Lawyerish

Please Pass the Smelling Salts

Until this past Friday evening, I'd never seen the underside of my desk, ridden in an ambulance or had an IV in my arm.  I would have been perfectly content to live my whole life without those experiences, but thanks to my delicate constitution, I won't have to. 

It was about 6:30, and I had packed up to head home from work.  I put on my coat and scarf, gathered my briefcase and BlackBerry, and neatened up my desk.  I had the beginnings of a headache, so I popped two Advil to stave it off.  I took a swallow of soda to wash the pills down.  The soda was warm and I slugged it a little too quickly.  I got that burning in my chest, as though it had stuck there.  I coughed for a second.  And then static appeared at the periphery of my vision.  I know that static.  I've seen it plenty of times before.  Nothing good ever comes after the static.  I sat down heavily in my chair.

Traffic noise.  Voices.  Vivid fever dreams.  I reached for the duvet, thinking it was too early for the alarm, had to be too early.  I hadn't slept long enough.  My eyes blinked open.  A glaring fluorescent light.  Rough carpet.  A shadow eclipsing the ceiling.  My...desk?  Oh.  Shit.

My head spun, my face burned.  I could feel my body going into Sweat Production Overdrive.  I fumbled with my coat, wrenching myself free of its hot embrace.  My briefcase lay next to me on the floor.  I extracted my BlackBerry.  "Having a problem.  Just fainted.  Come home when I feel better."  The phone began to ring a moment later, but I couldn't right myself without passing out again.  I sprawled helplessly on the floor. 

Then I realized that my left side was going numb.  My lips were tingling.  My entire arm was dead.  Left side numb -- I did a quick mental Google.  Heart attack?  Stroke?  Shit.  I'd fainted countless times before, but never the numbness.  Numbness could not be good. 

I got onto all fours and crawled to the door of my office.  One of my coworkers happened to be walking by, and I croaked out, "Help?"  She looked around at eye level and then spotted me on the floor.  "Um.  I fainted?"  She rushed into my office and called someone to bring me a soda.  She's a fainter too, so she knew getting sugar was the first step to recovery.  She called my husband and as she did, I announced that my left side was completely numb and I couldn't feel my face.  I started shivering uncontrollably.  She hung up and called 911. 

A few minutes later, I was surrounded by firefighters (which might have been rather awesome had I not been incapacitated).  They had on their firefighter pants and boots, and one of them, I swear, was carrying an axe.  They asked me about forty-five thousand questions ("What's your address?  Phone number?  Age?  You work out a lot?" (Huh?)).  I stammered out answers as one of them strapped an oxygen mask on my face.  I tried to impress upon them that I wouldn't have called them had it not been for the numbness.  I said several times that I was really embarrassed. 

In addition to the firefighters, there were EMTs.  I think there were actually 25 men hovering around me at one point.  The EMTs hoisted me up and strapped me onto a metal chair thingy that looked like the contraption they transported Hannibal Lechter on.  It was creaky and the suspension could have used some work.  My head lolled woozily about, and every time we ca-chunged over a bump or careened around a bend, I thought I was going to hurl. 

When we got to the ambulance, they had me crawl onto the gurney. I stared blurrily at the ceiling.  I don't remember much about the ride, except that I was ready for it to be over before it started -- and they kept asking me more damn questions -- although I was cheered somewhat when they turned the siren on.  (Yes, I am five.)  I kept thinking that it must royally suck to be taken in an ambulance after you've broken something or had any appreciable bodily injury, because all the starting and stopping and turning and bouncing, and then the jouncing about as the gurney is lowered to ground level, has to kill.  Even with my minor ailment, I got rather violently ill.

They rolled me into the ER, where I answered thirty-seven thousand more questions and signed a bunch of crap (can those contracts really be enforceable?  how could I fully read and understand them when I barely knew my own name?) and then they steered me into an empty bay, right next to one where a prisoner was being held, all shackled to the bed and looking not so well.  I answered the same questions yet again, they had me take off my shirt and put on a hospital gown, and then an RN took about fifty vials of blood, hooked me up to a heart monitor and put an IV in my arm.  (I'd always wondered if you can feel the needle after it's in there for a while.  Turns out you can.  And it's not comfortable in the least.)   

