While on the topic of Supreme Court Justices, I get to tell the best story of our recent law school reunion.
Corinne and I met in law school, keep in pretty good touch with many of our friends from law school, and since her family is in California, we find any excuse to find ourselves back on the Farm. We figured that everybody was going to bring their kids. (“Hey! How fun! The kids can plan on all the Greens at Stanford!”) They did, but we kinda didn’t realize that not every event was kid friendly.
We were running late to the kickoff lunch which was being held behind the law school where they had built some new law school dorms. We had driven from Sacramento and were in the car for several hours before pulling up near the law school parking lot. Forty minutes late, in shorts and sandals and kids running all over the place, we noisily made our entrance behind Crocker Garden expecting a casual barbecue.
Instead, we walked into a very formal afternoon affair. Happy to be out of the car (and knowing that they could run around because we told them 1,000 times “when we get to Stanford you can run around like crazy, but please stop yelling in the car”) our 4 year old was hellbent on catching up to her older sister. As she rounded the corner into the pavilion laughing and squealing like an escaped convict, she plowed right into an important looking man in black suit leaving the reception.
Cementing her reputation as the most calm, self-assured and all around badass lawyer-mother on the planet, Corinne caught up to her. Never missing a beat, she knelt down a bit to her level, and politely but firmly reminded her, “Honey – it’s important to say excuse me when you bump into the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”