law" joke here. 

The test is offered, I believe, three times per year.  Most people make the sensible and rational decision to get the MPRE out of the way before taking the bar exam, and hence sit for it in the fall or spring of their third year of law school.  Ever the renegade, I chose the less popular and more imbecilic option of taking the test approximately two weeks after the bar.  So, after spending the first three post-bar days drinking, carousing, and shopping in Manhattan, and the following five days huddling in the fetal position to recover from the resultant hangover and re-learning how to eat solid foods, since in the week leading up to and including the bar I subsisted mainly on fruit smoothies and Peppermint Patties, don't ASK! I had less than a week in which to learn all of ethics, from the dawn of time until present day.  My method of "studying" consisted of sitting in my local coffee shop while flipping through something in the vicinity of 900 flash cards, many of which included instructive scenarios featuring HIGH-lariously monikered characters such as "Auntie Arctica" and "Pola Bear."

And I aced it.  (I find it splendidly entertaining that none of the screening mechanisms designed to prevent highly inappropriate people from becoming attorneys managed to eliminate, of all people, me, from the applicant pool.)

In light of my MPRE prowess and my staggering generosity, I'd like to offer some test-taking tips for those who might not share my dexterity with the #2 pencil:

Laris's MPRE Tip #1: Accurately asses, via Mapquest or a comparable tool, the distance to your test-taking site.  After estimating the requisite travel time to be allotted, get a second opinion from someone whose estimation skills are less notoriously inaccurate than your own.  This will prevent episodes of spastic rage when you realize that the only way to get to the test on time is to drive at 60 miles per hour on residential byways where the speed limit is 20 and having to pass, illegally, on the wrong side of the road, two van-driving soccer moms and a tractor, all of whom are lingering under the delusion that the speed limit is an actual law, as opposed to a friendly suggestion. 

This plan of attack might also insulate you, to some extent, from the paralysis-inducing panic that comes upon you when you realize that the test is scheduled to start in three minutes, that you have arrived with no photo ID, and you have no time to execute ANY SORT of master plan (other than hoping that you have, unbeknownst to yourself, acquired the time-freezing powers of Evie from "Out of This World", and YES, I DID try jamming my fingers together a few times while trying to prevent myself from projectile vomiting at the horror of my predicament), beyond applying lipstick in a futile attempt to look cute, and crying.

Laris's MPRE Tip #2: Do not forget your photo ID.  Since you will not have taken the bar only ten days prior to your MPRE experience, you will not be capable of the sufficiently pitiful tear-filled, panic-induced, sleep deprivation-prompted hysterical meltdown that will result not only in your being allowed to sit for the examination without the highly requisite identification, but also in the proctor wiping your nose, giving you a hug, bringing you water, and telling you that everything will be all right.

As for advice related to the answering of actual test questions, I got nothing.  Although I hear that taking money from client trust accounts to cover your tab at Ye Olde Neighborhood Bar is generally frowned upon.  Good luck to all MPRE takers.

I Got A Jones, Man

Conversation between Laris and Unsuspecting Target Employee

Me: The eggs, man!  Where are the eggs?  The Cadbury eggs!  It is March!  March means spring!  Spring means Easter!  Easter means eggs, Cadbury eggs!  Yet, I do not see them!  Where are they?

Target Employee: Oh, my God.  Are you some kind of addict?

Me: What if I am?

Target Employee (feeling safer now that he is partially obscured behind a rack of chocolate which I have apparently found wanting): We don't have them in yet.  [Runs away]

Me: [Primal growl.]

My mother has always suspected that somewhere, deep inside me, there is a fat girl crying to get out.  She might be onto something, there.

Pimp My Ride

Yesterday morning, I found myself involved in a nasty parking garage altercation with an officious stranger.  For the record, let me explain that I park in the Guantanamo of parking garages.  We're talking about the type of place that, each morning, causes you to wonder whether it was initially designed with a midget circus in mind.  I do not doubt that, perhaps in a past life, I did something truly wretched to deserve the horror that is this garage.  Because punishment is the only justification for its existence.  The primary architectural theme here is "constriction."  There are spaces into which you cannot negotiate your car without at least a three point turn.  Spaces from which you cannot extricate yourself unless your neighbor to the right chooses to leave in advance of your departure.  Spaces into which you could only manage to slide a well-lubricated Yugo if you measured out the appropriate angle with a MIT-approved protractor.