Around that time, my husband arrived.  It couldn't have been amusing to see his wife hooked up to all this crap and drained of what little color I have, but he handled it well.  He was comforting and sweet and made me laugh and hovered by the doorway to make sure no one forgot about me.  It seemed to be a busy Friday night in the ER.  Apparently there was a trauma involving a baby that kept everyone occupied for a while, and then we heard one of the RNs yelling, "Where'd my patient go?  I can't find him!  He got out of the restraints!"  I hoped she wasn't referring to the prisoner next door.  Luckily, it turned out just to be a drunk guy, who stumbled by screaming for water a few minutes later. 

I began to realize that the right side of my head felt like a giant, throbbing tomato.  I must have hit it on the desk on the way down.  Ow. 

Finally, a doctor came in and told me they were waiting for my test results and they might want to do a CAT scan.  I told him that I was used to fainting, that it had seemed like the usual vaso-vagal episode, but that the numbness was new and it had scared me.  He was unimpressed by the numbness.  He said it was a common symptom and nothing to worry about -- at least, I think that's what he said, as English was not his first nor his best language.  In general, the doctor seemed ready to get rid of me so he could give my room to someone who needed to be intubated or have a bullet removed from a vital organ.  So I chose that moment to puke all over the place. He said I should stay for a while.

After the RN came back and put some kind of anti-nausea thing in my IV, I started to feel way better.  Better enough to feel caged in that little bed with all that crap hooked up to me.  Plus I was starving.  It was after ten and I'd been hungry even before hitting the deck.  My husband was about to gnaw his arm off; it was way past his dinner time, too.  After a while, the doctor wandered back in, said my blood tests were fine and my EKG normal, and I could go home.  Also they needed the room, so if I could go ahead and get dressed, that would be great.

Walking papers in hand, my husband and I swung through the glass doors into the cold night and hailed the first cab we saw.  The driver went about 95 mph up the west side.  I was certain we were going to die.  Somehow, we made it home, and I sank gratefully onto the couch.  I watched "Felicity" all weekend. 

So.  How was your weekend?

Not the Brightest Bulb

My husband has a theory that a lot of highly intelligent people lack common sense.  He has referred on several occasions to someone he used to date who fit this theory perfectly, and every time he's mentioned it, I've asked him to give me some concrete examples of her everyday cluelessness.  He's never come up with a specific story, though, so I am left to assume that he is, in fact, talking about me. 

Lest you think me immodest, I'm not trying to laud myself as some kind of intellectual genius -- although the highly regarded Georgia public school system did see fit to enroll me in their "gifted" program -- but at the very least, I've managed to find myself in a profession that unquestionably rewards book smarts over any kind of practical know-how.  Read some of the basic rules of civil procedure (or, worse, the tax code) and you'll know what I mean; very little in the law is written in a down-home, by-the-people-for-the-people sort of way (and thank God, of course, or else I'd be out of a job).  Ergo, I feel free to conclude that I have some fancy book-learnin' smarts.  Of course, it's entirely possible that I have deluded myself into believing I'm an intellectual type simply because I am so devoid of common sense that the only other conclusion is I'm quite dim all around.

Witness, of course, the make-up gaffe. 

After reading that entry, Allison emailed me and said, "That was so you."  Which, if I'm being honest, it was.  She then reminded me of a fairly typical Lawyerish incident from growing up.  I was spending the night at her house -- we were probably around 12 -- and we decided to make chocolate chip cookies.  Now, Allison's mom was into baking.  They always had fresh-baked cookies and sheet cakes available, whereas in my house we had Little Debbies (ohhhhh....Fancy Cakes, how I miss thee) or frozen yogurt or, for years before the advent of TCBY and its ilk, we would have ice milk -- remember ice milk?  The Superbrand vanilla-fudge swirl ice milk from Winn Dixie was some damn tasty stuff. 

Point being, I was not as familiar with the baking process as I could have been.  So, when Allison hauled out a large mixing bowl, I helpfully strolled to the pantry and peered into the shelves.  Then I turned around, puzzled, and asked, "Where's the mix?" 

I'm sure she and her mom still laugh at that one.

