I Used To Want To Be A Lawyer.

In fact, it's the earliest career that I recall having my heart fixed upon. For years I wanted to be a lawyer. From second or third grade I was fairly committed to being a lawyer. Then, all of a sudden one day I came home as a fifth grader and told my parents that I didn't want to be a lawyer anymore.

My dad took it kinda hard. In fact, from time to time he still reminds me of the days when I wanted to be a lawyer, and asks me what happened.

"Remember the good old days when you would have been done with school by now, and most assuredly would have been gainfully employed and out of my pocket? Remember those days? What happened to those days back in 1984?"

He doesn't actually say that, but that's what I hear. He says, with a light and wistful tone, almost as if he were prompting a flash-back sequence on a made-for-tv-movie, "Remember when you wanted to be a lawyer... [eyes glaze]...What ever happened to that?"

I've stopped telling him, and I just say "I don't know" these days. But, the truth of the matter is that I finally got to talk to an honest to goodness lawyer, and ask him questions about what his workday really was like. And, he answered me honestly when I asked him questions about scruples and ethics when they came into conflict with client obligations, and how that impacted job security/job satisfaction.

I didn't want a job where I would have to argue in support of things I didn't agree with, even if it was only from time to time; just felt like too high of a price to pay. And, the more I talked to him the more it became clear to me that there didn't seem to be a way to structure my career to circumvent these moral crises. The pay didn't seem worth it. I didn't want to be a lawyer anymore.

Oddly, from that day to this, I've always had people in my life who have been convinced that I would make a great lawyer, and have attempted to persuade me to "at least consider" law. I'm old enough to be jaded at this point, and I'm far from an idealist, but today I don't want to be a lawyer because I don't like conflict, I don't like breaking down other people, I don't like calling upon my abilities to be a disruptive and dominating force in order to conquer my opponent.

I think I ascribe to practices of intellectual non-violence. Huh. I guess that's where non-violence landed...

Anyway, it's been years since I've made the decision to dominate and conquer someone else's thinking in order to create room for myself. I don't like how it feels to "defeat" someone.

But, from time to time I think about law school; typically after someone has fucked me over, and I wish I were better positioned to defend myself.

Yesterday I got a call from my new dentist's office manager. She informed me that the $40 I paid to have a tooth fixed was charged incorrectly, and I now am responsible for an additional $279. At the end of a very heated discussion, she left me with the options to pay it or have it sit on my credit.

You BITCH!!

In that moment I wished to God that I was a lawyer. But, then I found a lawyer who would represent on this menial bullshit. At the end of our meeting I realized that I have absolutely NO interest in the practice of law. The shit is so unappealing across a spectrum of absurdities (Uhm... ACLU!)

I don't want to be a lawyer. I want to have a lawyer, especially when people run bullshit on me.

It was a wonderful revelation to finally understand that I don't actually want to take care of the shit myself when I'm mistreated, and learn all aspects of the law in order to protect myself and my loved ones; hawkishly protect us. Nah! I just want enough money to pay someone who specializes in that shit so that I can live the life I want to live, and not be disrupted because of someone else's stupidity.

The downside to this liberative realization, however, is that I know way down deep in the recesses of my memory that I never wanted to go to school. I never wanted to go to college; at least not when I went. Graduate school? Not really. Meh.

All of this shit is because I'm convinced that the world needs to be better for me and people like me. So, where can I contribute to creating the resources and support that I would have needed? It's not how I think about it, but my actions are thoroughly rooted in "being the change I want to see in the world". "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Inside my mind it sounds far more pessimistic, like "If I don't do it, no one will," or, "No one else gives a shit," or, "No one else can (wants to) do it, so I guess I have to." You know, shit like that.

I don't actually want to be an academic with 30 years of schooling under my belt. (I SO wish that number were a hyperbole!) If the world were safe for and supportive of little black girls, I don't know that I ever would have applied to anyone's graduate program.

I would have been a professional soccer player. I would travel around the country on a bus with 30 other women who love sport and athleticism, and give each other shit, and revel in camaraderie and the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. And at least once in my life, at least once, I would score a goal with a bicycle kick! At the end of the day you go to sleep and you start over again.

Why am I getting a Ph.D? Because the world is too fucked up for me to be a professional soccer player. Any questions?

Would I have made it? Yeah, I was damn good!!