Funny Yet Accurate

On Friday I offically retired [read: changed careers] as a lawyer. Practicing law for 50 years [read: 2 1/2] has been a really wonderful experience [read: it was someone else's dream for me.] I retire [read: quit] as a contient and fulfilled 75 year old man [read: a eager to start a new path in my life 28 year old woman.]

Other than the man part, I do think this is how my mother and father imagined my retirement dinner speech would begin. First, they must have very little faith in my speech writing abilities if they thought that I would pen such crap in honor of 50 damn years as a lawyer. Second, even if that is the exact speech my future self would have made, it is not to be. Beginning next week I will be a student again. Had you told me on the day of my law school graduation three years ago that I was going to willingly go back to school, I would not have believed it. But, the alternatives are not very appetizing:

1. Be a lawyer
2. Work at McDonalds

I am sure that there may be other alternatives between those two, but I don't really see any. Actually, I could probably do without another degree what I am going back to school to learn how to do, but I really think that when your job is to teach people how to read and write and the basic fundimentals of math, you owe it to them to not be shooting from the hip.

Yes, I am going to be an elementary school teacher. And I am going to do all my learning up in a birkenstock-wearin', tofu-eatin', gay-pride-parade-marchin', bra-burnin' hippy college town. (I'm sure that there is much hemp-derivative-smokin' going on too, but if it didn't happen when we were 18, it's not likely to happen for us now. We will just have to satify ourselves with our neighbors' incense-burnin', pot-maskin' coolness. Maybe it will rub off on us -- although it's going to have to get through Nancy Reagan first.)

Now many people have tried to make comparisons between being a public defender and being an elementary school teacher. I prefer to not make such comparisons. I see it as my job to try to instill some basic fundimentals (such as literacy) so that my students are not wearing orange jump suits on the side of the road. And as part of that vision, I also imagine that my life as a teaching student will be utterly unlike my life as a law student. In place of casebooks, Black's Law, the socratic method, and competition, there will be Green Eggs and Ham, Webster's, wholistic learning and we will braid flowers in each other's hair while listening to our professors share insightful thoughts with us.

I will be happy if this dream lasts even for three full days. But, truthfully, I am most excited right now about school suppy shopping. I have been writing in crayon and marker for years, and now I feel like I can do so without a dozen puzzled faces trying to figure me out at Starbucks. I am also planning to only wear jumpers. It is going to be a very happy year.