Then there was the time that Allison and our friend Sarah and I went on an unprecedented sewing binge the summer before we all went off to college.  We made boxer shorts and large flannel pillows; apparently we anticipated a lot of pillow fights in our underwear in the dorms (hello, Googlers!).  My mom took us to the local fabric store, where we loaded up on plaids and thread and pillow stuffing.  Back at home, we cut out patterns and took turns using the sewing machine (and messing up -- my mom finished most of the boxer shorts herself after she grew weary of hearing us screaming obscenities over having the bobbin jam on yet another front flap seam ). 

When we started on the pillows, Mom showed us how to sew them inside-out (which, by the way, I never would have figured out on my own; I would have sewn it up and then wondered how the pros get the seam at the very edge of the fabric without any extra hanging out).  I finished a couple of the pillow squares and got out the stuffing, and Allison reminded me to turn it right-side out before I put the stuffing inside.  I looked at the pillow and looked at her and said, "No, first you stuff it and then you turn it right-side out." 

Yeah.  I don't know. 

Aside from these lapses of mental functioning, I've had more than my share of foot-in-mouth moments, which also indicate a certain lack of, if not common sense, then common judgment.  In high school, I was always the one to be trumpeting some gossip about someone or loudly mocking something that was said in class, only to realize midway through that the subject of the anecdote was right behind me.  I'm not one to be able to smoothly play anything off, so usually I would respond to the awkwardness of the situation by turn flaming red, staring at the floor for a while, and never looking the person in the eye again. 

I've been burned by this enough that as an adult I've finally wised up, and now when I engage in some lowly chatter about other people, I barricade the door and speak only in barely audible tones -- sometimes reverting to mouthing words and making pointed gestures punctuated with eyebrow raises -- such that the listener usually leaves without a clue as to what I've said.  (Even at home, I lower my voice to a hush, because there's always that chance the person could be standing in our coat closet.) 

Of course, since I'm also paranoid about being attributed as the source of a rumor (I got burned too many times in junior high -- when someone swears they'll never tell your secret/gossip to anyone else?  THEY LIE.), this is an effective way of avoiding that fate as well.  If anything, the listener can pass on something along the lines of, "I heard a shocking secret about Bob -- either he's moving to Nepal or he was caught cheating on his wife or he wears women's underwear, but I'm not really sure, and it may not have even been Bob, so...oh, forget it."  This allows me to sleep at night.

I'm especially paranoid about gossip via email; fortunately, I have never forwarded something to the wrong person or, worse, had a "reply to all" mishap, but I have seen them happen, and the thought of that kind of faux pas -- especially in the workplace -- makes my feet sweat. 

As but one example, which didn't happen to me but is enough to make me blush nonetheless, a few years ago a secretary was retiring from the firm, and she sent around an email to all of the personnel in the office wishing them well and so on.  These goodbye emails are frequently the subject of barbed comments among friends; people will forward them around to each other to point out the unintentionally hilarious parts and the "unnecessary" quotation marks.  It's just what we do.  This time, an associate intended to forward the email to someone for that purpose, but instead replied to all -- ALL! -- and wrote something like, "Good riddance.  Who is this old bag anyway?"  And then hit send.  To the entire firm.

If that had been me, I would have had to leave the office immediately and move to El Paso to become a drunk in a bordertown bar.  The prospect of giving such offense, and having several hundred people not like me, think I was a bad person, even, would be too much to bear.   

At least I know there are limits to my lack of common sense.  I may have trouble figuring out the trappings of womanhood (the makeup, the baking, the stuffing of pillows), but however vacant I may be, I will go out of my way not to offend.  Although...well....there was that one time...  But that's a story for another day.  I'll have to have some wine handy for that one, as it still makes my face burn.  Maybe even more so than the memory of splitting my pants in court.

The Clumsy Gourmet

I've only been to the emergency room three times in my life.  This is quite a feat given my extreme lack of coordination.  That I haven't managed to mangle any of my appendages in a ceiling fan or break an ankle racing down the subway stairs is evidence, if not proof, of a benevolent higher power.

The first time I had to go to the hospital was not even my fault.  My family had gone to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and we were loading back into my mom's minivan afterward when my brother slammed my hand in the car door.  He was sitting up front -- by then he'd grown even taller than my dad, who is 6'2" -- and I was climbing into the backseat but still had my hand on the outside of the door when BAM!  He shut the front door right on it.  He didn't realize it right away and I was kind of sitting there in shock and finally I managed to gasp out, "The door...Open the door."  He was all, "Wha?  What's the problem?" for a minute and then he finally realized and snapped it open and I brought my arm in and stared at my fingers, which were a strange purpleish white. 

