Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

My mindset and personality, if not my inability to be "mean," are perfectly suited for being an attorney.  I have the well honed instincts needed to see all sides of legal issues.

In other words – I’m wishy, washy. 

But I do not look upon that feature in myself as necessarily being a detrimental one.  In fact, yesterday morning a fellow blogger, who shall remain nameless, but his initials are Greg, said – and I quote:  "Dee, your indecision is inspiring."  To which I eruditely responded, in my best lawyerly tone, "I do my part. Well . . . I TRY to do my part. When I’m not waffling on
whether I do my part or not or if life just sorta happens around me
while I’m contemplating . . . well – whether . . .."

I say all sides, because sometimes there are way more than just the two obvious ones – right or wrong.  There is often a vast neutral ground in the middle.  What most often happens in lawsuits is that all parties meet and carve out a satisfactory compromise.  Compromise is the backbone of the U. S. legal system, as you know from watching TV shows from LA Law to Law and Order to Night Court. 

Of course as lawyers, we call it "mediation" and make big bucks for being one.  Not a mediation, you understand, but a sacred mediator.  

I tried to be one myself, figuring that was right down my alley based upon many years of breaking up brawls at home, at church, at – well – not so much at church.  But then, sometimes the Ladies’ Luncheons would go bad when Mrs. P. snubbed Mrs. Q’s late grandmother’s secret family recipe for fluffy yeast dinner rolls that somehow under Mrs. Q’s impatient hand at the yeast rising method deteriorated into the consistency of bricks. 

Suitable for hurling when said LL’s went bad.  And, albeit being served with lunch, not dinner, but then some things are worth taking out of the family vault for sacred "church" occasions seeing as how women rarely, if ever, had the opportunity to otherwise speak out and thus used LL’s to expound on suitable issues in their most uninformed, but authoritative voices.

But I digress.  (And that’s not a common lawyerly trait, which is most likely one of the major reasons I was banned from more than one big lawyerly bash – that quickly turned into bruhahas – over briefs prior to and while perusing speeches for opening and closing arguments in big time trials. . . And then there was that somewhat sad semester in Moot Court in my first year of law school. . . At which time I probably would have been wise to reconsider my mid-life crisis #17 to go to law school in the first place. . . But, you see . . .)

Anyway . . . I’ll get back "on point."  (Another lawyerly term there for you uninitiated in the finer subtleties of lawyer communication.  My undergraduate major, by the way.  From the University of Southern Mississippi.  At 40, too!  In 2 1/2 years. . . And with a 4.0.  Which led to a scholarship at Loyola School of Law.  Me and Brett Favre were there the same time, have I mentioned that?)

(Oh yeah, and when I was in Toastmaster’s that time I gave a scintillatingly scathing speech I titled "Get to the Point."  Now that was many years before I ever dreamed – which I never did – of going to law school, but it was obviously, looking back, a percursor to my doing so and the first inkling of what was to become my illustriously dismal legal career.)    

Finally, in conclusion, . . . just to wrap things up here a bit . . . what I’m wondering is if I should consider returning to the legal profession do you think by entering the disarray of either (amongst?) (within?) the local, state or federal civil or criminal court system as a jurist?  (That’s the lawyer word for influencial judge who can be swayed with suitable pollitical "gifts".  At least in Louisiana, the only state in which I was barred.  Make that the only state in which I passed the bar.  So I could cross the bar; remember that hymn "Crossing the Bar."  But then, that’s death, not the fence across the front of the court room.  Make that bar.  Which I passed.  The first time, and it was really hard, too.  Three days long furiously writing longhand all day. . . To answer really hard questions by illuminating the various legal issues, while . . ..)

Well, do you? 

I mean – I can just see me now up there on the bench hammering down with my antique gavel my beloved mom bought me years ago in great anticipation as the jury solomnly strides in to give the court their decision.   I render the verdict from the bench after the court reporter reads their findings and I’ve had a chance to peek at the piece of paper on which it is written.  (You know?  I’m a lawyer, but I’ve always wondered; why does the judge always get to peek at the jury’s findings first when they come back in the courtroom, then fold the paper up and hand it back to the bailiff to give to the court reporter to read?  Is it because he or she is too lazy to read it themself?  Or it’s unjudgely to do so?)

There I am in my shining moment of glory.  "What say ye?" I intone thunderously, in my best thunderous voice, to the jury.  I ask the jury foreman if the jury has reached a decision.  And he’ll respond with the best answer I could possibly hope for from an educated, thoughtful jury.

"Well, your honor," he’ll say." . . . "It depends."

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