BOO! Since Halloween is quickly approaching, I thought I would write about a deadly disease that’s scarier than the Ebola virus — a disease that has infected hundreds of millions of people worldwide. While everyone should be afraid of this disease, very few people seem to care about it. If they had full knowledge of its devastating consequences, they would be petrified and would wear the equivalent of a hazmat suit to protect themselves from the disease.
After starting my own law practice in 1983, the first lawyer who hired me to help him with some of his client files was Raymond (Ray) Rose, a well-known Peoria injury and malpractice trial attorney. In addition to paying me to work on his files, Ray taught me the fundamentals of how to handle clients, question witnesses, conduct depositions, and prepare cases for trial.
If you pay any attention to the news, you know that on Friday morning, December 14, a 20-year-old man shot and killed his mother in her home in Newtown, Connecticut, and then drove her car to a local elementary school and murdered six adults and twenty children. He then turned his gun on himself and committed suicide.
I heard a joke recently that I think is worth passing on: Two well-armed pirate ships with large crews are closing in on a ship. The first mate alerts the captain of the ship that they are about to be attacked. The captain immediately barks out an order to the first mate: “Bring me my red shirt!” A fierce battle takes place and the captain and his crew defeat the attacking pirates. The first mate then asks the captain why he insisted on wearing his red shirt. The captain responds, “I put on my red shirt because if I would have been wounded in battle, my men would not have been able to see my blood and lose heart.” The following week, the first mate rushes up to the captain and tells him that an entire fleet of well-armed pirate ships – a dozen in all – with large crews, is closing in on the ship. The captain immediately shouts out an order to the first mate: “Bring me my I brown pants!”