I think my spouse and I get drive-by comments so frequently because we are surrounded by parents that think we are the mutants from our families, so we must be raising the pup to be a mutant too. And we look a lot younger than we are, and we had him young by today's standards, so sometimes I get the "how could you have a ten year old at your age" stuff.
As for D's mutant-status, I guess that depends on how we define "mutant." He's responsible enough for ten, kind, cuddly, and compassionate, and smart as a whip. He's also rebellious and sometimes a little sullen. Lately he argues just for the sake of it. I think it's being ten. We let him be ten sometimes.
On the other hand, he's got long hair that's perpetually in his eyes, likes baggy carpenter jeans and punk-rock band t-shirts like his father, wears funky-looking wrist-bands, and has a deep, abiding interest (going on five years now) in meteorology, of all things. He reads science fiction and fantasy, plays too many video games, and plays ice hockey. He's a feminist and he's pro-gay rights, but he's anti-lawyer (my job). He dishes out the snark better than some adults I know (frequently at my expense), but he still likes to crawl into bed with us in the morning and just snuggle up. And sometimes he entertains us by doing goofy dances to the music in television commercials.
Is he a mutant? I don't know. But I think he's doing okay.
Rivka: It happens to my spouse and I all of the time.
Hair-style is the big one. Dylan, who is ten, had a mohawk for a time and is now growing his hair long. We always respond with the choosing-our-battles line.
We also get sniped with: (a) lack o' church; (b) lack o' homophobia, and other purportedly criminal leftish indoctrination; (c) working mom/primary caretaker dad; and (d) lack o' the "right kind" of censorship, particularly regarding Dylan's choices in music.
And a fellow hockey-mom was appalled, and expressed that feeling at length, when she found out we are taking Dylan to see Green Day in May.
[asthma-girl delurks, tucking cosmic inhaler into pocket...]
...and reads, and nods, and gasps, and nods some more, and glares at the pile of tissues and meds on the tv tray next to the chair.
I've been living on the margins for most of my 34 years. My asthma was entirely uncontrolled--daily meds were only keeping me alive, usually--until I was 29, and obtained the right combination of lifestyle, medications, and brilliant doctor. Now, it's sort of controlled, but the control is tenuous and the "free" lifestyle is a fragile illusion.
My husband read this post, and nodded, and gasped, and nodded, and got angry for you too. And then we remembered when the mail-order pharmacy had a problem but failed to leave messages at the proper phone number, and when a manufacturer discontinued a key medication, and when a relative unwittingly made us reservations at a bed and breakfast that was home to a beautiful but lethal free-roaming kitty...
Today, my son has the flu. I am precariously balancing between avoiding him entirely and nursing him like a good mommy. But the last time I got the flu (pre-brilliant doc) I was in the hospital for a week.
Anyway, thank you for sharing this. I've never heard anyone so eloquently express what it's like to live with something like this. And asthma is different, but with substituted warning signs and symptoms and med names, that post could be describing me.
Teresa, I hope your climb back up to stable is not too exhausting.
Kimberly
mythago types in all of my thoughts as I have them; let me just echo, and agree. mythago is wise.
Re: Chamber of Commerce/Illinois WP story, which I must confess I haven't read (b/c I really need to get this posted and get back to work or I'll be here all night).
I wonder if the documenting of abuses of the legal system will include large corporate defendants responding to a document request with a veritable dump of sixty to seventy boxes of documents in no discernable order, in which even the individual pages of unified documents are not fastened?
Or to the practice of producing persons who don't know diddly about the events at issue in response to a deposition notice requiring the person who knows the most about the events at issue to testify?
Or to the filing of numerous frivolous motions for protective orders and to compel production and to sanction plaintiff's attorney and to strike several sentences from each deposition taken and to delay the trial date and to reschedule depositions?
Or to the misrepresentation of fact or law to the Court in briefs and oral argument?
Or to the smearing of the plaintiff with highly irrelevant and highly prejudicial personal attacks on the public record, or in front of the jury, and the judge rules on the objection, "the jury is instructed to disregard the immediately prior testimony," as if that would actually WORK?
I'm just sayin'.
Greg: there's a shirt in there somewhere, though.
And if it's fitted, hot pink or ice blue on black, I'm buyin'
Greg:
Tort Reform: the system is broken. pay no attention to the fix behind the curtain.
I want that on a t-shirt, please. Hot pink on black, fitted.
Thanks to mythago and Teresa for making points that have significantly shortened my post. And yet, it's still far too long. Sorry again.
All a damage cap would do is minimize the amount a defendant would have to pay once they've already been found liable under the law (probably after one of those expensive trials). How does that stop small businesses, exactly, from settling frivolous lawsuits out of court to avoid exorbitant legal fees?
