Dawn

The Dawn of Dawn

A quiet, happy, peaceful baby, who slept well, never cried much and hardly ever had to be changed.  Who could possibly imagine all of those wonderful traits in a single child?  But there she was, smiling an adorable toothless grin, doggedly crawling across the carpeting in her diapers (which were hardly ever dirty!), cheerfully spitting up on her mother’s new blouse during an occasional feeding gone awry.  Her beaming parents looked down at their beautiful baby, curled up peacefully in her crib, and imagined her becoming a doctor, a college professor, an entrepreneur, a scientist, a lawyer- Wait!  A lawyer?  Her unsuspecting parents never, ever in a million years, imagined such a dire fate for their darling daughter.  But life is full of surprises, some of them nice, some of them not so nice.  Let’s take a walk with Dawn through the stages of her life, and see if we can figure out exactly what happened.

Rise Up So Early In the Morn

What’s the difference between a rooster and an attorney?  A rooster clucks defiance.

Punctuality is a very good trait, most people would agree, so long as you relax once in a while, so long as you occasional take an extra couple of minutes on your coffee break, or show up at 8:03 for an 8:00 meeting.  Being stubborn can be useful, too; the first to hold on, and the last to let go.  But being too punctual and too stubborn can be infuriating to other people, as Dawn amply demonstrated in her high school years.

The brother of a dear friend of Dawn’s remembers how the telephone rang every single morning at exactly the same time: 6:00.  And it was always the same person: Dawn.  Regular as a rooster.  In fact, she probably woke up before most roosters.  Big brother would have preferred to sleep an extra half  hour, even an extra fifteen minutes, but Dawn, being the good friend to his sister that she was, decided it was her duty to wake her friend bright and early every morning.  If that meant waking up her brother, well, he was just a casualty of war.
“I hung up on her more times than I can recall,” Big brother recalls.  “But she kept re-calling, coming back again and again like a killer in a horror film.  Once I answered the telephone after it had been ringing for ten minutes straight.  After barking an angry greeting to the person on the other end, I heard Dawn very casually reply, ‘Hello.  May I speak to your sister?’”
Mister Booze, Mister Booze!

A man walked into a bar with his alligator and asked the bartender, "Do you serve lawyers here?".
"Sure do," replied the bartender.
"Good," said the man. "Give me a beer, and I'll have a lawyer for my 'gator."

A lot of people like beer.  Nothing wrong with that.  Beer is so ingrained in American culture that hardly anyone waits until age twenty-one before taking the first drink.  Most people are a little older than three, though.

When Dawn was three, she was already beginning to show signs of the fierce independence, the unshakeable tenacity that would mold her character.  Pulling her Hot Wheels up to the front of the neighborhood bar, she toddled inside, managed to climb up onto one of the barstools, and slapped down a twenty that she had stolen from her mother’s purse.  As articulately as she could manage, she demanded to be served a pitcher of Coors.

No, not really!  The story of Dawn’s descent into drink is a bit more believable, but still just as funny.  Dawn’s father and his firemen buddies from work were having a party at Dawn’s parents’ house.  Dawn, who was still relatively innocent at the time, was tooling around in front of the house on her tricycle.  Curious as a child will be, she approached the firemen, one by one, and asked for a sip of beer.  Seeing no harm in giving the tot a drop or two, they complied, not knowing that the man before them had also complied.  Totally toasted, little Dawn staggered outside, only to come roaring back into the house on her mighty tricycle.  “My goodness,” the firemen gasped.  “What have we done?”  Yes, what indeed?

Dawn still loves beer, but is responsible enough to know now that drinking and tricycling don’t mix.