My mom took me to the ER after dropping my dad and brother off at home, and we waited for a while until an orderly with a ponytail that reached all the way past his butt came to get me to go into the x-ray room.  He laid me down on the cold metal table and adjusted the machine over me.  Just before he snapped the x-ray, he asked, "How in the world did you slam your head in the car door?"  Quality medical care in our home town, I tell you. 

Years later, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I was living at home and working as a bank teller (that's where I fainted on the first day on the job).  One weekend, I went out to my friend Sarah's lake house with the rest of her family to grill out and eat pie.   

After we ate, Sarah was going to take the trash out, and I went over and held down the can because the bag was so overstuffed.  In one swift, sudden motion, the trash bag flew out of the can and I felt a sharp pain in the fleshy part of my hand.  I looked down and saw blood, and I rushed to the bathroom, trying to pretend nothing had happened.  Apparently there had been some broken glass in the trash, and a piece was sticking out and caught my hand on the way up.  Ow.

Sarah's dad is a cardiologist, and with great concern he followed me into the bathroom and made me show him the wound.  I insisted it wasn't that bad -- more than anything, I feared having to get stitches -- but he disagreed and we all piled in the car to go to the emergency room.  On the drive to the medical center, I put direct pressure on the cut with a vehemence that could have melted steel.  Meanwhile, Sarah, who has a debilitating phobia of vomit, continually implored me not to hurl in the car.  (I didn't.)  By the time we got to the ER, the cut had stopped bleeding -- it had almost healed completely, in fact, thanks to my tourniquet-like pressure -- and the doctor on duty determined that no stitches were needed.

I managed to live stitch-free all the way until last year.  One blustery November day, a week or two after the marathon, my husband and I bought some H&H Bagels (the best in the city -- very cake-like).  We'd had a big brunch with friends, so later on we decided just to toast up the bagels and have them for dinner.  It was around 7pm on a Saturday night (you can get a sense here of how wild our lifestyle is). My husband got his all nice and ready and sat down in the living room to eat (we generally take our evening meals hunched over the coffee table -- it's all very uncouth, but it works for us). 

I went into the kitchen and stood one of the bagels up on its side, brandished my bread knife, and...cut the tip of my thumb off.  Uhhh.  The second it happened, I tried to convince myself it wasn't that bad, that a Band-Aid would fix it right up, but then I instinctively stuck my thumb into my mouth to stanch the bleeding and I knew.  I knew it was not good. 

The thing is, every time I cook -- including when I make cereal or eat crackers out of a box -- I hurt myself.  Usually, I sustain minor injuries -- a grease burn here, a paper cut there.  So when I gasped and whimpered, my husband kind of glanced over for a second and then muttered something like, "What'd you do this time?"  But then I whimpered more and said, "Ohmygod it's bad.  It's very very bad." And then I grabbed a kitchen towel and wrapped it around my thumb and said, "I think we have to go to the hospital."  (The poor man.  He just wanted to eat his dinner.)

Our next thought:  where's the closest hospital?  We spent a good ten minutes discussing where to go.  Ummm...Cabrini?  No, too far east.  The VA?  Um.  No.  Mount Sinai?  Where is that exactly?  Uh....  Oh, St. Vincent's!  All while I was gripping my thumb and squatting near the floor so that, if I passed out, I wouldn't have far to fall.

So we put on shoes and crated the dog and put the bagels in the fridge and headed out to hail a cab.  Fortunately, it was early on a Saturday night, so the club crowd wasn't out jockeying for cabs, and the ER was almost empty.  We waited maybe 45 minutes and I filled out some forms and then a physician's assistant came out and got me.  He waved my husband away saying, "I think I can handle her."

The PA took me to a gurney and sat me down and then, with no warning or preamble, stuck a needle in the heel of my hand, and then turned it over and stuck another one in the top side of my hand.  It hurt like a bitch.  The lidocaine burned as it flowed into my hand and I screamed my head off the entire time (as you can see, I'm not much use in a medical scenario). 