If the "tort reform" folks were really concerned about small business settling litigation that is otherwise baseless, why aren't they out there lobbying for widely-available affordable legal assistance for small business owners?
Neither the administration nor groups like Common Ground are looking to inhibit frivolous litigation. Those people aren't on your side. They are lying. They are lying about the extent of frivolous litigation, and they are lying when they say their purported tort reform would stop it. Why? Because what they really want, you wouldn't want to give them.
What the damage cap folks want is to be free to stop internalizing the costs of their products to society, so they can lower their prices (or not) and reap more profit. Damage caps will disincentivize corporations such that there will be even more personal injury than there is now, largely uncompensated. Meanwhile, small businesses and individuals alike will still find it hard to afford quality legal help.
And no, Greg, I do not think any commercial litigation would be affected by tort reform. My contract and antitrust cases will still drag on for decades. Everything I've seen indicates that "tort reform" is focused most particularly on personal injury caused by corporate negligence, products liability, med mal and toxic torts. And that fact alone is pretty interesting.
I'm with Teresa. If you're going to convince me that "tort reform" is necessary, I want stats--percentages, full citations to cases, and reversal rates, too. Show me that there are so many frivolous tort suits brought in this country that are not dismissed, and so many frivolous recoveries, that the legal system has been brought to a standstill. I don't believe you'll be able to do it, because I think it is a fiction.
In order to assess how evil/misguided/dishonest the public relations campaign for tort reform really is, we need to distinguish between lawsuits that are "legally frivolous" (i.e., improper for the lawyer to file in the first instance, based on the facts and the law), and those in which the liability question could have gone either way under substantive law, and you happen to believe the court or jury should have ruled for the defendant.
We also need to distinguish between suits that were legally frivolous, and those that you personally believe, based on the facts of the case and regardless of the applicable law, should not have resulted in liability--i.e., suits in which you personally have a disagreement with the substantive standard for liability in that state.
Because that's what we're talking about when we are arguing about personal responsibility (my thoughts on which were expressed eloquently by both Teresa and Patrick). That you personally think someone shouldn't be allowed to sue does not mean that their claim is illegitimate under the substantive state law.
If you think the problem is "too many legally frivolous lawsuits," then argue for the consistent enforcement of procedural and ethical rules that can prevent them.
If you think the problem is, "Boy, tort law in [insert your state here] allows for comparative negligence and I think we should return to the days when a plaintiff's own negligence completely barred any recovery, even if the other side was negligent too," then lobby your state legislature to change the aspects of state tort law in question. I think you're wrong, but at least you would be tailoring your fix to what you think the problem is. And if the corporations did this--if they actually said "We don't think we should be liable, and we don't want to have to pay, when we [insert brazen corporate tort here]," well, that would be at least a bit closer to the truth.
Damage caps and the kinds of "tort reform" currently being bandied about by the current King and His Court do not efficiently address either of those (also, in my view, trumped up) concerns. In fact, imposing damage caps to inhibit frivolous lawsuits is frankly stupid--unless, of course, your actual target is not legally frivolous lawsuits, but rather lawsuits generally.
Damage caps make loads of sense if your goal is to inhibit the bringing of all claims, frivolous and legitimate, i.e., if your goal is to skirt the actual state tort law and thereby minimize your accountability for your company's mistakes and avoid internalizing the costs of the harms you as a corporation inflict on society.
Damage caps will also exacerbate the effects of an actual, documented problem with the legal system--the dearth of quality, affordable legal services. Addressing that problem would also help ease small business fears (which have been fanned by the big business campaign for tort reform) of expensive litigation.
Okay, that went on and on, didn't it? Sorry about the long post.
Hi! I'm new too, been lurking for about six months and just coming out of my little lurker closet recently. I like it! On occasion, late late late at night when I'm bleary, there is trouble. I usually just take it as a sign that it is Time To Go To Sleep.
I'm a lurker-leaning-toward-poster on electrolite too, and I actually find Patrick's font a bit large. But I still like it. I'd probably read it if it were in two point ice pink Times New Roman italics on navy.
Great post.
On preventing frivolous litigation: We have court rules, loads of them, that are meant to do just that. Early motion practice, later motion practice, offers of judgment and/or mandatory case evaluation (with actual fee shifting for rejectors), dismissal with sanctions (on the party and/or the attorney), ethics complaints and bar suspension, etc. The rules just need be enforced, with teeth, in every court room across the land. That would undeniably be to the benefit of the attorneys (plaintiff or defense) that do their jobs thoroughly, honestly and with great care, and to the detriment of the greedy lawyers giving us all a bad name.
