Potential Clients

First of all, I have to say I was thrilled to death to have an old friend come to time and spend time catching up. I miss my NM friends and can't wait to see all of them. Apparently the Catie Blythe memorial guest room may be occupied so I will call ahead and see what is up when I am free to roam about the country. My passport is still being held hostage by the state of Hell.

Last night I attended my first fireworks off the pier by my house. It was wonderful being able to walk there and back and not deal with huge crowds or public transportation. Now to the potential clients part. When I was doing criminal defense work, I found myself muttering, like a mantra, "Stupid people pay my rent. Stupid people pay my rent." It was my experience that criminal clients were not evil, awful, sociopaths, but they were just average people who tended to be really stupid or who did reallllllly stupid things. One of the first things that comes to mind is driving on a suspended license. Unless you are really living in a bubble and it was suspended for something like failing to get your emissions done (this happens all the time and most people honestly did not realize it would happen), when you KNOW you have 25 unpaid tickets or you KNOW you were arrested for DUI, you KNOW your license is suspended and you have no excuses for being caught driving. My favorite "excuse" is that they didn't know that being suspended meant they could not drive at all. Really?

So, stupid people. Last night at the beach there were at least two groups of folks shooting off what appeared to be professional grade fireworks. We were actually quite impressed and it even appeared that one group knew what it was doing and was doing it behind a fenced in area. The rest were questionable at best. One group seemed to manage to launch all their fireworks on a horizontal plane over the lake. Not a problem if there had not been quite a few people in the water swimming at the time. Then there were the idiots who held on to sparking tubes that apparently were supposed to launch missile like projectiles. More then one of them almost got burned when the flame started to travel down the tube they were holding towards their hand. Parents will all tell you not to play with fireworks because you will blow off your hand or shoot your eye out. So, even though there were still some pretty impressive amateur fireworks going off, we chose to leave so that someone else would not shoot our eyes out.

A number of the other attorneys at work got offended when I referred to my criminal clients as "stupid people." However, the one guy who had previously worked as a public defender had to agree that for the most part, the clients were stupid.