Sometimes your neck just refuses to stay tucked into your shoulders.
So I sat in court yesterday next to a lawyer that’s gotten my goat a couple of times. Oozing arrogance, big and bony, the guy practically calls me “little lady” and reminds me of a now-deceased cigar-smoking attorney that actually had the temerity to call me “honey” on the record. I beat him dead to rights in a jury trial but that never fazed him. Needless to say this guy yesterday evoked the same reaction throughout the case we had together last year. I shuddered as he lowered himself onto the bench beside me in Division 26, a half-hour before Judge Otto took the bench.
He opened a file and sorted himself while I hunched against the wall and contemplated moving. Finally he turned to me and asked if I knew a particular attorney. I did, I quietly admitted. I did not continue, though I knew damn well that what he actually wanted to know is if I had seen her. He minced his mouth a little, hesitant to go one step further.
I stuck my neck out to meet him halfway and said, I haven’t seen her. He smiled. I suddenly realized that he might not actually be a jerk. The absolute purity of the look on his face suggested that perhaps I had misjudged him. So I tried another comment, this one about the case we had together and something I had learned from him about bankruptcy law. Then he asked if my practice was strictly domestic and I nodded. We exchanged a few more sentences, harmless, even friendly. When the courtroom door opened and the lawyer for whom he was looking entered, I nudged him and said, That’s Mary Ann, and he had his hand out to greet her by the time she reached us.
A few minutes later, Judge Otto took the bench and did an uncontested dissolution by telephone with the petitioner on the other line from prison. She called him “Mister” and walked him through the questions with something close to dignity. I sat for another hour and a half before she called my case, watching her address lawyers and litigants alike with the same calm respect. By the time she called us to the bench, my world had shifted another notch closer to nirvana.
It’s the first day of the thirty-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining. An old dog learning new tricks, coming to you live from Brookside, Kansas City, Missouri, the U.S.A., Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, the Universe. Life continues.
