Early in my career, I was assigned to represent a woman named Teresa.<\/p>\n
She had been arrested for stealing a cheap blue fountain pen from a department store.<\/p>\n
It seemed like a minor case, but when I spoke with her, I learned why she had taken it.<\/p>\n
Her ten-year-old son loved drawing and writing stories, and she had promised him a \u201creal grown-up pen\u201d for his birthday.<\/p>\n
Then her hours were cut at work.<\/p>\n
Rent came first.<\/p>\n
Food came second.<\/p>\n
The birthday gift disappeared from the budget.<\/p>\n
She made one terrible decision.<\/p>\n
In court, I explained her circumstances and asked the judge for leniency.<\/p>\n
Teresa received community service instead of jail.<\/p>\n
Before leaving, she thanked me and said, \u201cSomeday my son will understand that someone gave us a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
I never saw her again.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years later, I owned a small law firm.<\/p>\n
One morning, I was interviewing candidates for a junior attorney position.<\/p>\n
A young man walked into my office, introduced himself as Marcus, and sat across from me.<\/p>\n
Then he placed a blue fountain pen on the desk.<\/p>\n
I stared at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother kept this story alive my entire childhood,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Teresa was his mother.<\/p>\n
She had told him about the lawyer who had helped her when she had almost ruined both their lives over one desperate mistake.<\/p>\n
Marcus had become an attorney because of it.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t ask for special treatment.<\/p>\n
And I didn\u2019t give him any.<\/p>\n
He earned the position on his own.<\/p>\n
But when I called to offer him the job, I added one thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBring the blue pen.\u201d<\/p>\n
He laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already planned to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Early in my career, I was assigned to represent a woman named Teresa. She had been arrested for stealing a cheap blue fountain pen from a department store. It seemed like a minor case, but when I spoke with her, I learned why she had taken it. Her ten-year-old son loved drawing and writing stories, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9927,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions\/9927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}