TO WIT: HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION
As a child, I lived in the country, and my very favorite times were the summertimes. My friends and I had large forests and vast open fields to run though. And when the weather was good, and even when it wasn’t, we were outside, almost always running. I actually became quite adept at plunging full speed through fields strewn with cow chips without so much as a soiled shoe, a skill that, surprisingly enough, has stood me in remarkably good stead in my professional life.
As I got a little older though, my parents packed me off to camp for the summer where I was introduced to the pleasures of short sheeting and pink bellies. Most of my time was spent there running, and as far as I could tell, the chief difference was that my friends weren’t there. Those summers at camp, after all these years, still retain a distinct place in my memory.
Since, as a lawyer, I firmly believe in pro bono work, even if it appears for certain I could not profit a whit from it, it was only fitting that, when the opportunity arose last summer, I volunteered to serve as counselor at Camp Maxikaka, a summer law camp for kids in the Poconos. It provides a wonderful chance for kids to practice practicing for the summer, and I was head of arts and crafts, and coach of the products liability team. The children called me “Uncle S,” and I had a wonderful time.
Each morning, we had the kids line up for flag raising, and immediately thereafter they gulped down hot coffee and cold pizza from the night before and rushed off to moot court on an upset stomach, just like a real lawyer. And for afternoon swim, the kids had to run all the way out to the lake behind the camp bus, just so they could get the smell of a big city practice.
As at every summer camp, the highlight is Color War, and this year the camp was divided into two teams, Labor and Management. The athletic competition during Color War was especially fierce this year, with Labor taking an early lead during the bowling meet by consistently pulling off crippling strikes. Management countered with a win at roller-skating when they stole the keys and locked Labor out of the rink. It was nip and tuck all the way, and the outcome wasn’t settled until the final event when the teams met on the baseball diamond carrying bats.
My favorite time at camp though was campfire time. In the cool crystal evenings, when the scent of pine had settled in on the forest floor, we all gathered around the campfire to sing camp songs and toast incriminating evidence; and when things quieted down and the stars and the trees were all that we could see, the children asked for stories.
I started to tell them the one about the successful lawyer who made a lot of money and was loved and respected by all, but these kids were much too sophisticated for fairy tales and they insisted upon a real ghost story. So told them my favorite one, and this is it.
Once upon a time there was a lawyer who undertook to represent an old man who had lost his left arm in a car accident. He had had it replaced with a prosthesis of pure gold. (The kids had learned “prosthesis” as a vocabulary word in their Language of Torts Workshop.) He did not like having one less arm than everyone else, and he was so angry that he wanted to sue. (“Yaay,” cheered the kids.) But the accident had happened some time ago and the Statute of Limitations was close at hand. (“Oooh,” cried the kids.) The lawyer signed the man up to a contingency fee agreement (“Yaay”) and began to work on the case.
But soon, the lawyer forgot about the case because he did not have a very good docket control system (“Oooh”); and one night, many months later, he was awakened from a deep sleep by a voice that kept wailing, “What about my golden arm?” He sat up in a cold sweat, threw on his robe and slippers, and drove down to his office where he discovered that the Statute had passed that very day.
At that moment, a vaporous figure appeared in his office, without an appointment, and identified himself as the Ghost of Statutes Passed. He took the lawyer on a brief and convincing tour of the hell that awaited him for his transgression. When he returned to the office, the lawyer discovered that all his hair had turned white and his skin was all wrinkled and drawn. Only half-daunted, he filed suit anyway, leaving out any allegations as to the date of the accident; and he got the case to the jury by challenging the credibility of the 300 defense witnesses called to establish the correct date. He got a favorable verdict and discovered in a post-mortem with one of the jurors that, because he appeared so prematurely gray from worry, the jury did not wish to add to his woe with an adverse verdict.
“Is that a true story?” the kids asked when I had finished, their faces shining with hope.
How could I tell them the truth? They were just kids.
“Go to sleep,” I said. “You’ve got a long run to the lake tomorrow.”
© 1984 – S. Sponte, Esq.