I love that story. It reminds me of a dog bite statute memorandum I wrote for a paralegal torts class, where it took me a long time to brief all the related cases, draft and compete the memo, probably two weeks. I told an old dear friend, who used to work practically alone as an attorney for one of the richest men in Hawaii, and he said he could brief a case in about an hour or two. I was stunned. How could I possibly survive in a law firm if I took that long?

He added insult to my injury by saying that even if I ended up going to law school, I was too old and no one would hire me.

I got a 4.0GPA as a paralegal student. Every test, every paper, everything.

The torts instructor said that he once had a student, who went on to Harvard, and she showed him the pages of notes she had taken.

I never showed him my notes for the class, but they turned out to be longer. I typed almost everything he said. I had a very small computer in those days and I attached a keypad and would bang away durning the lectures.

No one else did this that I remember. Anyway, back to my friend, who used to sit in the Prosecutors' offices, he read my work or at least part of it and concluded it was about some whole other, unrelated issue. And I concluded that my two weeks were better than his two hours if I had the essence of the issues in the case, and I knew who was at fault and how I could and did propose a brilliant argument.

It reminds me of a movie I saw but can't remember the name. There was a main attorney, who had spent years preparing to battle a huge corporation about some contamination issue or something like that and I think he eventually killed himself.

But, he knew everything. You could ask him any question about the case, and he could formulate an informed response and you couldn't counter his argument because he knew the law and all the information to such an extent that the details would counter this person's train of thought. That's who I am. I did this in University during a debate. I knew everything there was available about the debate topic. I remember the opposition proposing an idea based on something they either made up or had found that I had not seen, and I questioned if it even existed and if they had simply made it up. I decided they had because they weren't able to provide the source.

I still pine for law school and to brief cases and write memoranda. I never went. I took all the LSAT Prep classes at the time, over the course of many years, scoring at the highest 151, which was at the time, the lowest acceptance score. I have always had a hard time with standardized tests. As an example, I scored 310 for English and 300 for Math on the SAT. This is out of 800. That's always haunted me. Meanwhile, I was in the Quill and Scroll Honor Society while in High School and won a School Service Award.

I could never take the risk of spending at least $150,000 to graduate and pass the bar based on that score. The bar exam is a giant standardized test. Then, that new fear: "No one will hire you; you are too old."

I loved living vicariously through your example. It made me giddy because I know how wonderful it is to go through something to a point that you know it inside and out and you can make an informed decision about it, and the words you use to articulate that exactitude are there. It all jells, and the question becomes, simply, "What's the first word?"