This morning we woke up to a world in the teens, frost covered and colder than it's been since last winter. I scraped off the windshield of the Ford while older and younger son gathered their bookbags and headed out to join me. Younger son got to the front seat first and decided that, since you could clear dew off the window by lowering and raising it, it should work on frost as well. About halfway down you could hear the grinding of something going wrong with the works inside. No matter how he pressed the button, all he could do was drive the window lower and lower until it was irretrievably down, with no signs of rising again under it's own power. We were running late to the bus stop, so there was no slacking on the speed. The outside temperature was 18 degrees. Inside the car this was reduced by a thirty five to fifty mile per hour wind chill. Older son in the back was huddled down in his seat, hood up, hands in pockets, lips turning blue while muttering dire threats directed at his brother. I dropped them off, returned home and parked the car in the sun, hoping that the problem was cold related and it would thaw out before my first Court case later that morning. No such luck. I drove back to town, the temperature only risen to the 2o's, hair still damp from my morning shower with the heater on full blast to compensate, unsuccessfully, for the swirling frigid wind from the open window. As I stopped at the first light on the main drag through town, windblown and near frostbit, I turned on the cd player, forgetting that missing window provided a free concert for all passersby. I had also forgotten that the disc in the player was soprano Dawn Upshaw's recording of Broadway show tunes by Bernstein, Blitzstein, Sondheim, and Weill (which would have been a great law firm name if they had ever tired of the music racket). So picture this; a middle-aged man sits shivering in a Ford Explorer, mind on his upcoming misdemeanor trial when, at full volume, a piercing female voice suddenly proclaims to all within earshot that:

I feel pretty,
Oh so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and bright,
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me tonight.

I feel charming,
Oh so charming--
Its alarming how charming I feel,
And so pretty
That I hardly can believe I'm real.

I will not describe the looks I got, except to say with the late Rodney Dangerfield that "Sometimes it ain't easy bein' me."