When you work from home, the summer months can be trying, particularly if there are school-free children home. Your best hope is they’ll sleep til 11, but don’t bet on that. But you’re better off starting your work day as early as you can.
In my first full summer of essentially step-parenting experience, I learned this the hard way, thanks to the precocious 10-year-old Creature 2. She was an incredibly imaginative and dramatic kid (I don’t mean dramatic as in eye-rolling, hands on her hips, OMG I’m going to sigh so loudly until you acknowledge my misery.) But she staged a lot of plays, held art and cooking classes, and very early during this particular summer, she opened a cat pet-sitting business.
I worked in one corner of the basement; she set up her art table on the opposite side of the large room. She set up her “business” on her side, complete with a play room, conference room, and a crazy maze/tower made of moving and file boxes, into which she cut passages. The cat actually loved the tower of boxes and played in it when Creature 2 wasn’t around, but I never told her, for fear it would go straight to her head.
The day after she opened the cat sitting business in late June, she pretended to be a British house and office cleaning lady, but she quickly learned that even pretending to clean basically sucks ass. So the cat sitting business opened its doors for Day 2.
She made a schedule for our kitten: play time, nap time, lunch time, the works. She drew up contracts, she sent mail, invoices, and warning letters if I was late picking up the kitten even once. She pretended her business won awards, signed by the mayor and everything. It was serious business, and horribly cute. It was a little annoying at times while I tried to answer emails, proofread documents, or prepare for client calls when she’d call over to my office (did I mention she was on the other side of the room) and ask if I still planned to visit my kitten at 2:30 p.m.
(I repeatedly asked why I had to visit the cat at all since it was, after all, cat sitting. I mean, people don’t drop by the babysitter’s house to visit their child and go back to work. But, as clever 10-year-olds do, she deftly found a way to ignore the question and ask if I still intended to visit).
So the incredibly long backstory concludes this way: One document she drew up was one in which I was to pledge to clean up after my cat, that “I will not blow off cat sitting when I have an appointment” and that I would not be able to sue cat sitting for any reason.
Sue. A fake business. Did I mention she was 10?
So of course, if a kid makes me sign a nonsense document that says I’m not going to sue her company, what’s the ONLY thing to do? File a lawsuit. Naturally.
I typed up a quick lawsuit, left it on her desk, and watched her go nuts. She emailed all kinds of threats and correctly pointed out that I signed a document that said I would not sue her company.
So I dropped the lawsuit. And then I sued her again. For a million bucks. Pain and suffering being what it is and all. (I mean, she put my cat in a box that was 4 feet wide and at least 30 inches tall. Inescapable. And above that box was a sign “Free Kitten’s” which offended me more for the punctuation lapse than anything else. The apostrophe alone entitled me to pain and suffering compensation.)
So what else did she do? She counter sued me. For 5 dollars.
We set a court date the next morning at 9 a.m. She set her alarm for 8 a.m. to be sure she would be ready. She picked out her outfit. I picked out my outfit. Her mother was to be the judge. Now a thing or two about her mother you should know, particularly as it relates to an important 9 a.m. court case: mom is not a morning person. Further, mom does not share the same sense of humor (did someone say “over the top?”) as Creature 2 and I.
Quickly we realized that this was not going to work. Firstly, there were conflicts of interest all around. How is a judge supposed to rule between two people she loves? Second, mom dressed in a red bathrobe rather than the distinctive garb of a serious judge. Both parties agreed to conference to select another, more qualified, person to decide this matter.
An adult relative was called in to oversee the matter. Obviously, some conflicts of interest would be present in order to find someone willing to toss away a healthy portion of their day to appear in our basement courtroom. But Cousin Aimee was game.
We agreed on a court date later in the week. Aimee created a Yahoo! email account at which we could send pertinent documents, evidence and other correspondence. She reviewed documents and asked pertinent legal questions. When she arrived for court later in the week, she was adorned in a body length black robe carrying a meat tenderizer for a gavel. She had borrowed the robe from another cousin for the occasion.
