Category — Casual Observer

Mark Levy

I Like My Present Age the Most

            Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes walked down a street when he was 90 years old or so and reputedly saw an attractive young woman. Holmes turned to his companion and muttered, wistfully, “Ah, to be eighty again.”

            I wonder if I will have the same wish when I get as old as Holmes was. I know a few, much younger people who already are pining for their even younger selves. That helps explain the reason many people are obsessed with looking younger. They wear fashionable clothing and hair styles and they get face lifts and tummy tucks. They listen or try to listen to rap and hip-hop music and use teenage expressions, like “omigod” and “fly girl” and “cheese” and “phat,” spelled with a PH. Now if they have that sort of never-young-enough temperament, they might also wish for younger years when they hit the advanced age of 30.

            If they regret reaching, say, the 40-year milestone, how will they feel when they reach each succeeding year or decade? Life must become more and more disappointing to those folks as they age. That’s really too bad. It means they have less to look forward to every day. Where’s the fun in that?

            I, on the other hand, enjoy my present age more than I did my age last year. And last year was better than the year before. Now I’m not saying that each of my faculties is better than ever, or that there aren’t more insidious signs of failing health; but I have a better adjusted attitude with each year. I have a better appreciation for how the universe works and how and why people act as they do. Now I also know better how to urge some people to react the way I would prefer, from the cashier at the supermarket to my boss. I still haven’t figured out my wife, but I’m optimistic even about that, as foolish as that sounds.

            I’m increasingly empowered with knowledge, and that feeling of self-sufficiency should continue to increase as I live through more events, meet more people and gain more experiences. It’s a shame it will end, but I try not to think about that.

            I am free not to have to prepare for events that I now know will never happen. I don’t feel the urgency to rehearse with an air guitar, for example, since the prospect of rock stardom has already passed me by. And I’m not writing and rewriting my acceptance speech anymore for the Oscars or the Nobel Prize ceremony. What a relief. That saves me a great deal of time and, of course, anxiety. Nowadays, the only thing I rewrite is my last will and testament.

            I don’t have to practice catching fly balls to right field or get nervous about meeting my teen-aged girl friend’s parents or explain to my own parents why my 8^th grade report card in Spanish isn’t as high as they had hoped. I don’t have to stay up half the night trying to remember the capital cities of 50 states or the names of the explorers who discovered each little dinky Latin American country — information that I was pretty sure I would not need in the next 50 years… and I was right.

           I spend little time thinking about what I’ll be when I grow up, although I have to admit fleeting thoughts of that still cross my mind on certain Monday mornings.

            Besides the obvious advantages of qualifying for senior discounts at the movies, at restaurants and at sporting events, and the deference youngsters pay me occasionally, when all of the seats are taken on the bus, here’s another benefit of being older. Recently, I completed a Master Degree in creative writing. (You might not realize that from these little essays, because they are essentially non-fiction. Let’s face it: you can’t make some of this stuff up.) Anyway, my writing class of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings spent time learning how to think of subjects to write about. I could have skipped those classes, because coming up with new ideas is no problem for me. By now, I’ve experienced all sorts of things that I can write about. I felt sorry for the younger students in my class, who could just imagine events that I had already experienced. It seemed like an unfair advantage for me, in fact.

            No, compared to my earlier years, I am completely satisfied with my present age. I just wish I could somehow remember those early years better.

Everybody Should Go To Law School

By Mark Levy

As crazy as this sounds, I think everybody should go to law school. I know what you’re thinking: we have too many lawyers already; an entire society of lawyers would be like a science fiction horror movie come to life. But hear me out, please, before you call the men in the white coats.

Law school can be an enlightening experience. It requires only three years after you graduate college —— four if you go to night school, which law schools like to call “part time” or “the evening division.” Really, in the great scheme of things, what are three or four years of your life? You’ve already probably spent more time doing unimportant things, like spending quality time with your family. You’d hardly miss three or four years. Trust me; I’m a lawyer.

Here’s another benefit of going to law school: you get to read about all sorts of crimes and bad behavior. In a way, it’s a TV reality show without the pictures or the sound effects.

I know three good reasons to attend law school, even if you never want to practice law a day in your life.

First, a legal education will teach you how to negotiate. That’s an important skill, since we all negotiate dozens of times a day. When I wake up in the morning, I have to negotiate with my wife who will get to brush his or her teeth first. Then we negotiate who will prepare breakfast, what the breakfast will be, who will walk down the driveway to retrieve the newspaper, who will use the last five drops of milk in his or her coffee, and who will decide where to meet for lunch.

That’s the typical morning routine that I engage in on Saturdays and Sundays alone. During the work week, I negotiate with business associates, with retail store employees, with bank tellers, with grocery store cashiers, and with taxi drivers, not to mention dealing with a fairly long list of requests demanded by my children, of course.

So you see how valuable it is to have good training in negotiating tactics.

Here’s the second reason I think a law school education is helpful: you get to know how to get around the law.

Take the simple “do not enter” sign. How often have you seen that sign and been deterred from going where you want to go? How often have you had to pack up your suitcase and rush out of a hotel room before the 11:00 a.m. checkout time? How often have you had to pay your income taxes? (Just kidding, all you IRS agents out there.)

