tag-your-pomegranates

[tag-your-pomegranates]

When I am appointed to represent a child, my first action is to separate them from their parents and tell them the following things:

1. I am their attorney. I do not work for their parent or the judge or the cops. I don’t care what any of those people want.

2. My job is to listen to them and try and make what they want happen in court. (At this point I make a joke about how most people want me to get them out of trouble but if someone wanted to be in trouble I would do my best.)

3. What they tell me is confidential. It goes nowhere unless they agree to it. (If old enough, I talk to them about mandatory reporters, and how I’m a mandatory non reporter.)

4. I will give them lots of advice because I’ve been doing court for a while and I know a lot about it, and they don’t. It’s all really complicated, and if they don’t understand what’s happening it’s my job to help them figure it out.

5. They will make the decisions. (At this point I usually have to reassure them that I’ll help, I’ll speak for them in front of the judge, and I’ve got their back. It’s scary to have an adult say you’re in charge, most of the time.)

6. I tell them I know it’s absolutely wild to have some stranger come in here and say “hey, you can trust me!” and that I get if they don’t believe everything right away, because I plan to show them through my actions and my words that I’ll fight for them.

7. But nonetheless, I will treat them like a person who can make decisions, because they are living their life and I am not.

I do not:

Pretend to be cool.

Try to be their BFF.

Overwhelm them with detail.

Let their parents in the room until the kid asks for them. (I provide openings for this, and ask if the kid wants their parent to help them remember and understand.)

I want to emphasize I went into this job knowing nothing about how to interact with vulnerable populations, especially children. The training was minimal, and my role means that I can literally walk into a facility and get an unmonitored visit with a minor client one on one.

In my years of practice I have never felt threatened by a child, even one that was “violent” and “unstable.” It turns out just saying “hi, I think you’re a person with thoughts” is wildly successful? Now people treat me like I have special Child Whisperer powers. My powers are that I ask the child what’s up and I’m not scared to say things that are objectively awkward. I know nothing about anything.

[tag-your-pomegranates]

This may be the worst use of LLMs anyone has attempted, ever. Up there with recognizing mushrooms.

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i hate dogs with blue eyes. why is fucking jeff the killer at my back door

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Damn, I can't believe we have to wait almost a full year until the day Hitler ate lead. Can we make April 30th another Ides of March?

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It’s so unfair i don’t get to see where evolution will go in 50 million years

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as a person who uses either public bathroom on a toss of a coin i gottta say its kind of ridicuous that people are so attached to them being seperate facilities. youre not usually gonna see anyones dick at the urinal and youre not usually gonna be able to spy on any women. the stalls are the same except one has a little tampon bin. we would lose nothing if all bathrooms were unisex and i'll die on that hill.

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Help me. I am a 8 year old boy living in the illegitimate Yankee Capitalist regime. President Xi, our shelves are empty and we are hungry. I am asking you to liberate my state of Connecticut with your Chengdu J-20 Stealth air superiority fighters and your Dongfeng 41 Missiles.

[tag-your-pomegranates]

genuinely something so delightful about getting obsessed with your own characters. what do you MEAN I can turn my headcanons for my characters into Official Real Lore. that's so fucking cool are you serious

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let’s hang on mama (of another species)

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can u imagine if other pieces of media were as scared of calling their monsters what they are as zombie media is about calling zombies zombies

[tag-your-pomegranates]

so i wore a pride flag pin to work the other day and the kids were all interested (obviously) (find me a classroom of preschoolers who are not obsessed with rainbows) (i'll wait) so they crowded around to see.

"aww!" they said, "it's a flag!!"

but the thing is: they're little. a lot of them don't really have a handle on all their mouth sounds yet.

such as, notably, that tricky tricky "L" sound.

[tag-your-pomegranates]

snifs u with my snorfer.

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fool me once, fool me twice, fool me ten times, fool me twenty times

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We need to bring back free the nipple