As I write this post, it is 10:39 p.m., Ohio time, on the evening before my last day as a law student. We are chin-deep in exams. Mary Pat and I have been studying for most of the day, until we just couldn’t. Tomorrow we take our Remedies exam which, for me at least, will be my last (MP's last is on Tuesday). It is hard to convey my joy at the prospect that this, this
unsavory experience is almost over. Tomorrow morning, at 10:00 a.m., I will enter room 126 in the Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law and take a three-hour final, put my pencil down and walk out of the building in a state of profound glee. On my face will reside the biggest grin allowed by statute. In fact, I will probably be in violation of O.R.C. §1892.09(a)(7). Yet I will not care. As people walk past me on the sidewalk, they may wonder to themselves (or out loud),
‘What’s up with the shit-eating grin, dude?’ But those who really understand, the ones in the know, the observant ones, will see the trail of notebook paper and pens and file folders and outlines that have fallen from my hands in a long, sad wake behind me, and hear my confident, somewhat tired voice inside their heads, whispering
‘You have no idea.’ I will probably drift home and have a beer. Or I may simply sit on the couch, put on the new Paul Simon album and wait for Mary Pat to walk through the door, who will have the same weightlessness inside her, knowing she’s almost done, smiling.
At any rate, I know that at some point after the exam I am heading up to Detroit to go see one of my favorite live bands, Sector Nine in concert at St. Andrews Hall downtown, where I will kick back in the music and let the entire law school experience, all three years of it, loosen and drift away. I might even boogie a little. It will be a nice –what is it?-- denouement.
So folks, I’ll see you on the flipside. In the meantime, I give you quite possibly the most precise statement of how I feel right now, at this most cheerful moment in time. Be sure and turn your speakers up:
Van Halen – Panama
