Put a lid on it!

There was a client in my office today. She sat down. She adjusted her hair. She took some papers out of her satchel. She took a highlighter out of my mug of pens. She took the lid off, as though she were going to highlight something in her papers. She set down the highlighter without making a single mark -- but she didn't put the lid back on!

She didn't stop there. She realized she had left some papers in her car. So she went to get them. And she left the highlighter lying there with the lid off! I would have fixed it myself, but her boyfriend was also there, still in the office, and I thought that would seem rude.

I blame the lidless highlighter, though, for my distraction during the meeting. "You don't like the judgment you got? Okay, what did it say?" My highlighter is naked right now. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that last part?" Oh god, it's drying out. "True, that does seem a bit inequitable." Seriously, it's not going to work anymore! "Wait, did you just say Pulaski County?" And it's the only one I have!!! "I think we need to start over. Yes, from the beginning."

Okay, actually that conversation didn't happen at all. But that's how things were going in my head. Really, they're J's clients, and he wants to get me in on the work, because there are going to be some post-trial motions and possibly an appeal. Interesting stuff -- doesn't happen all that often. But since he's the only one who's reviewed the case thus far, I was just listening for my own edification. I had nothing valuable to contribute, so my distraction (which really did exist -- I am not making that part up) was of little consequence.

Back to the matter at hand though. People. A felt-tip highlighter is unlike a ball-point pen or a regular old pencil. Think of it like a marker; a felt-tip marker, even. If you leave it lying on my desk unlidded for an hour and a half while we're talking, it is not going to work anymore. Remember when you were a kid and you left all your fat Crayola markers on the dining room table with no lids, because the dog had chewed up the lids and they didn't fit the markers anymore? Do you remember what happened to the markers? They dried up. They stopped working. That is also the sad story of my highlighter.

Not that it matters, because she took it when she left. Now I have zero highlighters, working or otherwise.