Sweet Sibling Rivalry

Dawn was stubborn, as has already been established.  Stubborn, persistent and tough.  Not tough in the way a boxer or a football player is tough, not tough like a Marine drill sergeant, not tough like a Mafia thug (whom she may wind up defending one day), and certainly not tough like her sister, Amy, who was more than happy to dispense her share of scratches, punches and kicks to Dawn if big Sister misbehaved.  In some ways, the dawn of Amy was like the dusk of Dawn, or at least like the high noon.  Like most siblings, though, their rivalry waned as they grew older, became more mature, and as Dawn finally realized that she couldn’t take Amy and shouldn’t bother trying!  Maybe motherhood had a mitigating influencing on Amy, who said of their early years, “I guess I really was a little shrew, but Dawn wasn’t exactly an angel, either.  She’s just the one who was beaten up most of the time, so everyone had more sympathy for her.  We’re the best of friends, now,” Amy admits.  “but I’ll deck her in a minute if she gives me a good reason.”  Ha!  See you in court, little sister!

For The Love of Dawn

Why does the Bar prohibit lawyers from having sex with their clients?  To prevent clients from being billed twice for the same service.

Dawn liked boys almost as much as she liked beer, which is to be expected from most girls.  But Dawn had a penchant for choosing boys who didn’t always like her, and made no attempt to hide it.  Maybe Dawn liked a challenge.  Maybe, to paraphrase Mark Twain, she didn’t want to date any boy who would go out with her.  And unfortunately for her, she didn’t.  In retrospect, her friend’s brother might feel some satisfaction knowing that he was not the only boy who was pestered by Dawn’s constant phone calls, albeit for a different reason.


Building a Future

A doctor told her patient that his test results indicated that he had a rare disease and had only six months to live. “Isn’t there anything I can do?” pleaded the patient. “Marry a lawyer,” the doctor advised. “It will be the longest six months of your life.”
After years spent chasing boys who wanted nothing to do with her, Dawn finally decided that finding one who actually liked her might be a better idea.  At the time they met, Chris was working in construction, and Dawn was working for a realtor.  He built houses, she sold them.  What could be a better match than that?  Of course, poor Chris had no idea of his betrothed’s legal aspirations when he married her, but he decided that he still loved her anyway, or maybe he was just terrified of going through a divorce from a lawyer wife!  Nevertheless, here they are, hardhat and hard nose, happily married for a good six months now.  Talk about beating the odds!
He Said, She Said
Like most happily married couples, Chris and Dawn quarrel occasionally, but that's perfectly normal.  Sometimes, spouses just have to get it out of their systems.  What are some of their sources of conflict?
"She likes to read," says Chris.  "Not that I am against literacy, not at all.  But why does she always have to crack a book at 11:30 at night?"  Dawn used to wake up very early in the morning.  Apparently, she now likes to go to sleep very late at night.  Like any bright, ambitious, young professional, she thrives on excessive work and insomnia.  So she drinks coffee like water-or in her case, like beer- and is still dragging helpless innocents into the dreary depths of fatigue.
"I only use a tiny little bedroom lamp," Dawn protests.  "It's not like my husband can't close his eyes, or roll over on his back, or put the pillow over his head.  He can be so inconsiderate at times!"
Eventually Dawn relents, after maybe an hour or two or fairly peaceful bickering, and with a curt remark, shuts off the light.
By the morning, the darling couple are back in each other's good graces.  "She's a sweet, beautiful, darling lady," Chris says.  "I love her too much to ever leave her.  Plus, I'm afraid that she'd take me to the cleaners if we ever split up."
Fun With Dawn
Stubborn as always, Dawn usually thinks- okay, always thinks- that she's right.  But according to her husband and family, she's almost always left.  Very left.  During family gatherings or a simple supper with Dawn's parents- Ken and Pauline- the family takes great sport in setting Dawn off with any kind of politically incorrect commentary.
"Boy, this corn on the cob is good," Ken might remark.  "And with President Bush's tax cut, think how much more of it we'll be able to afford."
Dawn scowls in surly silence as Chris adds, "I hear that, Dad.  I just hope he stops giving all this assistance to these puny, third-world nations who wouldn't pay us back if they could."



That does it!  Dawn is out of her seat and up on her soapbox.  After pontificating for fifteen minutes, she asks if they have been paying attention to anything she has been saying.
"Absolutely," one of them invariably replies.  "And it's hysterical."