The reason the "tort reform" pushers aren't shouting "enforce the court rules" from the roof tops? Because those same court rules prohibit dilatory and abusive discovery tactics, frivilous motion practice, and misleading the court on either fact or law. The giant law firms representing the giant corporations are, in fact, equally if not more egregious in their abuse of the rules meant to ensure orderly, efficient, timely and fair litigation of any case.
Um, and thanks to everyone for the great recommendations. So much for the Yule "budget" this year, I think.
And we bought Abarat on a whim at the bookstore four months ago and haven't got to it yet (because we bought too much at one time), and now I'm going to have to get right to it when I get home.
Mris:
So whenever anybody gets into whether kids are old enough for something at a given age, it makes me nervous. If kids aren't allowed books that excite and challenge them, something else will take their attention and wander off with it, in some cases permanently.
Case in point--Dylan is ten, and I've been surprised often enough now that I rarely underestimate his ability to handle a book. I'm definitely more concerned about him not being excited and challenged than I am about him being disturbed or warped. If he doesn't find a book challenging, he'll just want to watch television or play videogames all afternoon. If the book holds his interest, though, he won't remember that there is a television in the house. There are limits, of course, but we tend to age him a few years when looking at recommendations.
Also, when books seem too challenging, we just read them together and he asks me when he doesn't understand something. I feel very lucky that he'll still cuddle up with me on the couch, and I'm not above using difficult reading material as a crutch to keep that going for a couple more years.
Steve Eley: Re His Dark Materials--I agree, and I think Dylan would too. He was a bit bored by The Subtle Knife, and I suspect he skimmed whole chapters of The Amber Spyglass due to disinterest. He had to ask more questions about The Golden Compass, but was fascinated by it and could not put it down.
Pookel:
Thanks! It might end up being a Very Terry Yule at this rate. Dark and fantastical is good; teen-boy-adventure is also good, though, and anything an adult woman can enjoy at the same time is wonderful. I can't get Dylan too many books--every time I think, "well, THIS one will keep him busy for awhile," he just devours it.
Now, though, I have to make ready for his other big interest--his hockey game--and maybe finish up a little bit of real work before I leave the office...but talk about books gets me all shivery and is far more interesting than document review...
julia:
Thanks for the tips.
I don't think he would be put off by a girl heroine--he really liked Coraline, and related to her just as easily as he does Harry Potter. He's starting to get to that anti-romance-but-not-really age, but if he would be put off, that's probably an even better reason to have him read more stories with a female protagonist. Plus, if it's funny, it's going to be a winner, no matter what.
Although I wonder--after all of the Artemis Fowl books, he tried The Wish List, and couldn't really get into it. I don't think he's finished it yet.
Another thing we've been doing lately is going through the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror for short stories that aren't too inappropriate for his age level. We read one in the Sixteenth annual edition--of course now I can't remember either title or author--but it was about a composer (first name Maurice? I think) and Pagodas in the French countryside? He loved it.
Julia:
I'm late, too.
My son Dylan turned ten in August.
He counts many of the titles mentioned above among his favorites, including the usual suspects (Narnia, Potter, Lemony Snicket, Pullman); he absolutely loved The Thief Lord (so he'll be getting Inkheart for Yule) and Coraline. He is reading the Susan Cooper series now.
Here is something I haven't seen above (although I may have missed it, and I'm sorry if it's a repeat): Nancy Farmer's House of the Scorpion. Dylan resisted my suggestion that he try it at first ("Cloning sounds boring, Mom"), but one chapter in and he couldn't put it down. He has now proclaimed it his "favorite book ever."
He also likes the Artemis Fowl books, but sort of in the same way he likes the Goosebumps books; he told me he thinks they aren't "deep enough," but that they are funny and sometimes he likes a break from things that are "harder."
A question: We read Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents together, over the summer, and Dylan loved it so much he was sad when it was over! We are now wondering which Pratchett to spin him toward next. Thoughts? Best Pratchett, Maurice aside, for ten-year-old boy?
Thanks for compiling the list, by the way, as I've socked it away for future reference. It's funny how many of these books are on OUR bookshelves that we haven't shared with him yet!
bellatrys,
the pattern you're describing was, at the last time I checked (midnight or so Nov. 3, when they still hadn't called my state as "blue" and I was panicked), entirely consistent with what went on here in Michigan. Believe me, we went blue by the (brown) skin of our urban (Detroit, Ypsi, Flint) and ivory tower elite (Ann Arbor, Ypsi, Marquette) teeth, unless those patterns changed significantly during the wee hours.
Michigan is only partly blue, really. The rest is militia, cows, fertilizer, corn and Oakland County (Very High Property Values factor, which is trumped here in Ann Arbor by the Ivory Tower factor).
Hence the Blue-State-Yet-Gay-Hating thing. We're all very, very ashamed by the way. Well, not all of us. Just the ones that voted "No." Unsurprised, but ashamed.
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