How often have you heard someone say, “You can’t do that” or “We can’t do that” or “Nobody can do that?” When you’re a lawyer, you don’t blindly accept those statements; you take them as a personal challenge.

Going to law school means never having to take “no” for an answer, with the possible exception of when an aforementioned IRS agent says it. There’s almost always a way to accomplish your goal if you learn how to approach every problem as if there must be a solution. Of course, that’s what lawyers get paid to help you with, but if you get the education and you can develop the correct mindset, most of the time you won’t need no stinkin’ lawyer to help you out. Look at the money you’ll save by attending law school for yourself.

Which brings me to the third advantage of going to law school and perhaps the most important reason I think everybody should have a legal education: you learn when you should call a lawyer. You may think that’s a trivial reason for spending so many hours reading cases about plaintiffs and defendants, but you’d be surprised how often people go to a lawyer too late in the game.

For example, in real estate only a small percentage of home buyers consult a lawyer before they sign what the real estate agents call a “binder,” but which lawyers know is a contract. Turns out, the lawyer they select has one hand tied behind his or her back, since the client has already agreed to certain terms and conditions and forfeited some options in that binder agreement. Usually, it would have cost the buyer the same to engage the lawyer before the binder was signed as after.

In the patent business, where I spend most of my time, I can’t tell you how often inventors approach me more than a year after they’ve publicly disclosed their invention. That’s a shame. The patent law states that an inventor cannot obtain a patent unless the invention has been publicly disclosed, if at all, for less than a year. If the inventor had made the appointment with me a year earlier, he might have obtained a patent. But because he didn’t know when to call a lawyer, he’s  out of luck. That’s why Mr. Rubik never received a patent for Rubik’s Cube, by the way.

So there you have it. Everybody should go to law school to learn how to negotiate, learn not to take “no” for an answer, and learn when to call a lawyer. Luckily, it’s never too late to go to law school, so start saving up for the tuition now. I should have mentioned that earlier.

Hey, tuition fees may be negotiable. If you look for loopholes, as we say in the legal biz, and you don’t take “no” for an answer, you’re already on your way to being a lawyer. See how easy that is?

The Litchfields Copyright Lynda Barreto

Ordinary People

With Famous Names

In Denver, a woman named Amelia Earhart reports on traffic from a helicopter for a local news station. The broadcast news people at that Denver TV station don’t crack a smile when they introduce Amelia Earhart in her helicopter. Maybe they were all born too late.

This got me thinking about famous names in unlikely places. With the help of an Internet search engine that uses U.S. census data to arrive at its statistics, I discovered that there are over 79,000 Amelias and almost 3,000 Earharts, but only one Amelia Earhart in America. Apparently, she’s the one flying around in a helicopter. And how many of the three Charles Lindberghs even have pilot licenses?

            There was a Howard Johnson in a company I worked for once, but sadly, he didn’t work in our cafeteria. There are 2,837 Howard Johnsons in the U.S.

            It must be difficult going through life with a famous person’s name. People either expect too much of you or don’t take you seriously. If you’re one of the three Frank Sinatras, for example, you probably have to be ready to sing a few bars of My Way at the drop of a fedora.

            Not too many Tiger Woods, yet, because only some 1,500 or fewer people are named Tiger; but I’ll bet that situation changes in the future. At this time, there’s only one Tiger Woods, which should provide some comfort to the rest of the players on the Professional Golfers Association tour. We might eventually see some Tiger Smiths, Tiger Browns and Tiger Johnsons become celebrities, for that matter. Or we could soon see other not-so-famous Shaquilles, Beyonces and Chers. I’m surprised there are only 15,000 Elvises.

            Barack Obama is not high on the list of popular names. In fact, there’s only one. I think Barack Schwartz or Barack Harrigan would have a nice ring.

            Have any other of the two Mickey Rooneys or the 4,400 Elizabeth Taylors been married eight times?

            There doesn’t seem to be an Alfonse Capone, but apparently there are nine Albert Capones, five Alfred Capones, and 13 Alan Capones. At least some of those 27 Capones are called “Al Capone” by their close friends, I suppose.

            Of all the 18,000 Lincolns in America, how many would you guess are Abrahams? The Internet says only three.

            Are all the 342 Bob Hopes funny?

            You probably don’t realize that over 500 people are named Roy Rogers, yet there are only 429 Dale Evans’ to go around, making for almost a hundred lonesome cowboys, assuming they’re all cow people who want to hook up with a cowgirl counterpart having her famous name. Good luck, pardners, and happy trails to you.

            There are estimated to be 19 William Shakespeares, but nary a Hamlet in sight, prince or otherwise.

            Here’s another interesting statistic: only 276 people are named Jaclyn Smith, which just doesn’t seem like enough.

            Although there are over 42,000 Levys, 201 are named Mark Levy, believe it or not, but I’m the only one you get to hear on Weekend Radio.

            If you’d like to check the frequency of your name or someone else’s, visit the web site: HowManyOfMe.com.

Mark Levy is an attorney with the Binghamton-based law firm of Hinman Howard and Kattell. He is a contributing editor to ragazine.cc with Ryan Miosek (Feeding the Starving Artist), and an occasional contributor to NPR, where his comments can be heard some Saturdays at noon.