And Now For Something Funny

"Accidental Thoughts"
A humorous essay by Joy A. Bartmon

Having a car accident in South Florida is mind-bending for a lawyer. I was a passenger in a collision that totaled the car. Handling a stressful situation should be second nature, but a car accident raises that to a new level. I generally have to compartmentalize and organize everything, but I now know that after a car accident one’s brain is a little balky and thoughts can be incomplete.
First, open my eyes and take inventory of fingers and toes. All there, thank goodness. White shirt is still white, no blood. Look around the car. Instinct tells me it’s a goner. The little VW Bug looks like a mouse with its head caved in. Determine if the smoke is dangerous . . . decide it is best to exit the vehicle as quickly as possible. Look around for the driver of other car. A teenager. I got the worst of it, which I am happy about. Look into the caring eyes of the EMT and realize they are all fuzzy. As is everything else. Auggghhhh, where are my only glasses!? Oh, there they are on the floor of the car, a bit bent and scratched, but I can put them on. OK, now what is my social security number and doctor’s name? Strangely, I have to give those simple questions a lot of thought. And, I really do not feel like talking. Probably something to do with being hit in the chest by a CAR GOING REALLY FAST! No, wait, that was the airbag. Decide whoever invented airbags should both be rewarded for absolute genius and hauled off to jail for assault and battery.
Do I want to go to the hospital? Do I have any allergies? Should I make a statement to the police right now? So many questions! How much detail do they need? Oddly, for once, all I want to do is keep my mouth shut. Then I think, maybe, I should call a lawyer! Dismiss that thought quickly. The police officer is already giving me the fish-eye. Call my insurance agent. Tell the police officer what happened. Tell the doctor what hurts. Now what? OK, time to call my husband. Poor guy. He’s home with a fever. How do I put this so he does not have a heart attack? I know. "Honey . . . feed the dogs, walk them, put on your nice jeans . . . then come to the hospital, I was in a car accident." Husband jumps out of bed and gets there in no time flat only to have to wait to be allowed into the ER because of some other emergency. I’m happy that he put on the nice jeans despite shakes and chills from fever. What a guy!
Listen to the sounds in the ER. Realize that my bumps and bruises do not rate any sense of urgency or immediacy . . . not when there is a brain bleed in one bed and an overdose in another. Wait around, wait around, wait around. Worry about the other driver. Can’t get much information on that. Call friend and hear horrible story of years of litigation over car accident. Worry about litigation. Call mother and hear horrible story about increased insurance premium after minor accident. Worry about insurance. Worry about losing time from law practice. Check planner to determine what hearings or deadlines are coming up. See police officer, hear that car was towed and is likely a total loss. Worry about getting another car.
Get some more information from my insurance agent. Decide that raising the liability limits a month ago will turn out to be one of the smartest decisions EVER! Have some x-rays done, get three years worth of radiation in a few minutes. Wait around some more. Get a prescription. Leave. Dream about tornadoes chasing me. Wake up the next morning with achy knees and a few sore spots. And really thankful.
By, Joy A. Bartmon
Joy is a family law attorney in Boca Raton FL.

