TO-WIT: My Xmas List
Well, it has been that time of year again. though those of us in the litigation biz would sometimes sooner forget, it has nonetheless again been that annual season when humankind temporarily manages to get a handle on its tempestuousness. At Xmas time, snow is on the ground, joy is in the air and the first cuckoo of spring is far away, although one just called for a March appointment. But for now, no one wants to sue, no one wants to divorce, no one wants revenge, and as a result lawyers are left with a vacuum of professional time to fill.
You’d think that people would be more considerate of attorneys in light of the significant way we contribute to the disarray in their daily lives, but no. At this time of year, people other than lawyers are only interested in peace and good will and they seem to be quite content with the knowledge that there will be plenty of time to return to a wreaking of havoc right after the first of the year.
Some of my colleagues do not take at all kindly to this involuntary sitting-on of writs, as it seems to run so contrary to the professional grain. In fact, one of my earliest employers reacted so adversely to this unnatural confinement of his adversarial nature that every year at this time he became incontinent, petitionally speaking. Temporarily deprived of all other targets upon which to vent his litigious juices, he spent the better part of his Xmas vacation suing himself to a fare-thee-well. The year I worked for him, he appeared pro se as Plaintiff and I was assigned the task of representing him as Defendant. Before I could learn much about the case however, he fired me for trying to take his deposition.
as mid-December approaches, I am actually grateful for the lull in the air’s litigiousness, for it gives me an opportunity to reflect on my office Xmas gift list, to make a few additions (sometimes necessary), to make a few deletions (always necessary), and to thereby obtain something of an overview of my professional world and the folk who populate it.
So it is that every year at about this time, my secretary trundles into my office with that annoying beatific smile of hers, naively assuming I enjoy spending my money on others, and she reminds me that it is time once again to go over the Xmas list. It isn’t anything that she has scheduled to do. It isn’t anything that is on the calendar. She just intuitively knows it’s time to do the Xmas list when the office account reaches a monthly balance that would otherwise lull me into a false sense of financial security.
I have managed to develop a routine to this ritual. Sort of in the same way that water cuts a path through even the most stubborn and resistant rock formations, I have been reluctantly contoured by the relentless pressures of good will into a pattern of systematic giving. I have divided my list up into two categories of recipients, an “a” list consisting of those people to whom I should be grateful, if only I were the grateful sort, and a “b” list, consisting of those people in positions of elected, appointed or circumstantial power who, but for the lavish presents I send them every year at this time, would make my professional life considerably more than the occasional dance in hell it already is.
I have further divided up the “a” and “b” list into the sub-categories of “lawyers” and “non-lawyers”, but I am no longer sure why. There hasn’t been a lawyer on the list since I sent a splendid two-year fruit of the month gift to a colleague who, when he subsequently represented my first wife in the divorce, placed his bananas into evidence as proof of my extravagant professional life-style.
Judges have never been on my list. It isn’t that I am not grateful to that occasional jurist who, either because of an abiding love of justice or a total indifference to it, leaves my cases unimpaired. It’s rather that the thought of littering the noble paths of justice with the picayune trash of gift-giving is, to me, quite distasteful. I’d much rather spend the money on the judge’s secretaries, who know what’s expected in return.
without judges and lawyers to consider, the rest of the list is easy. I always remember those certain magistrates, constables, deputies and row office employees who always remember me remembering them. After so many years of remembering, we have formed a bond together, an endless circle of remembering, and I will always be pleased to remember them for as long as they never forget. Occasionally I add one, occasionally I omit one, but actually my list has remained more or less static.
Then there’s my secretary. She’s been with me for so many years. Sometimes I think this whole business of going over the Xmas list is just foreplay for our discussion of her Xmas present. This year I particularly wanted to honor her for her years of loyalty and devotion, so I deviated significantly from prior practice. This year I sprung for the kind with the almonds.
You should have seen the look on her face. As usual, she didn’t say much, but I could tell she was pleased. Why, she just jumped right up and charged out of my office and began banging away on her word processor, more eager than ever to get back to the business of suing people and making their lives a holy and living hell. And who says gratitude is dead?
© 1991, S. Sponte, Esq.