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One year closer to the finish line

September 29, 2009 By: John Kindley Category: Uncategorized

I didn’t know this was a blogging tradition until I read this post by the taxgirl, with whom I share a birthday (today!), so in compliance with this newly-discovered tradition I offer the following ten random fun facts you may not know about me in no particular order:

1. It’s my 40th, so Scott Greenfield’s description of me as a “young” lawyer is highly relative to Scott’s own, shall we say, “maturity.”

2. Like the attorney apparently in over his head defending terror suspect Najibullah Zazi, I’ve been practicing law ten years, having graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1999. But I’ve been practicing criminal defense less than that.

3. I play World of Warcraft with Patrick of Popehat fame.

4. My parents were both 16 when I was born. Like Norm Pattis’ father, my father was a desperado, at least in his younger years. I didn’t see him much growing up, as he was either in prison or running from the law. When I was two, my mother tragically did what Gerry Spence’s mother tragically did. My brother (younger by one year and ten days) and I owe our upbringing to our mother’s geeky but loving sister.

5. I won $17,730 at the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event in Vegas, after winning a seat in an online freeroll poker tournament two weeks before the Main Event. My decision to attend the WSOP instead of an uncontested guilty plea hearing in a misdemeanor case in a neighboring county provoked the judge to file a disciplinary complaint against me (although I’d sent him a letter in advance of the hearing explaining my predicament), which resulted in my sole disciplinary blemish (a reprimand from the Indiana Supreme Court) thus far. I could have handled the situation better.

6. The first trial of my career was originally scheduled for September 11, 2001 in Fargo, North Dakota. The trial was postponed, and we (the attorneys and parties for both sides) watched the terrorist attacks on a TV the judge had set up in a small conference room in the courthouse. My expert witness and I were then stranded in Fargo for the better part of a week until the ban on air travel was lifted.

7. One day in law school I happened to come across a couple of classmates discussing the fact that one of them had just found out she shared a birthday with another classmate. What’s your birthday?, I asked. September 29th, she answered. We also share a birthday with Miguel de Cervantes, biographer of Don Quixote, who like me just couldn’t help tilting at windmills. And September 29th is the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, traditionally known as Michaelmas, and a good day to ask “Who is like unto God?”

8. I got married on April Fools Day, 2007.

9. I resigned from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1991, thinking I had a calling to the Roman Catholic priesthood. I was initially involved with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, lately in the news. Later, while an undergad at the University of Dallas (from which I received a B.A. in Philosophy in 1994), I became a member of Regnum Christi, whose founder, the late Fr. Marcial Maciel, turns out to have fathered a child and very likely sexually molested seminarians. Today I’m a Quaker. But I’m still a Mel Gibson fan.

10. My favorite novel, or at least the one that has influenced my life the most since I read it at age 18, is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

2 Comments to “One year closer to the finish line”


  1. Many happy returns.

    Just turned 40 myself back in August. Dind’t know about this business. Do I have to wait until I hit 80?

    1
  2. John Kindley says:

    Thanks Ken!

    For all I know, the taxgirl just invented this tradition today. From what I hear, getting to 80 takes an awful long time (just ask Patrick!).

    2


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