I was in court yesterday and noticed something odd.
The courtroom was quite crowded. The three rows of seats at the rear were almost all taken, lawyers with cases were rotated in and out of the jury box, another group was traffic-managed by the courtroom deputy who rotated them in and out of seats in the well. A smaller bunch hovered around the bar — a wall of legal backs! —because they had no place to sit, and all the seats and benches outside the courtroom were taken. Some lawyers were tripping over the rubber door wedge that was being accidentally kicked around the floor. It made me think of airplanes circling in holding patterns above JFK.
Most of the lawyers were male. It was a while before our case was called so I had time to observe. And what I observed was that about three-fifths of the male lawyers — of all ages — had double or triple chins.
I have not yet had the time to research this observation, to see if there are statistics on it. And I’ve been so busy I don’t know that I’ll ever have the time or degree of scientific intensity to do adequate research. But there we are. Chins. Make of it what you will.