Some people are easy to love; others, like me, are an acquired taste. As this year comes to an end, I'm thinking about resolutions and mainly, focusing on ways that I can make myself, how shall I say this--a little more lovable.

Ever since I was a little girl, I was trouble--and by trouble, I mean, testy, pushy, difficult, far too highly opinionated and just a know-it-all brat. You know, like the lawyer I am today! It's a miracle my mother has maintained her mental health thus far.

I can remember way back when in first grade, we had a fire drill in my grammar school and I, most unlike a good, dutiful little girl student, decided to carouse with the boys and climb the fence surrounding school. Skirted uniform and all, I plainly didn't just want to wait around aimlessly while the drill went on.  No, ma'am. Instead, I decided that I wanted to be a little bad with the boys--a little testy. It was precisely that thinking  that landed me in the principal's office after school and was actually the first time I couldn't sit down for quite some time after my mother came to pick me up. Little girls don't act that way, don't you know? I was never to be trouble like that again--at least according to my mother and her instructions between lashings. That was, coincidentally, the first time that I came to question that ridiculous notion that little girls couldn't act like little boys. Bullshit, I thought!

Throughout my upper grammar school years, I was awkward, boisterous and friendless. I just never seemed to get it right. Instead of trying to work on those foibles, I just got worse--more troublesome, more obnoxious. I had one friend, a pencil thin flake of a redhead, Twiggy, we'll call her, who had stringy Chia-pet hair and what appeared to be an explosion of freckles on her bony face. We got along just fine until one day in seventh grade she called me up in a huff and announced that we could no longer be "best friends" because "best friends hang out together at the mall" and "talk about boys." No, she could no longer be my "best friend" because she was "best friends" with another girl and my "mother was far too strict." Following that call, Twiggy proceeded to make my life a living hell. She did everything in her power to be the evil witch. Well, never being one to mince words and after thinking long and hard on how to really sock it to her good, after one of her attacks, I told her to stop talking to me because she was nothing but "garbage." Well, that did it alright. It was like a well-planned tactical attack, successfully making the little Twiggy rat cry and permanently silencing her. Boo hoo. Cry me a river. She deserved it!

On Valentine's Day, when everyone in eighth grade was professing their love for each other and getting candies and teddy bears from their love-bugs, I got a big fat nothing. When it came time to pin up Valentines to the bulletin board with our crush name, I put "Northwestern University" on my paper heart.  I always had to be obnoxious. I made sure everyone knew I was going somewhere when they would be probably stuck with ten kids and no college education. Sure, in hindsight, there was plenty of boys that I did in fact have crushes on--the older boys, actually--but I would have never given a single one of them the satisfaction of knowing that I pined for them. This was part of my "being difficult" personality.

Everything with me seems to be difficult. In high school, I fought with my mother about boys and rap music and platform heels and deep mahogany lipstick and black eye liner. I fought with my English teachers about proper interpretations of Shakespearean dramas and about the real meaning of Chaucer's tales. This constant pushiness and testiness garnered me virtually no friends and a big fat B- in AP English from a teacher who said I could easily get an A+ for the work I did when measured against the other students but because I didn't push myself to my own level nor carry through on one of my many pontifications, I didn't deserve it.

In college, I was no different. On my first day of school I marched into my counselor's office and asked how I could graduate early because I wanted to get into the business of making money -- fast. Dumbfounded, she told me just to try it out and see how I did in class first. Well, to be sure, the University of Chicago kicked my ass--but I kicked back. After two and a half years, and having discovered there was little or no money to be made with a mere English degree, I became the proverbial Legally Blonde girl in law school, equipped with a fluffy hot pink zebra pen, four inch heels. and lots of pink. In fact, I tend to be that same girl now, just with an "Esq" behind my name. I still have the occasional judge do a double take when I approach the bench with my "foofy" pen. Always being testy, I guess.

The bottom line is, my personality hasn't changed much. I think maybe I've gotten a bit more pushy, more testy and more obnoxious. Maybe it's an occupational hazard and maybe it's even contributed to some of my professional benchmarks. But, one thing's for certain, I have to pause and make a concerted effort to kick it down a notch. I have to know when to draw the line outside of the office or courtroom. I think, in this new year 2011 and in the spirit of actually making resolutions that I can stick to, I resolve to try to be a little bit more "girly," more "gentle." I resolve to bite my tongue a bit more, to replace my typical "are you insane" more often with "yes dear" and to be, generally, a little bit more lovable.