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Life Would be Better if I had a Scooter…

dixie_scooters

Sitting around being unemployed can really make you think about sitting around and being unemployed. Now, I realize that I’m not technically “unemployed”; I’ve just rejoined the student ranks, but my roommate, Sebastian, is unemployed. And I’m on summer break. Which means we spend the majority of our days sitting around and thinking about being unemployed. And drinking. We also think about drinking.

Of course, this is not to imply that there is no productivity going on in the apartment. Just today we went out shopping, and spent a combined three hundred dollars on things we can’t afford. Then, when we got back to the apartment, we were curious if Sebastian could fit inside my suitcase. He can. Important life lesson right there. Then we spent a half hour on Craigslist trying to find him a job. Except I actually spent twenty-five of those minutes searching the barter section. Ever wonder if you could trade your unwanted laptop for a 2002 Honda CH80 Elite scooter? You can. Second important life lesson of the day.

Then Sebastian and I discussed the feasibility of sharing a laptop, and if it’d be necessary or even possible to carry a new scooter up the stairs. Things got heated for a while, but it ended the same way these discussions always did: we’re holding out for a scooter. Afterward, I returned to my aimless internet surfing and thought about sitting around and being unemployed. I also wondered if it was too early to start drinking. It was.

At that point I remembered that writing for my blog would be productive, so I decided to start searching with a purpose. I put a few generic law-related terms into Google and discovered that I’m not alone in the legal world (can I claim that yet?) sitting around being unemployed (can’t claim that either, can I?). I clicked on a website that appeared to be solely dedicated to chronicling legal layoffs, and lo and behold the very first post on the page is about a… SCOOTER! Ok, maybe not exactly “about”, but I was still fully distracted. I began to feel that squeamishness associated with the realization of a lost, fantastic opportunity.

I decided to take a break from the blog research, and tried to reopen the barter discussion. Sebastian was pretending to update his resume and ignored me. Luckily, three episodes of Arrested Development later, my eyes were back on the prize and I was ready to continue my search.

I kept clicking, from blog to article and back again, and it seemed things go from bad to worse. Beyond the unemployed lawyers, there were the recent grads that had suddenly been told that they weren’t exactly needed yet, and maybe not ever. Although, to be honest, I don’t have much pity for people who are getting paid 80k to not work for a year. You could investigate the ratio of body size to storage cavity for a multitude of luggage with that kind of time.

Then there is this poor guy that Trent wrote about earlier. I can’t actually offer any commentary because I’m too busy cringing. Now he could use a personal transportation device to cheer him up.

Of course none of this is news to anyone with a computer and even passing interest in the legal world. And with so many people sitting around being unemployed all day, that’s likely a pretty high number. But it can make a girl who had just plunged herself 60k into debt a little worried. And then I got to thinking, not just about sitting around and being unemployed, but about that big scary thing that no one getting into this whole law school game wants to talk about….

Drinking. Luckily it was happy hour by then, so Sebastian and I put our hard work aside, dipped into the scooter fund, and headed out to enjoy the one perk that unemployment always guarantees.