I don’t mean to offend anyone with the following joke. It’s meant as nothing but comic relief. And just so you know, I don’t have anything in particular against lawyers. I have friends and relatives who are lawyers, and most of them are perfectly nice people.
But even with the best of them — no matter if they are young or old, man or women, liberal or conservative — you can see when they go into “lawyer mode.” They click into an alternate personality that is more suspicious, more skeptical, more self-righteous, less tolerant, less understanding.
I’m just confessing my bias . . . and I’ll be the first to say that you want a lawyer on your side if you’re doing a big business deal, or in a contest with another party, especially if it’s a larger more powerful organization or, of course, if you’re facing legal charges. And, besides, Better Call Saul is one of my favorite TV shows!
So with that as the fine print, here’s the joke.
A lawyer with a wife and eight children had to move out of their rented house because the lease wasn’t going to be renewed. The owner wanted to move back into the house himself.
The lawyer went hunting for a new place but was having a lot of trouble. When he told people he had eight children, no one would rent a home to him because they thought the children would destroy the place.
He couldn’t say he had no children, because he couldn’t lie. Lawyers take pride in saying they do not lie.
So he sent his wife for a walk in the cemetery with seven of their children. He took the remaining one with him to see rental homes with a real-estate agent. He loved one of the homes, and the price was right. Then the agent asked, “How many children do you have?”
The lawyer answered truthfully, “Eight.”
“Oh, where are the others?” asked the agent.
With his best and saddest courtroom look, the lawyer replied, “They are in the cemetery with their mother.”
Funny, huh? So the lawyerly lesson is: It’s not necessary to lie, only to choose the right words. Oh, and remember in this political year, most politicians are lawyers.
