Monday, February 11, 2008

Revisiting the Oral Argument

Granted our chief justice is kind of mannish. A little like Dustin Hoffman in drag as Tootsie, only not quite as pretty.

But I think I probably screwed up when, in the middle of my oral argument, she pounded me with another tough question, which I began by answering "no, sir."

Whoops. I did try to recover though; I recognized the mistake right away, inwardly cringed hard, but kept going with my brilliant (ok, maybe not brilliant, but pretty good) answer, in my best most serious and professional and articulate and intelligent-sounding voice, ... and then followed it up with a whispered "no ma'am." Which I don't think anyone caught, and didn't mean to say out loud anyway, it just slipped. If she did hear that whisper though, I hope she realized I was just trying to let her know I was aware of her gender and trying to make up for my mistake.

Yeah, this post will probably get deleted pretty soon ... I think it's funny right now as I'm writing it, but later tonight I'll probably have a hideous nightmare that it circulates throughout my legal community with my real name attached to it and I get disbarred by the all-powerful woman herself, and I'll race to the computer to delete delete delete. For now, though, I think I'll just have another cocktail.

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