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comma), is the comma used immediately before a grammatical conjunction that precedes the last item in a list of three or more items. The phrase “Portugal, Spain, and France”, for example, is written with the serial comma, while “Portugal, Spain and France”, identical in meaning, is written without it. There is no global consensus among writers or editors on the use of the serial comma.
    David’s response to this link was, “See, I’m right.”
    After a half hour, David finally let Ralph get his first words in. David used this opportunity to mute our end of the speaker phone conversation and explain to me his brilliance over the past thirty minutes. He said, “Do you see what I did there, see what I’m doing, I’m laying the groundwork and schmoozing him. Seriously Jennifer, do you know what I did? He sure doesn’t. I’m getting him to agree with me, but making him think it’s his idea, he has no idea what I just did to his mind.” David’s summary of his legal prowess was always very helpful, especially in lieu of listening to the other half of a conference call.
    I zoned out for the rest of the conversation. It frustrated me that David was asking to be lead counsel because the lead was actually going to go to me since I’d be handling the file rather than him. Subrogation cases are handled on a contingency basis, so I always prefer to do as little as possible on my cases when there’s another attorney to share the load.
    I zoned back in and heard David saying “…just recently I settled a nine million dollar case. It actually went to trial, but after my opening statement, opposing counsel called a recess and just offered the money because he could tell that I was making a strong connection to the judge and jury.”
    David continued beating his chest, oblivious to the fact that I was more antsy than usual. Not only was I bored, but I was in a hurry to tell David that I was knocked up. I wanted to do it before I thought too hard about it and lost my nerve.
    David finally turned off the speaker phone and looked very pleased with himself. Technically, mission accomplished. However, considering that the interests of our client and Ralph’s client were the same, the task could have been accomplished with a one-line email which would have taken me four seconds to draft but for which I would have billed: “0.6—Draft correspondence to attorney Walker regarding litigation strategy.”
    “See how I did that?” David said.
    “Yes. Impressive,” I responded.
    “Great, how’s your load? Can you take on more cases?”
    David asked this question a lot and his creepy emphasis on the word “load” never failed to make my skin crawl. “Actually, I may have to slow down. I just found out that I’m pregnant.”
    Mr. Socially Savvy responded by looking at me in disgust and asking, “Are you going to keep it?”
    I responded with my own look of disgust and said, “Of course!” as though I were appalled by the suggestion that I would abort my fake fetus.
    “Who is the father?”
    Hmm. Probably should have anticipated this question. Somehow, the name “Ben Weinstein” came out of my mouth. David is a super-Jew and to him, the greater sin between an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and an interfaith coupling is the latter. As a result, I just blurted out an invented Jewish name for the father.
    “Are you and Benjamin getting married?”
    I almost said, “Who?” but caught myself, realizing that David had already converted Ben into the more formal, Benjamin.
    I said, “Marriage isn’t in the cards right now. He doesn’t live in Florida anymore.”
    “Where does he live?”
    I should have expected this peppering of questions. David was an obscene over-sharer and as a result, he expected his employees to be as well. “New York City.”
    “What does he do?”
    “Marine biologist.” I do not know a New York City marine biologist named Ben or Benjamin, but the occupation was a nice tribute to George