The next thing I knew, I vaguely heard the PA saying, "UH.  I'm gonna go get Big Daddy."  (Hee.)  And then my husband was next to me stroking my hair and telling me I was ok, and I realized I had passed out (BIG surprise).  And then I realized that the PA was already giving me stitches and I started freaking out again, because I could feel this weird pressure even though my hand was numb and it felt so weird and awful and I just wanted to go home. 

The PA kept cracking jokes throughout, and his voice sounded so much like the doctor on "The Simpsons" that it all took on this rather surreal quality and I couldn't help but laugh.  As the lidocaine wore off, my thumb started to throb and ache, and then, after I was done and all bandaged up and the PA warned Big Daddy that, if we ever decided to have a baby, he should wear a protective cup in the delivery room (heh), and then we had to walk forever to get to a Walgreen's that was open late enough to fill my prescription for Tylenol with codeine, and then, finally, at 11pm, we got home and ate our bagels.  Big Daddy sliced mine for me.     

The Vapors

I previously mentioned that I have something of a propensity for fainting.  The first time I ever passed out, I was seven years old, and my mom and I were baking cookies - the peanut butter ones with the Hershey's kiss on top?  We were mixing the dough, and I was kneeling on a kitchen chair so I could reach the counter.  Suddenly, I started to see spots in front of my eyes.  I think I managed to say, "Mommy, I feel funny," before I fell backwards, slammed my head on the table behind me, and landed flat on the floor.  My mom, of course, flew into a panic.  She yelled for my brother to get off the couch, where he was hanging out listening to records (possibly our 45 of "Pac-Man Fever" or the LP of "Thriller"), and told him to run to the neighbors' house.  I think by then I was starting to come to, so he just slouched back and repositioned his earmuff-sized headphones to drown out all the ruckus.  Lying under the table with no idea of how I got there, I was dazed and my head was pounding, but I was otherwise fine.  I think for my trouble I got to lay around and sip 7-Up all day.  We chalked the episode up to me being overheated, and moved on.  The cookies turned out perfectly.

The next time my vaso-vagal friend made an appearance was on a family trip to our nation's capital.  We were at a pizza place in Georgetown, and there was a long wait; the place was mobbed.  I was about 10 at the time, my brother 14.  I had spent much of the trip writing in my Hello Kitty diary about Matthew Simpson, the love of my life; while my brother declined to accompany us on trips to Capitol Hill in favor of spending his days in comic book shops.  So after a long day of sight-seeing, we had to stand in line at this pizza place for what seemed like an eternity.  It was warm, and I was famished.  That light-headed feeling started to come on again, so my mom and I went out to get some air.  I thought I was going to throw up, so we ran back inside and tried to find a bathroom.  Instead, we ended up in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by sweaty Italian men throwing pies with their sweaty treetrunk arms.  And that's where I hit the deck.  Somehow, the restaurant manager caught me just before I landed on the greasy tile floor, and the next thing I knew, I was in a back alley being cradled by a man with a husky voice and an understanding air (I now realize that liability was the first thing on his mind).  A few minutes later, we were escorted to our table, having jumped the rest of the line, and I got a large virgin daquiri for my trouble. 

To this day, when there's a wait for a table somewhere, my dad asks me to do my fainting trick.  Har.

The summer after eighth grade, I went to a several-week ballet training program in Aspen.  On my first night there, having been there for less than 12 hours, I was standing around in the plaza area outside our dorm with my roommates and a few other dancers, all of whom I'd just met.  This time, without warning, I fell directly backward.  My knees didn't bend in the slightest - just "TI-I-I-M-BER!" onto the asphalt.  Breaking the fall with my head.  As at the lawyers' conference, it caused quite a stir and I became That Girl Who Passed Out the First Night of Camp.  I'm pretty sure I had a concussion, since I threw up all night; but the ever-vigilant resident staff told me to take some Tylenol and I'd be fine.

You didn't think someone could write so much about fainting, did you?  But when your body decides to lose consciousness at the most inopportune times, it gives you a fair amount of material.  Someone out there must understand.  Rebecca from America's Next Top Model?  Hello?  Are you there?  Don't make me just another fainting goat.

