Years ago, when I was a young man who still had hopes and dreams, I worked for a real estate lawyer north of Baltimore. It was my first job after graduating from college, and for the first day and a half I was pretty excited about it. The job paid well and I got to wear all the button-down shirts with pull-over V-neck sweaters I could handle. The actual work was terrible, though. I spent two hours a day on the phone being chewed out by courthouse clerks, and the printer/scanner/fax machine broke every time I turned it on. And of course my boss was a penny-pinching sociopath prick who genuinely believed that “hippies should be fed to the dogs” (whatever that means).

Anyway: I was miserable about 96% of the time (eating lunch at Whole Foods every day was my faint salvation), so I would amuse myself by reading through civil suits until I found something sad or hilarious. As you might imagine, there was often a great deal of both. Toward the end of my employment there, I began compiling the best lines into a document so that I could use them as the basis for stories at a later time. I just found my favorite one, and why the heck not, here it is (names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty):

“Mr. Marbles chose not to comment or participate. Mr. Marbles seldom comes to the building, about once a month. He is usually belligerent and reeking of alcohol and quite convinced that he is the object of a great conspiracy led by Bobby O’Hare. He does not participate in the affairs of the LLC except to rage at any Members or tenants he might encounter in the hallways scaring some and offending many.”

“Scaring some and offending many” is great. I think about that line sometimes. I think that line is so good, in fact, that I’m almost glad I worked there. Almost!

I wonder how ol’ Mr. Marbles is doing. Maybe he’s dead. Who knows.