Are stereotypes just easy short cuts?

Q. What's a thousand lawyers on the bottom of the ocean? A. A good start.

My apologies to the barristers among you, but I wanted to make a point very quickly.

If you're introduced to someone you don't know, and you hear they're a lawyer, the odds are pretty good one of your first thoughts will be of one of the dozens of lawyer jokes you've heard.

Q. What looks good on a lawyer? A. An angry Doberman.

In a world where our senses are constantly assaulted, a world in which we meet new people every day, we often draw conclusions based on very quick information.

What do you think if you meet someone who's morbidly obese?

Or a blonde woman with large breasts? (Or a blonde man with large breasts, for that matter)

How about someone whose first comment to you is, "I'd like to talk to you about Jesus?"

Now not everyone with a major weight problem is sloppy in their personal habits, and there are certainly large-busted blonde women with high IQs. There are probably even people in the last category who aren't obsessed with evangelizing.

But what's probably true is that before we get a chance to know all that, we've formed an opinion that may or may not be accurate.

What happens if you're the father of a teenage daughter and her prom date drives up with rap music booming loudly from his car speakers?

Or if you meet your son's girlfriend and the first thing you notice is her tattoos and piercings?

First impressions aren't always wrong, but they aren't always right either. When I first met my future son-in-law, I learned that he considered himself a connesseuir of beer and had a tattoo of Ireland over his heart.

I was reminded of Dan Hedaya's classic line from "Clueless:"

"Anything happens to my daughter, I have a .45 and a shovel and I doubt anybody would miss you."

Imagine my surprise when Ryan turned out to be a wonderful young man, an outstanding husband to my daughter and a terrific father to my granddaughter.

That's when I realized once and for all that stereotypes are just lazy.

And usually wrong.