Anyway, next we proceed to the High School faint.  Which ranks very high on the embarrassment meter, let me tell you.  First off, as I may have mentioned, I was not the most popular girl in school.  Mostly I just wanted to get through it, fly under the radar (except academically, of course) and all that.  But no.  Junior year, Trig class.  I had just finished a test and was using the leftover hour to read "The Bell Jar" (oh! the angst!).  I came to that part where she loses her virginity and bleeds all over the place?  You know that part?  (I'm getting a little woozy right now, just thinking about it.)  Well, I had to stop reading because I started to feel funny.  And then...I would say you know the rest, but you don't.  Oh, God - no, you don't.  The rest is that I fell sideways, slamming my head into the teacher's desk, coming to rest with my noggin on the floor.  But my LEGS were sticking STRAIGHT UP INTO THE AIR.  I had become the hypotenuse of a right triangle made up of the floor, my desk and my unconscious, diagonal body. 

The teacher, of course, was flipping out.  She rocketed out of her chair and buzzed the office for assistance.  She shouted for this guy, Lucas - who had never said two words to me - to get my legs down and put me all the way on the floor.  People started chattering about how I subsisted on rice cakes and diet coke.  As I came to, I said, as loudly as I could muster under the circumstances, "I EAT PLENTY!"  Bastards.  But then I thought I was going to puke, so this girl Jessica pulled the trash can over to me.  There I was, on all fours, staring into the trash can filled with pencil shavings and crumpled notebook paper, while my Trig class speculated about my eating habits (secretly hoping that the disturbance would mean an adjournment of the test) and the meddling secretaries in the office called my mom (who just sighed and said, "Give her a Coke and I'll come get her.") 

Our teacher managed to get me off the floor and walked me to the office, telling me it would be ok even though I knew I would not survive this new notoriety.  The next morning, my AP History teacher asked me if I had eaten my Wheaties.  I had to endure these kinds of questions for the rest of my high school career.  And that's how people remembered me; that was the story that was told about me - not some funny thing I did at a party or a witty comment I made at a football game, but my loud, ugly, awkward faint in Trig class. 

I won't bore you with all the rest of the stories, but the highlights included passing out on the first day at a new job (the paramedics were called, a new milestone in my personal fainting history) and going into convulsions after I sliced the tip off my thumb while cutting an H&H bagel (My husband declared the incident a vaso-bagel episode.) 

I doubt I'll ever become famous as an attorney.  I may never achieve my dream of publishing a novel or getting a screenplay made into a movie.  But God knows, some story of me will live on.  Because I have a talent.  A talent for hurling myself to the ground.  In public places and social situations.  Usually while surrounded by strangers.  Dammit, I may not have much, but I have that.

Conduct Unbecoming

I am extremely clumsy.  Two decades of ballet training have had no effect on my ability to control my limbs or navigate my environment effectively.  When walking around corners or through doorways, I am certain to slam one side of my body into the closest vertical surface.  My living room is an obstacle course; every protruding corner threatens the well-being of my toes and kneecaps.  I am no longer allowed to cut anything in our household after having to be rushed to the emergency for stitches in the wake of a bagel-slicing incident in which part of my thumb ended up detached from my body.  I cannot hit or catch projectile objects of any kind -- you could throw me a ball the size of a sofa cushion, and it will slip through my hands and land at my feet while I blush furiously and feel like an asshole. 

I was surely the only child alive to strike out in a game of teeball.

And so, it was inevitable that my klutziness would manifest itself in some way, even in the highly non-physical legal profession.  Fortunately, it has only come out at the most inopportune and potentially humiliating moments.

Exhibit A:

As a junior associate, I attended a bar association conference at a Caribbean resort.  Most of the people in attendance were judges or law firm partners.  I didn't know a soul there.  On the FIRST DAY of the conference, a few generous souls took pity on me (after determining that I was not there with my parents or spouse) and invited me to have lunch with them.  We had to wait for a table at the poolside cafe, so we were all standing around chatting.  Being the Caribbean, it was hot.  And sunny.  And I hadn't eaten in a few hours.  And someone gave me a rum punch, which I sipped politely but cautiously.  And then I knew.  The tinny sound in my ears, the static in my vision.  I grabbed a chair and sat down, suddenly not caring that no one else in the group was seated.  I tried to pretend I was fixing my shoe as I put my head down between my knees.  But it was too late. 

