True story.
Earlier in the week I was introduced, in passing, to the newly appointed judge who is about to become my latest "stakeholder". He seems like a nice guy, which might be a platitude but is also true.
So anyway, later on I bumped into the person who had done the introducing. She said to me that afterwards the judge had said to her words to the effect of, "I am glad to have met Stan. Everybody knows about Stan: he's a legend."
Now, assuming that he wasn't making this up, and assuming also that he hadn't just been well briefed by another, soon-to-be-retired judge, I find it hard to know what to make of this. The idea that I am on the radar of people I don't know makes me very uncomfortable. It also strikes me as entirely ridiculous, and a bit scary, that the people doing the talking would include people of the calibre of recent appointments to the esteemed institution at which I work, and where all I have ever tried to do is an honest day's work. (Also: I am not a legend. (But nor am I a myth.) One of our boys may once have referred to it as "Daddy's High Court", but it actually isn't.)
Still and all, I must admit that it also put a smile on my face: at least until I realised that I had an overwhelming urge to tell my parents about it, which, of course, is one thing I cannot do. I wonder what they would have said. Dad would probably have been quietly complimentary and encouraging. Mum would have found a way to put me back in my place. She wouldn't want such things going to my head. That would be a dangerously slippery slope.
But I can't tell them, so I'm telling you instead.