This, kids, is what we call committing to the bit.
My opponent demonstrated the same seriousness. The night before our new court date, opposing counsel engaged in ruthless mockery of me, trash talking with the confidence of a middle aged mediocre white man. (As an almost middle aged mediocre white man, I was very proud). She organized her documents, using a 3-hole-puncher and then placing them in a binder, which was labelled “important papers.” She consulted her mother, the former judge in this case, about an appropriate outfit for her second court appearance. I observed, making mental notes about further conflicts that could help my case. Who consults a disgraced judge removed from said case to prepare for their next hearing? Come on!!! Judge Aimee would be hearing about this during oral arguments for sure!
Creature 2 again set her alarm for 8 a.m., though she woke up at 6 a.m. because “I’m sooo excited for court.” She even studied her notes and brought a coffee mug full of water to court with her. “What?” she asked. “This is my professional cup!”
In my first court appearance, I dressed in a dashing brown suit, blue shirt with a power tie, and a relaxed but serious pair of loafers. The site of me wearing anything but shorts and flip flops, a summer staple made Creature 2 smile, and then laugh.
But I had to be unpredictable this time around, to throw my opponent off her game. I dressed in a black suit, black button down shirt opened to the belly button of my dad bod, hair disheveled in a way that would make Hugh Grant proud, and sunglasses. I spoke with a slow Southern drawl and introduced myself as something silly like “Harvey Howard Wallbanger, Esquire, for my client Mr. McFeeley. Frankly yah honoh, I do not know what brings me to this esteemed hall of justice on this beautiful day. This is as open and shut as Chick-fill-A on a Sunday morning. Lordy it’s warm in heah.”
Judge Aimee asked many questions, reviewed all the documents, (“The only document I have for your perusal, yah honah, is that of common sense.”) and even called a brief recess before rendering her decision. (If we had one more person to play along, Creature 2 could have given an interview to a fake news reporter during said recess. I could have used an improv troupe.)
Despite failing to disclose her exhibits and documents to me, threatening me via email, and admitting that the cat was left in the box unsupervised for up to 2 minutes at a time with a blanket and a plastic bag (on either of which she could have suffocated) Judge Aimee tossed my lawsuit, because as my brother once said about any game “It’s not who wins or loses that matters, it’s that Tom doesn’t win.” Thankfully, her baseless lawsuit was also dismissed.
Though nobody won, she was a worthy opponent. She had her case lined up, argued it well, brought the right exhibits to make her point and even stored documents and evidence in a long cooler that served as her seat. I was a cocky over-priced bourbon-sipping attorney who intended to clog the system with baseless motions and who spoke too loudly, somehow slower than an the urgency of the case demanded.
She totally kicked my ass. All over the basement of our Indiana home.
An hour after court was adjourned she came over to my desk, shook my hand said “Congratulations on a good case,” then asked me what time I was going to visit my cat that day, and said flat-out she wouldn’t mind if I sued her again. I told her my suit was at the dry cleaner.
That afternoon, though, her cat-sitting business suddenly was transformed into a pet store. Utilizing her current inventory (my pets), she switched from pet care to flat-out sales. Meaning, of course, she wanted me to pay for the cat I already owned. Because she admitted in court that her $5 counter suit was simply a vehicle through which to purchase a blizzard at Dairy Queen and that she would turn over the remaining $1.05 to me afterwards, we discussed her new business over a Brownie Batter Blizzard later that day. I convinced her to free my pet under the condition that I (either) provided new animals for sale, or, purchased another Dairy Queen Blizzard on a date to be determined. Easy peazy. Hands were shaken, a deal was struck and our legal dilemmas were formally behind us.
Fourteen years later, as both her mother and I work out of our apartment, I pine for those half-serious summer days. While the now-24-year-old and I still play the occasional practical joke on one another, spending a summer morning arguing bogus motions to a pretend judge about small business violations sounds like a perfect way to start the day.
And my cat could use the company.