Talk Thursday (on Saturday): Talk Thursday?

Okay, I'll admit I skipped my meeting and my going-home-early-to-get-some-sleep idea and a bunch of other things so I could hang out in the desert with Lawrence (of Arabia) and Auda and Ali and the gang.  But look, folks, opportunities to see the big man on the big screen are few and far between anymore, and Just Not To Be Missed.  Larry has a special place in my life.  It's my favorite movie ever, for one thing, unless Star Wars is my favorite movie ever, a thing about which I go back and forth a lot.  (Actually, Lawrence is a lot like Star Wars.  It's Star Wars in the desert.  Camels instead of X-wings, that's the only difference.)  For another thing, it's one of the few movies ever made that refuses to lionize its hero, shows both his good and bad sides and eventually ends (spoiler alert!) not in triumph but in catastrophe.  And, yeah, it cleaned up on Academy Award nominations, and it's considered one of the best films ever made, and David Lean is a genius, and blah blah blah, but those are just other reasons to go see it.  The main reason is Lawrence himself, as played by Peter O'Toole.  He's both noble and psychotic, cheerful and unbelievably messed up, probably suffering from a pretty severe case of PTSD and at the same time believing he's a god.  He's a psychologist's dream, or nightmare, or something, and yet when he's onscreen, it's very hard to look at anything else. Besides, he helped me write the synopsis for Mindbender, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that he died in 1935.

Thursday was the 50th anniversary of the film's release, and also the introduction of yet another new! Improved! version of the film.  Unlike 1988, they didn't add any missing footage (and thank all the gods there are; the movie's pushing four hours as it is).  What they did instead was take a digital picture of each and every frame of the original film footage, which, being 50 years old, is in pretty sorry shape.  Then they took each digital picture and loaded it into something called 4k software, which I didn't follow very well, but if you're into digital photography, you probably know what that means.  The technicians then went over the digital photos of every single frame of this thing (remember, pushing 4 hours) and removed things like cracks and splits, deepened the color where it had obviously faded or stained, corrected the lighting where it was too dark, and did other photography thingys until they had a finished product that was as close as they could come to what David Lean originally had in mind.  The result:  You can see every pore on Larry's face.  You can count the hairs in the camels' noses.  I don't mean to be flip, here, but it's unbelievably clear.  Considering that half the movie is gorgeous shots of desert vistas, it sure is nice to be able to look at them and practically run your hand through the grains of sand.  A Blu-Ray of all this is being released in November, and if it looks half as good on a TV as it does on the big screen, it'll be worth every cent you'll pay for it.  Not owing a Blu-Ray player myself, and having a TV that's at least 20 years old, I can assure you that this is not a paid endorsement of any kind whatsoever.

Speaking of great undertakings that don't always end well, I'm not sure what's going on with Talk Thursday.  It's been a month or so since I heard from anybody at the Topic-o-Meter, and the last time we assigned dates for the topic, it was just me and Cele (though Shinsige dropped in at the last minute).  Since then, all quiet on the western front (and that's a different movie altogether).  So I'm not sure if we've dropped off the face of the planet, or what, exactly.  At the moment I'm forced to assume that we're at least on hiatus.

The point of Talk Thursday (and there is one! There is one!) was, or is, if I understand correctly, to encourage regular blogging.  There was also the whole "oh yeah, and we're all going to blog about this thing in particular" but I think that was basically arbitrary, because the topic could be "The Sock Drawer" and you could end up with a column about sex toys. Certainly it encouraged me (especially the sex toys).  So I'm kind of not sure what to do now.  Except to keep blogging on Thursday, since that seems to be one of the best nights to grab a table at Afrah and snarf down pita bread before my meeting.  (Anymore, you want to go to Afrah, the earlier the better; past about seven the place fills up so fast you'd think you were in downtown Amman on a Saturday night.  Okay, I'll admit that wasn't the world's greatest metaphor.)  Besides, blogging on Thursday means I have an excuse to haul my laptop somewhere, use somebody else's WiFi and look intellectual for a little while.  The chicks go for ladies who look intellectual in Muslim restaurants.  Er, or so I hear.

