Amanuensis: I was one, thank goodness I didn't have to spell it

[L. (in Suetonius) adj. used subst., f. denominative phrase a manu a secretary, short for servus a manu + -ensis belonging to.]
One who copies or writes from the dictation of another.

This word also comes from Wicked, a book full of great words I have never seen before. This one was curious to me as, given its definition, I WAS one at one time in my life without ever knowing it! And I have to admit, I find this highly disturbing. I recently had a conversation with two police officers, and during same used the previously featured CRS vocab word sycophant. They were so delighted to learn this word, which they were certain naught but a few on the force would understand; they devised great plans to use it, and use it often. Now, as a self admitted word geek, I would find it highly disconcerting to both be arrested AND to be deemed something by a term I did not understand. Perhaps your average member of the law-breaking proletariat would think nothing of it -- I know the drunk ones would care less.

I digress. As I was saying, I was, during that searching time post Bachelor's Degree when looming student loans haunt you, an amanuensis, or a secretary at a local law firm. I took dictation each and every day. Had the attorneys I worked for introduced me to clients as an amanuensis, I cannot imagine how different my days might have been. I furthermore cannot imagine a few of their partners being able to pronounce such a word, let alone knowing what it meant. I have to admit, however, that the last part of the etymology has a connotation that was part of my experience but that I did not appreciate all the time -- the idea of belonging to, like a slave. More than once I was made to feel like a second-class citizen by the other partners in the firm, a powerless entity behind a computer and a pile of files. During that time, I was also writing a collection of short stories about the experience. I have hesitated pursuing publishing because even though these do-hocks don't actually read, I would not want to get the ones I do like in trouble (or get sued -- let's face it: when has a lawyer been able to take the ugly truth and leave it the truth?) I always meant to do something productive with them before one of them that I actually liked died of the cancer that was eating away at him even then. He who hesitates is lost, alas, so I will add to this entry a little bit of that collection in his memory.

Here's to you, Tuna, from your old erstwhile amanuensis.

From So Bite Me, John Grisham, and Other Law Briefs

Chapter Five: Ambassador Flashy and the Guys I work for
(in this chapter I describe each of the partners. Here is a look at two of them.)

Victor almost ended up in the a*hole pile. He is an a*hole, but he’s one of those rare kinds that can be actually quite charming in a geeky sort of way. He once paid me the ultimate compliment. He said, “she knows things.” Coming from a man who professes to know everything, this was not to be taken lightly. He also introduced me to the Flashman novels. I would never have known about the details of the Boxer Rebellion, or smirked each time I saw the huge diamond on the British Crown Jewels Special on PBS if it hadn’t been for Harry Flashman. Had I met Victor when he was in his twenties, and I had begun working for him at that time, things would have worked out much better for us. As it is, he had little patience for an English major who masqueraded as a legal secretary, even if she was well-read. And I cannot say I blame him. He needed a secretary who didn’t need direction. You see, he was also getting, as he put it, cobra venom once a month for a week, then spending three or four days in bed recuperating. I know chemotherapy is supposed to lengthen the lives of cancer patients, but I am not sure it would be worth it. He had a way of announcing it when he went into the doctors office, telling the nurses to start milking the snakes, that made everyone else in the lobby nervous. They put a shunt into his vein right in the place where he used to shoulder his rifle, too. He scared Katie the receptionist half to death by showing her the blood stains on his shirt when he’d get back to the office.

Schmeeder was a class-A a*hole. He earned this ranking because he pretended to be a nice guy. He was a divorce lawyer. He had to smell people’s money before he took their case. It’s okay, really, because you have to be a class-A a*hole in order to feel nothing about dividing families for a living. As long as you pretended that there was no god but Schmeeder and he was his own damn prophet, things were swell. He didn’t know things. He knew about being an a*hole, and being a lawyer (or are those synonymous? Not sure yet) and a bit about division and multiplication (divide belongings, multiply hours times money). But he didn’t know jack about Flashy, or anything historical, or books, or popular culture.

It was this last point that allowed me to have so much evil fun with Schmeeder and his feeble little mind. (I would have left him alone, but he treated every secretary there like dirt, so a stand needed to be taken.) Victor and I would debate the treatment of history in some movie or book, and Schmeeder would walk by and ask what we were talking about. “You wouldn’t understand,” I would think, but Victor would offer the topic anyway.
“The latest book on Lewis and Clark.”
“Oh,” Schmeeder would say, “the Civil War guys? I read about them once.”
Victor winked at me.
“Yeah, they stood astride the source of the Missouri and took a leak right after the battle of Bunker Hill,” Victor would add, and walk back into his office.
"I remember that part," Schmeeder said. “So you’re really into this history stuff,” he would then say to me, trying to seem cool.
“Yeah, when I am not busy with my squirrel taxidermy.”
“You majored in history, right?” This was time number four asking that.
“Yes, among other things.”
“So what should I look for when I take my wife to Europe next month, historically speaking?”
“Terrorists.”
Schmeeder looked at me, faked a chuckle, and walked away.

The above is fiction, but it is sitting almost on the lap of the truth. See now why I have to wait until they ALL die?