RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE A MORON

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day (True) readers,

I apologize for the lag between posts but there was a death in my family and respect forestalled me from sharing my curmudgeonliness. I thank you in advance for your condolences and reply to them with a tilted head, bobbing ever so slightly, as I say, "Thank you, yeah, I'm OK, she was 89 she had a good, long life." With that awkward moment out of the way we can now focus on the matter at hand. We don't have a matter at hand, you say? Fair point. How about I tell you about my CLE class instead? Wonderful.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE's) classes, are a strange place. It's not like law school or college where everyone taking the class wants to be there or at the very least chose to be there. Instead, what you have is a motley crew of assorted lawyers, the overachievers, the underachievers, the "Where am I's" and the "When can I get out of here's. " As one might expect in a lecture series that starts at 5:30pm, after a full day of work, the back rows were first to fill up. Your Royal Curmudgeonliness, not accustomed to having to having to arrive on time to functions, let alone early (the very word spoils in my mouth), was forced to sit in the front row. To a lesser man such a tragedy would have resulted in three and a half hours of, dare I say it, paying attention. Fear not, however, readers, I would never betray you like that. Napping and conversing being impossible, I simply resorted to note passing with a colleague, the following were my observations.

- Einstein's early work in proving that time can pass at different speeds for different people given the proper circumstances was, in my opinion inspired by attending a CLE class. I myself, well aware of the theory of relativity, was shocked to discover that when I walked out of the class it was still the same day. I don't think it would be an unfair comparison to equate CLE's importance to the theory of relativity, with Newton's apple.

- Apparently some people out there still don't realize "Are there any questions?" is actually code for "If no one is stupid enough to ask a question we can all leave 15 minutes early." This is somewhat troublesome as there are attorney's people who've been in class for around 22 years. If you haven't figured this out in 22 years, the human race is much worse off than I thought. Then again I think this would be a great way to cut down interview times. Just ask the prospective employee, when you hear the words, "Are there any questions?" do you raise your hand or not?

- "Oh, I know someone from your law school," is apparently viewed as an acceptable conversation starter. This is wrong, if the following: lack of eye contact, one word answers and distracted looking around, are not clear enough signs that I have no interest in conversation, the human race is... well you get the point. What's even more saddening is that the culprits weren't even the hand raisers. At least if it was them you could just say a a group they're incapable of reading between the lines. Instead, we've doubled our idiot population.

- Old people bob their heads a lot. Have you ever noticed this? Ever have a senior citizen or even someone over 50 in your class? Look at their head while the professor lectures, they're constantly bobbing. Maybe old people have lost the rebel in them and will just agree to anything or maybe they're so senile they feel like if they make a show of agreeing no one will know they haven't understood a word anyone's said since the Reagen administration.

(Rejected hypothetical reasons for senior citizen head bobbing deemed too insensitive for inclusion: Weak neck muscles, its actually wobbling, not bobbing; Being out of a rocking chair is a traumatic experience, the head bobbing is a soothing placebo)

- People lose all sense of what is funny in CLE's. I'm convinced that these volunteer professors volunteer for the express purpose of having people laugh at their disturbingly unfunny jokes. I'd reproduce some examples here but I didn't even know they were jokes till after I heard the laughing. The only amusing thing about this is that these guys must wonder why people don't think they're funny outside of CLE's. I can only hope they try an amateur stand up routine.

More to come after Wednesday's class.