So, none of the spaces are what you might describe as "spacious."  Yet, a few of them, based on wholly invisible and inconsistent criteria, are designated as "compact only."

Back to yesterday morning.  I gently maneuvered into an open slot, turned my heater from "hell" to "off", locked up, and went off on my merry way.  As I walked away from the car, a squat, matronly little woman hurried after me at an alarming speed, waving her arms over her head and squawking, "You can't park there!  You!  Cannot park there!  That is not a compact car!  You DO NOT HAVE a compact car."

I stopped.  Looked at her.  Looked at my car.  Looked at my watch.  Habitually driving at a breakneck speed had paid off yet again, as it left me with plenty of time to settle minor territorial disputes before reporting to work.

"Is my car hanging over the back line?"

"No."

"Is my car hanging over the side lines?"

"Well, no, but that is NOT a compact..."

"Am I somehow violating the UN protected airspace of the cars next to me?  Is any portion of my car extruding from, or even overlapping, the contours of the parking space as indicated by the bright yellow perimeter?"

"No."

"Well, then, by golly.  It looks like I've got myself a "compact" SUV."

Hello, Kitty

There is nothing, really, that quite compares to starting your day on the kitchen floor, head between your knees, waiting for your heart to descend from your sinus cavity and refrain from beating as though it had registered in a NASCAR event for bodily organs.  Especially when you do not even have the previous evening's alcohol abuse to blame for your prostrate condition.

Someone, this morning, left the cupboard door ajar. The perpetrator shall remain nameless until these allegations can be substantiated, but let it be said that her reaction to my cupboard door neglect included lengthy remonstrations at a pitch so high and frantic that it caused neighborhood garage doors to careen from closed to open and back again on an involuntary basis.

Number One Cat, always on the alert to opportunities involving the simultaneous prospect of food and torment, immediately sprang into action.  Either by a chain of complicated jumping maneuvers or by employing her secret, concealed opposable thumbs to create a makeshift ladder out of cereal boxes, Number One Cat managed to elevate herself to the fourth shelf of the cupboard.  Which, in an amazing coincidence, is both the shelf where the Caribbean Tuna Cat Treats are located and also the shelf which is at eye level for a person who is, say, 5'6".

I stumbled into the kitchen, seeking my cupboard-stored lifeblood, my nectar in a brown and green bag.  Before I took notice of her presence, Number One Cat, angered by my invasion of her solitude, my interruption of her efforts to gorge herself on tasty crude proteins, and the mere fact of my continued existence, went on the offensive.  Sticking her nose up in my grill, Cat swatted my cheek with her paw and uttered a vicious, "ROWWR" that, had I been a cartoon character, would have been drawn as a visible force, propelling me backwards into the countertop island.

Two hours later, due to the panaceic effects of the Sumatra blend and Hershey's dark kisses, I have largely recovered.  In body, if not in spirit.  Beware, Number One Cat!  Revenge shall be mine!  I shall not rest until I have avenged my honor.  I have not only evolution, but also the internet on my side.  Now: anyone seen any tasty recipes for cat stew floating around out there?

In Contempt

Recently, I'd adopted the theory that the grinding pressure of my law school experience, coupled with the traumatic ordeal of studying for and taking the bar, had aged and weathered my appearance to the extent that I could blend passably with the rest of my generation.  As demonstrated by the conversational snippet below, I was sorely mistaken.

Repairman, to my mother, believing he was out of earshot: Your daughter's so polite.

Mom: Uh...thanks...I guess.

Repairman: Is she in high school?

Mom: Actually, she's in her twenties.

Repairman: No!  Really?  So, she's in college?  Around here?

Mom: She...graduated from law school last spring.

Stunned silence.

Repairman: There is no way I'm gonna believe that that little girl is allowed to sue people.

Mom:  I imagine you'd have to address those particular concerns to the state of New York.  Outside my jurisdiction.

It's not often that my mom takes a swing, but when she does, she hits 'em out of the park.