"Helpful Hints"
A humorous essay by Joy A. Bartmon

I want you to know, I am really smart. It’s not just me who thinks so. The Internet says I am. I saw that my kids had taken this twenty-question Internet I.Q. test on a website called something like, "ifyouarestupidenoughtolookatsomebannerads-takethisIQtestdotcom." So I saw their scores and realized they had gotten pretty close to the test scores from their psychologist’s thousand dollar I.Q. tests. And I thought, "wow, when I wanted to get them into the Gifted program at school, I could have saved a thousand dollars with this website."
So, anyway, I took the test, and, you will just have to believe me on this, I’m really smart. I tell myself that every time that I do something really stupid. I tell it to myself like one of those affirmations that you do while looking at yourself in a mirror. Like... "every day in every way I am getting better and better." When my kids were little, I would just go into the bathroom and say it in front of the mirror over the sink. Now that they are teenagers, I just keep a mirror in my pocket at all times.
I know that my kids are really smart, because they do some really stupid things too. Like, we got this great dog from th e pound. When we got him, he never barked. So what did we do? We taught him to bark. We took this great quiet dog, and now, every twig cracking, every car door closing a block away, starts five minutes of throaty, vicious barking at 200 decibels. As if that was not stupid enough, picture how we did it. My kids and I knocked on the door and then ran around the house, barking. Two teenagers and a lawyer, hopping around madly and barking. The dog would just look at us. I think his first barks were really doggy laughter...Ru, Ru, Ru, Ru, Ru, Ru.
We get lots of blackouts. How many times can you walk down a hallway during a blackout, flipping the light switch and saying under your breath, "damn, the electricity’s out." My record is seven times in forty-five minutes. I am the origin of the phrase, "not the brightest bulb in the circuit." But my kids, they are really something. They will try the light switch for the tenth time and get angry...at me! "Mom, I was in the middle of shaving my legs, how am I supposed to finish if you don’t get the lights back on?" That is about the time I have to be careful what I say. Because you CAN NOT tell your kids that they are stupid. No, No, No! At all costs you have to make them believe they are really smart. And our everyday slips off the track of being great parents, that is what keeps the psychologists busy in Boca Raton.
I was saying that my kids had I.Q. tests at their psychologists’ offices. This is because every kid in Boca Raton has been tested at a psychologist’s office for their school’s Gifted program. Then they stay on with the psychologist for therapy. The moms and dads keep the pharmacies in business with their kids’ prescriptions for Adderal and Paxil.
What did I learn from my kid’s therapist? I learned that when I put my kid in daycare so I could work, that gave her "abandonment issues." I said to the therapist, "I can stop working, but I’ll lose my insurance, and then I can’t afford you." And, he said, "hey, a little abandonment builds character." So, my kid’s definitely a character. My kid’s kind of bossy, and I asked her why. She said because she expects people to act to the best of their ability. I asked her, like with her grades and her messy room? So, she said, "I never said I’m not a hypocrite."
Raising kids in Boca Raton is really hard. I gave my daughter an eight-year old silver Buick. When I handed her the keys, I could see she was struggling to make herself say thank-you. At first I was mad, but then I drove by her high school parking lot. In the student lot I counted two Hummers, three Corvettes, four Porsches, sixteen Volvos, one hundred twenty two Jeeps, two hundred and fourteen Mustang Gts, and one eight-year-old silver Buick. I really felt bad because I could not get my daughter a Mustang, so I got myself one instead. By the way, I looked in the teacher lot and saw a 1995 Chevy Malibu and eighty-three Dodge minivans.
So I was saying, you have to be really careful what you say to your kids. My kid asked me if I liked her singing voice. So, I said, "of course I do honey." When I told her to sing more quietly, she said "but you said you liked my voice." Then she looked at me, and I know the look said..."you are a scum-sucking liar." So I went directly to the phone and made an appointment for her with her psychologist.
Reading the look on your teenager’s face is another way for an adult to feel really stupid. It’s really, really, a problem when you have smart kids. I said to my kid "would you jump off a cliff if all the other kids were doing it?" I got back a look from my ten-year old that said, "I am ten years old with a college level reading ability. Do you really think that I care what you think?" I said to my teenager the other day...accompanied by my most stern look, "what you did really disappoints me." I got back a look from her that said, "I am the only kid in Boca Raton driving a used Buick Century and you’re disappointed?" It’s lucky for them that they confine their thoughts to a look, or I can tell you, there would be two more kids in foster care, because I would be in jail.
Of course, if I went to jail I would need a lawyer, because I could not represent myself. A Boca divorce lawyer would be really stupid representing herself on a serious charge. After all, most of my practice consists of making other lawyers think I am really smart. Boca divorce law is one of those areas where it does not matter what school you went to or what your class rank was. It is so much more important to cultivate "the look." You know, the one you give your client’s ex-husband who is a doctor living in a water-front home with a Mercedes in front, who does not have any money to pay his alimony? The "look" that says, "you are a scum-sucking liar." I learned it from my kids.
By, Joy Bartmon
Joy is a family law attorney in Boca Raton FL.

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