Are you a tool?
In 1994, I was a second-year law student living at home and my father was dying.
I was sitting in a waiting room at Sloan Kettering on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, waiting for my father's chemotherapy session to end. There were little children getting chemo, wearing colored turbans because their hair had fallen out.
I was stressed about law school, wondering if I even wanted to be in law. Could I get a job? I was worried about my father. How long would he live? Would he be sick in the car the 90 miles home? Was I good enough at anything?
The kids in that room didn't have the luxury of those problems. They wanted to live. To be normal. To look normal. To fit in.
On the coffee table next to me was the New York Times, opened to the obituaries. As if there weren't enough misery all around. There was a picture of an old man, pretty stiff in appearance.
His obituary read like it was written by his secretary. "He handled a wide variety of cases throughout his long career. He regularly said that a lawyer was like a fork. It didn't matter what it was used for as long as it was properly sterilized between uses."
Holy crap. His obituary practically admitted that he was a tool.
Those kids were fighting for a life. He'd had forty years of one, and this is how it was summed up.
I've thought about that fork for thirty years, and not because it's insulting. Because it's the smallest possible description of a career. Handled a wide variety of cases. Used for whatever came up. Clean after each one.
The man was probably an amazing lawyer. That's what's terrifying.
