(1093) How could a lawyer not read?

This blog is inspired by my daughter's comment: " But how could a lawyer not read?!"

Well, that is very interesting! My old friend happened to be a lawyer, in fact she won 96% of her cases in her chosen area in one particular year. What I meant is this particular lawyer does not read in her leisure time.

After I returned from the States, and before I got married, I used to spend a lot of time with her. We jogged, swam, played tennis and watched plays in the city hall - we were too poor to watch any plays that collect money for tickets. As a lawyer, she would send her dispatch boy to queue for free tickets in the district office. In the process of watching those Saturday night free plays, we two former pure science students learnt much about literary dramas.

One day, we were eating in the Mamak shop (Indian Muslim eatery). I picked up an English newspaper and flipped it to open on the back page. Leisurely I flipped from the back to the front admiring the colour sports photos. She was very surprised! She thought she was the only one who read the papers this way. Well, I was not really reading, I was glancing through the photos and speed reading the head lines that caught my eyes.

She went on to tell me she never read outside of her job as a lawyer. Now, I became very surprised. But, I objected, how could it be that she was so very knowledgeable about everything under the sun? Well, she was and still is a good listener, moreover she could ask relevant questions and patiently dig information out of the many readers who surrounded her. Then I realised how I was one of her info mules, since she asked so prettily, I often summarised principles I learnt after many hours of reading. Since she gave me new info in exchange, I never thought much about imparting hard earned knowledge to her.

Much later, she confessed that she had never finished reading any one book of fiction or non-fiction. I was shocked! By then I realized that reading is an activity that is very tiring for her, she employed it because of her chosen profession, not because she enjoyed it. Years later, she immigrated with her young family to Canada. Until today, I have not visited her. It is not because I don't like her or do not value her as a friend. A return ticket to Canada could not be any less than $5,000 local currency, for some one who has not worked at a paying job for most of the past 25 years, that is an astronomical amount. The last time I met her a few years back, she was planning to become a landlady and a guardian to foreign students who were legally minors in her school district. Though I could see pit falls in her career change, I did not really discourage her much, as I could see that in the new role would mean much less reading of documents during working hours.