A couple of linked posts over at What About Clients caught my eye. Apparently American lawyers have trouble asking for business.
This struck Geeklawyer as positively bizarre and for a moment he thought Dan was talking about his own experience of effete poofy English lawyers on one of his numerous jollies over here. But no it was yanks he was talking about: lean hungry denizens of the goal driven land of pecuniary want. No, lean would be
wrong
Geeklawyer has never had any trouble asking either other lawyers or lay punters for business and he can’t really imagine others do either — is he right?
It’s true–a lot of us are wimps. Perhaps GL is more aggressive-type Yank at heart. Great picture of the ultimate gringos, by the way.…JDH
Ruthie always formed the impression that a shy Yank was a contradiction in terms. Ruthie recalls a morning when Clapham South Tube station had been shut and there a huge queue for the ticket machine. A woman had apparently been pushing in the queue (which in England is the only offence for which we have retained capital punishment) the Yankee woman behind me hollered “woman in front, yes you with the blonde hair and green bag, you’re pushing in the queue!” For the benefit of confused American readers, it is important to understand that Embarrassment is the worst fate that can befall an English person. Our society is governed by all manner of subtle face saving protocols, which is no doubt why we get on so well with the Japanese.
Dan: please be aware, when we finally meet, that it is customary in this country to bring expensive gifts when meeting a woman for the first time.
Also why is it that in the Land of the Free, all Americans dress the same: white sneakers, white socks, khaki pants, gap T shirt? Why do grotesquely obese Americans invariably dress in sportswear? Why do Texans always wear the above but substitute shorts for Khaki pants when traveling on the London Underground? Is it just to make it easier for us to identify them and avoid them?
I’ve corrected all your spelling mistakes
Thanks. Nice to know youre good for something.
Well, that’s two things I’m good for; unlike you
And Dan when she says expensive believe me she means it: Geeklawyer once bought her a Cartier watch and she returned it because it wasn’t the most expensive model.
We have more money than class or real education in life and, oddly, we eat, watch TV and isolate ourselves from the rest of the world on most fronts–and that’s why Yanks, in my view, need both the French and the English as a good influence and counter-balance in the West. Still, we are good and often great people. And we work harder than anyone on Earth. But without European culture and the old verities, many Americans, me included, will just run amok without thinking and make ourselves look sillier. So I’ll just get Ruthie a leather-bound copy of Leaves of Grass, one American breakthrough in poetry. And maybe a Big Mac.
Dan: how very insightful. You’ve gone up 50 points and a gold star in my estimation already. Ruthie actually won a poetry competition many years ago and still pens the odd ode, but nothing that’s good enough to be reproduced on here.
Ruthie recently spent the weekend at a houseparty with one of her old schoolfriends: it was a great eye opener. Ruthie seems to spend most of her life with middle aged men for reasons generally beyond her control so it was odd to suddenly be thrown back amongst her contemporaries.
After a weekend with them she was glad to get back to her middle aged men; she has never met a bunch of people who were so unhappy despite being very successful. Ruthie found the constant comparative discussion about cars/houses/size of wage packet/love life/academic qualifications utterly tedious. Thatcher did a good thing when she encouraged us to be aspirational. She didn’t tell us how to know when we’ve made it, or warn us that all this stuff may not, of itself, make us happy.
Ruthie cant help thinking that those who grew up in the 60’s have a much healthier attitude about whats really important.
Anyway: back to Dan. At a certain point in ones professional life virtually everyone you meet is “rich”, in the sense that no-one is struggling along on the breadline. The difference between driving a small car and a big one is far less in terms of the impact it has on the quality of your life than the difference between having no car and a car. But advertisers need to keep telling us we need this stuff and that we are some how inferior without it, otherwise why would we keep buying stuff we don’t really need?
So it you’re rich its easy to throw money around. Far harder to actually try and understand people.
As for the Big Mac, yeah Ruthie has the occasional dirty habit. But generally only because she does lots of gym and craves the salt..
I, on the other hand, think that he who dies with the most toys wins.
Possessing stuff is fun. Sure being spiritual and having love and friends are all necessary (more important even) but its the toys that add the fun. They aren’t mutually exclusive: you can have lots of toys, and aspire to more of them, without being shallow; while having an artistic soul; while having social compassion.
A hair shirt looks good but it kinda itches.
As for the 60’s; Geeklawyer really is a bit of a hippy at heart, you know, drugs & free love ‘fight the man’ chill-out etc, but the hippies were a tiny infinitesimal minority and the 60’s zeitgeist wasn’t really flowers & Haight-Ashbury. The period was as much about greed/aspiration as any other era: corporate asset stripping, strip mining, property booms etc etc, for example all started then.
Yeah, toys are fun, but when self esteem gets tied up with possessions it gets scary and dangerous. Especially when children, whose self estemm can be fragile at the best of times, are cynically targetted as consumers, and made to feel inadequate if their parents cant afford the latest consumer toy.
Ruthie has been especially impressed by the baseball stars who, remembering their own impoverished childhoods have recently brought out cut price sneakers for 15 dollars. The verdict so far? Cant tell the difference from the 150 dollar ones.
Yes that I really do agree with. I knew lots of kids at school who did not have rich parents and felt terribly inferior because they didnt have the trendy clothes, the chopper bike even tough they were well off in absolute terms. They never were poorly regarded but they felt they were — and sadly they were ashamed of their slightly poorer parents. I agree, toys are fun only if interest in them is benign.
As for the 60’s…well since Geeklawyer lived through them, he is more qualified to comment than I.