CHICAGO. It was, Alicia Fahrquahr now admits, a cringe-inducing moment. “I picked up a ‘Daddy’s Little Lawyer’ onesie for Mikey without even thinking about it,” she says with a look of embarrassment on her face as she cradles her six-month old son in her arms. “When I got to the checkout counter at Babies ‘n Things this Goth girl at the cash register said ‘You’re not really going to do that to the poor kid, are you?’”
Alicia and her husband Bob are members of perhaps the most despised class of young parents in the nation; both are lawyers, and both saw nothing wrong with buying lawyer-related baby gear for their first child until they noticed the looks of scorn on faces of friends and were subjected to withering comments such as the one described above. “We’ve dialed it back a bit,” she says, “but every once in a while I . . . I just can’t help myself and I buy a Little Litigator Brief Case or a Junior Notary Stamps & Seals Kit.”
Geneticists say inbreeding among members of the legal profession may result in a genetic abnormality known as “Cardozo Syndrome,” after the Supreme Court justice. “It’s characterized by an inability to laugh at lawyer jokes unless they are told by a member of the bar in good standing,” says Dr. Philip Wertz of the Illinois Institute of Technology. “Also a penchant for cutesy legal memorabilia in the home and office, and in extreme cases, law-related infant wear.”
Victim of law-related child abuse.
Social workers say they are prepared to remove children who are subjected to “My daddy & mommy are lawyers!” wear and other psychic abuses from the homes of two-lawyer families and place them in foster homes where they will be free from legal shoptalk that can cause narcoplepsy and crying jags among infants.
“We’ve recognized the risks inherent in second-hand smoke,” says Wertz. “The next step is to get to two-lawyer couples before they make their kids wear baby wingtips.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Lawyers Are People Too–Sort Of.”
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