A clamor of voices. 

"Is there a doctor here?!" someone shouted. 

I heard the scrape of a metal chair on the cement patio. 

"I'M A DENTIST!" a man shouted as he leapt over a chaise lounge and crouched by my side.

The dentist took my pulse and poured a sugar packet into my mouth while I heard various people disclaiming responsibility for me (these were lawyers, after all) -- "she's here ALL ALONE" "what was her name again?" "do we even know she's REALLY with the conference?"  I opened my eyes to find my lunch companions huddled nearby, staring down at me.  One of them whispered to her husband, "Maybe she's anorexic."  I tried to glare at her as the dentist helped me to a chair.  Someone brought me some water and a Coke.  This is the scourge of being a young, tall, fair-skinned woman of Scandinavian descent:  the vasovagal response.

The rest of the week, people treated me like a leper, except for one very delightful couple who took to me in spite of my tendency to get the vapors and invited me to dinner each night.  When I returned to work, a partner thanked me for making such a great impression on people on behalf of the firm. 

Exhibit B:

Recently, I had to attend a court conference for a big-ass case I'm on.  It's one of those huge commercial litigations in which all of the lawyers cannot even fit into the courtroom at one time.  It was a rainy day, so the partner ordered a car to take us to court.  I was wearing a pantsuit, one of my standard-issue J Crew suits with skinny pants and a cropped jacket. 

The partner and I head downstairs to our waiting car.  The car is parked about two feet from the curb.  A Grade IV rapid is gushing between the curb and the car.  The partner gets in first.  As he scoots across the back seat, I reach my foot out and begin to bend down to clear the top of the car as I bridge the raging river with my legs.  The contortions required for this maneuver meet with resistance from my J Crew pants.  As descend toward the seat, I hear a VERY LOUD RIP.  I feel something give way Down There.  I say, "Shit." 

The partner, who is talking to me about the case, does not appear to have heard the rip or the curse.  He keeps talking.  I position my briefcase over my lap and attempt to gauge the severity of the damage while en route to court.  It's bad.  Stem to stern.  The seam has zero connectivity between the bottom of the fly and the back of the waistband.  I'm not hearing anything the partner is saying; I'm just thinking about how I am going to get out of the car, go up the steps of the courthouse, make my way to the courtroom and return to my office without showing my ass to the fifty lawyers on this case. 

I did have some things going for me:  In a moment that now seemed to be divine intervention, I had chosen to wear black hipster bikinis that day instead of a thong.  My pants were navy.  I was carrying a briefcase containing a legal pad.  Drawing upon the skills that I developed while attending a junior high school that forced all the girls to wear white shorts for gym class, I plotted my strategy.  Before I knew it, we had pulled up to the courthouse.  It was time to act.

As I slid out of the car, I positioned my briefcase over my ass as we walked up the steps.  But then, panic ensued:  security.  I would have to relinquish my briefcase to pass through the metal detectors and THE PARTNER AND SEVERAL OF OUR CO-COUNSEL WERE NOW BEHIND ME.  As I placed my bag on the conveyor belt, I turned sideways, giving my companions a profile shot.  I sidled through the metal detectors.  I am sure everyone thought me insane, but that was infinitely better than having one of them come up to me and whisper, "Dear, you seem to have split your pants" in that concerned, sympathetic tone that the gym teacher used when she came over and told you that you were leaking blood all over your white shorts and you just wanted to DIE. 

After retrieving my bag, I saw more lawyers on our case ahead of me.  I grabbed the legal pad out of my briefcase and held it in front of me while using my other hand to continue obscuring my butt with my shoulder bag.  Nothing to see here folks - just an eager associate, ready to take notes!  You never know when I might need to write something down!  Could be any minute! 

I use this makeshift sandwich board to cover me until we reach the courtroom.  There, I am relegated with the other associates to the jury box, which is the only place we can fit.  The conference lasts all of ten minutes.  I sandwich-board myself out of the courthouse.  The partner and I make our way back to the office.  Before we enter the building, I tell him that I have to run an errand.  I rush to the nearest J Crew and buy a new outfit.  And ask them to fix my pants, using steel-reinforced thread.