The Scandal

Well I've completed day 2 of a 3-day-long BYU law school orientation (emphasis on the "long"). It's been pretty interesting so far and by far the best part of the experience is getting to meet so many new people and already feel the anticipated camaraderie that has presented itself as genuine niceness thus far. The law orientation adventure has been informative and mostly uneventful other than my all time best performance in today's mad-dash to get to the few remaining used books before they were all sold for a tenth of the price their new counterparts go for in the book store across the street. I was 25th in line and I managed to secure all of my books as well as the books for two other students who I tag-teamed with to find books for specific classes while they rummaged through the piles for our other classes. I didn't even have to run; I just walked in authoritatively and calmly claimed my prizes. I still don't know how it all worked out but I'm ecstatic that it saved us hundreds of dollars.

But the real reason I'm writing tonight is because of this evening's adventure. All new students were assigned in groups of 8 or 10 to go to professors' homes tonight for an intimate chat and refreshments: another ploy to get us to mingle, about which I have no complaints. I did, however, worry greatly about attending said event as I had not met a single person in my specific group and the instructions specifically stated that "you and a guest" are to come. I'm no expert but two days of law school orientation is enough for me to realize that that "guest" meant "spouse" as I'm quite sure I'm the only person in the class who isn't married and raising four or five kids. Realistically, (I know everyone gets a bit skeptical when I use that word) we were told that just over half of the class is married, but unless they are counting me as 50 people, I don't understand how on earth it isn't more like 85%.

So understandably I didn't want to show up to the small gathering with strangers and their wives completely alone. This is partly due to my shaken confidence this week which is a result of two hair-cuts at two different places within 30 hours of each other (another dramatic story for another dramatic day; suffice it to say, my hair is tragically MUCH shorter today than it was on Monday morning). In order to rectify the situation I asked my very good friend Alyssa to come with me and pose as my wife (we've often considered getting married purely out of convenience so this was just a trial). She graciously agreed to come thinking that I was probably exaggerating (imagine that) and that there would be plenty of other single people there. Well she was wrong and we knew it right when we got there and saw each person sitting next to their spouse in a circle of chairs while they talked about how to get through law school as a married couple (we did find out later that one girl in the back was also single; she must be the other one in the class).

Of course the group assumed that Alyssa and I were married (although we told noone this) and we got some great marriage advise directly from the professor who recommended that Alyssa and I take some class together. This was all after she and I realized that we missed our chance to set the record straight when we thought we heard someone ask if everyone there was married when we were disruptively mumbling back and forth about the girl who started breast-feeding right next to me in front of the entire group despite not knowing anyone there other than her husband and regardless of the fact that we were sitting in a circle fully exposed to each individual member of the group. Anyway, we weren't sure if that question had been asked and we thought it would be a bit awkward to say that we weren't married if that wasn't what they were talking about in the first place so the lies continued until we sat at a table 10 minutes later with one of the couples who asked us where we lived. I said that I lived in Provo and Alyssa in Springville which finally required the clarification that we were not married. Or engaged. Or thinking about getting married (we thought it was odd that anyone would ask that after we already told them we were not engaged. What if that was a touchy subject?) Anyway, apparently it was a bigger deal to this couple than it was to us that the whole group was functioning under the false pretense that Alyssa and I were building a life together because five minutes later it was announced to the professor that we were a "scandal" which I thought was a rather harsh and interesting choice of nouns but hey, I'm always looking to be a part of a good scandal. For this I officially award law student X the tellin' like it is award. Then the professor apologized profusely for recommending that Alyssa and I take a class together when we weren't even married which we assured him was no problem as we were really excited by the idea regardless of our marital status as it would be a fun way for us to sit on the back row together and be disruptive to an entire graduate class two or three times a week.

Despite the drama and looks of shock on the faces when our true selves were revealed, the evening wasn't so bad. Everyone we met was extremely nice and friendly and I can't wait to get to know them better. . . all except for the breast-feeding girl who didn't offer her milk to anyone else even though it was really hot and everyone was very thirsty.