Saturday, May 25, 2013

"That happened, for sure."

About a month ago, I finished my 2L year. That makes me X if X=(2/3)(Lawyer - bar exam). That is how to represent my professional status via algebra.

I start work at Schiff-Hardin LLP, a bona fide law outfit doing business out of Chicago, on Tuesday.  The firm itself does pretty glorious things. They represent Michael Jordan, some of the Chicago Bears, Pepsi, Aunt Sally's Cookies, the NCAA, and other people. I am about to do among the least glorious of those things, and I am overwhelmed with joy about it: evidence that I have chosen a good path for myself. I will write memorandums for people. Important people. Players. They do influential things like file briefs, lawsuits, responses, and my payroll paperwork. They argue to women and men in black robes, and men and women who agitatedly endure their jury duty. They merge business empires.  Every once in a while, they will have a little question that they need answered in order to answer a big question. They will ask me to answer that little question. With my stunning(ly infantile) legal prowess, I will dodge, dart, and dig through the legal cybersphere for information which I will push into my mind like freshly ground coffee, and coupled together with the hot waters of my passion for my work, it will trickle out through my fingertips in the form of delectable legal analysis.  I will take that hot drank to my boss, who will likely sip it through their spectacles, spit it across the room, and tell me how to make it palatable.

So anyway, I finished the law school year, and had some time to fart around. So I went on a lil trip with the Padre. We moseyed on down to Mammoth Caves National Park. It was my first time in Kentucky. The Derby had just happened. As we drove through Lexington and I saw the vast expanse of empty parking lots where tourists' cars were previously parked and the green fields where the horses played after they got done running side by side wondering what the point of carrying around those tiny men is, exactly,  I felt I had grown closer to the horse racing world somehow. Maybe next year I'll watch on TV.

As two generation of Bergsma's trounced through the woods on the hiking trails paid for by your stimulus dollars, we talked about what our protocol for a cougar attack would be. The animal kind of cougar. I carried a 3-inch buck knife passed down to me by Harold Bergsma, the eldest of our clan. There were many rocks on the trail. We decided we would be best off with the Third Degree Black Belt wielding the knife and the former above-average 14-year-old pitcher casting rocks like brutish spells at the pondered beast's face. Getting the blade under the ribs would be key to survival.

Then, a huge tree fell. We heard it. That particular woodland oratory lasted about 5 seconds, I would say. There was some snapping and crackling then some ripping and crashing, then some avian refugees fluttering off to find a new home.  Then, wisely and matter-of-factly, Dan Bergsma said, "Well, that happened for sure."

 There was no hint of self-celebratory tone in this statement, which is odd for our bloodline.

A well-armed woodland prophet.

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