Remembrance of Times in the Future with apologies to Marcel Proust December 2022 column

This column, being something over #320, is the most bizarre of any I have written. And it is the scariest. (Teaser to induce readers to move on to next paragraph.) I am now in the present for me, composing the second paragraph of this column, which of course you are reading now in the present for you, and the past for me. Nothing unusual about that. Not one of you has been around watching me staring at the keyboard. You don’t experience the struggle to grab the squirming words out of the air, or wherever they come from. What is unusual is that I am writing about an event that has not yet occurred. But now as you read this column, it already happened. Consider this column a combination of anticipation and reminiscence about the future. Explanation: This column usually appears on the first Monday of each month. If the universe is still intact on Monday, December 5th, it is likely you and I will be reading this column on that or some future day. That means, my drop-dead deadline (pardon the reference; as you shall see, the reference is relevant) to submit my column to the Daily Journal is the morning of Friday, December 2nd. But the event I am writing about will not have occurred until Friday, December 2nd, at noon. This moves my deadline back to Thursday, December 1st. This is what is supposed to have happened last Friday. (Gulp!) Sorry. Can’t help it. Let’s assume it did. Strike that last sentence. We know now whether it did or not. But right now, as I write this column, I don’t know for sure. Nobody does (reference to humans only). There is a courtroom where I (pardon the formality) preside during oral argument. My dear friend and colleague, recently retired Justice Steve Perren, thought we should name the courtroom in our division after me. That’s odd. He’s the one retiring. Somehow the idea caught on. There’s no way out. Probably has something to do with my age. So here are my concerns about the event. There will be speeches, I hope short and concise like good appellate opinions. And no doubt I will be expected to say something at the conclusion of the, I hope, short ceremony. From past experiences, when they call up the “honoree,” people in attendance feel obligated to stand. One joker, usually a brother-in-law, stands up and everyone follows suit. Now I am not so vain as to think anyone is going to stand up when I am introduced. But… just in case, I have an admission to make (please keep this under your hat). I freak out when people stand up, a problematic condition for a judge. It goes back to a traumatic experience in grammar-school. The teacher called on me and said, “Arthur, will you please stand, and lead the class in the pledge of allegiance.” I stopped playing with the ink well and got up from my desk. As I placed my hand over my heart, the class yelled, “Stand up Arthur.” Short guys must deal with this phenomenon. Watching other people stand up when my court is called into session would truly help overcome this phobia if any of them were from my grammar school. All of us have dreams as kids. For me, being a judge was not one of them. But as far back as grammar school, I wanted to be a writer. I eagerly pursued this dream while sitting down. I wrote a script that a classmate and I read at an assembly before the entire school. The theme – not wasting paper towels in the lavatory. It was a smashing success. In high school I wanted to a columnist. The illustrious attorney Andrea Ordin was no less impressive in high school than she is now. She was an editor of a slick magazine, The Junior Journal. She gave me my first break, and put me on staff as an ace reporter, columnist, and jazz critic. One of my notable interviews was with trumpeter Shorty Rogers, one of the early exponents of what was called West Coast Jazz. I recall asking him a question that only a 16-year-old would conjure. It was something like, “Shorty, our readers would like to know to what extent you employ contrapuntal figures and Stravinsky-type polyrhythms in your improvisation.” After a long contemplative gaze, Shorty said, “Hey man, you got a match?” I also interviewed Robert Kingsley when he was Dean of the USC law school. Who would have believed that some 30 years later we would be colleagues on the Court of Appeal. Seeing my name in print was a thrill, but as teenagers are wont to do, for a short period to time, I thought it would be cool to have something more concrete named after me. Anything would do, even the men’s room at Union Station. When the Junior Journal moved from its building to a new location, I saw my chance. Here’s something else to keep under your hat – As the last of our desks were removed, I noticed a can of paint and a brush outside the entrance to our now empty offices. I climbed up a ladder and wrote “Art Gilbert was here” on the side of the building. And, yes, on occasion, I drove by to see how long it would be before my name was removed. Quite awhile can be a short time when one is in high school. As the decades move forward with quickening speed, I can look back to have written opinions, memos, articles, and letters, that together number in the thousands, and over 300 columns… oh, I already mentioned that. Not sure whether it is true that David Huston, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Journal, obtained excess liability insurance with me on staff. Getting back to the courtroom naming… what else can I call it? If you are not a billionaire, you usually have to wait until you’re dead to have something named after you. I was relieved to read the book on etiquette for naming courtrooms after people. It is permissible for the person to be alive, so long as the person is not too young. In the Einstein universe of relativity, perhaps somewhere in another dimension the future I am writing about already happened. Oh, by the way, you may be seated.