Talk Thursday: Security

My mom and dad are in Italy this week.  No, not the town in Ellis County, Texas.  The country shaped like a boot on the other side of the planet.  They're going to Rome and Florence and Venice and places that have more syllables than consonants in their names.  They're going to hang out and eat pasta and drink vino and have a fabulous time.  At least, I hope they are.  (And I'm stuck here at Afrah eating stuffed grape leaves and akawi pie.  I can't even tell you what a tragedy this is.)  There was a time when I did that whole international travel thing, but I have to admit it generally took place in years where I didn't have to replace a roof and a water heater and a stove and a washing machine and a huge transmission component for the Saturn and a cell phone and half my wife's mouth.  Yeah, we can kind of forget international travel this year.  I'm trying to figure out how to get the two of us to Phoenix some time around the holidays so we can reassure our friends and relatives of our continued existence.

Anyway:  I don't think I have ever once in my life had occasion to yell, "Call security!"  I did, once, have occasion to yell "Call my lawyer!", but A. I yelled it in English and everybody around me spoke only Swedish, and B. I didn't have a lawyer, so it really didn't have the kind of impact I would have preferred.  Security, though, is an interesting concept.  For some people it means big ugly guys with guns and six-cell flashlights.  (In my mind, the six-cell flashlight and gun disappear, and I'm carrying a mere Detex watch clock.  Yes, I was a security guard in college.  The things people will do to, you know, eat.)  For some, it's all about money.  For Linus, it's a blue blanket.  (Please, I beg of you, get this pop culture reference.  Lie to me if you don't.  Because if you don't, I'm going to lapse into despair and start into one of my what's-wrong-with-kids-today speeches and nobody wants that. Not even Linus.)

For most of my adult life and probably most of my youth, as well, I've been plagued with anxiety.  What the heck is anxiety, anyway?  Well, that's probably something else that means different things to different people.  What it always meant to me, still means today, is a fundamental, lizard-brain feeling that I Am Not Safe.  Yes, this floor looks very sturdy, but be not fooled; I'm about to fall through it.  Yes, this job looks pretty promising, but don't hold your breath; I'm about to get fired.  Yes, this relationship looks happy and stable; but she's going to leave me any second.  And any number of dreadful occurrences are going to happen before you can say Jack Robinson.  (Don't ask me who Jack Robinson is.  I think he's just one of those people whose name just doesn't take very long to say.)  Tornado? Fire? Flood? Gout? Mitt Romney?  Yep, expect any or all of them any second now.  And once this feeling gets started, it does not want to go away.  There are things that help, but the only thing that's Guaranteed To Work is the judicious application of pharmaceuticals.  Legally prescribed ones, that is.  And what are they prescribed for?  Uh, severe anxiety.  Imagine.

Now, this here's a Buddhist speaking.  We're supposed to be all calm and relaxed-like.  And I am, most of the time.  Unless the anxiety jumps me.  Does meditating help?  Yes, somewhat.  Does chanting, reading stuff out of one of the sutras, something by Thich Nhat Hanh help?  Yes, again somewhat.  Does plunging into a project and just working like hell until I forget what I'm so anxious about help?  Yes, though it doesn't stop it from Coming Right Back as soon as the coast is clear.  but if I need a guarantee, if I want to be positive that I'm going to stop wanting to jump right the hell out of my skin in twenty minutes or less, pharmaceuticals help the best.

I'll give you an example.  I was talking to the New Guy last night about one of those things I really don't want to talk about.  I have quite a few such things, and generally deal with them by saying "Yes, that happened.  It was gross.  Let's move on."  The thing about visiting mental-health care professionals of any stripe, though, is that you really have to talk about the stuff you don't want to talk about or visiting doesn't do you a bit of good.  So I have this way of sneaking up on something, whacking it with my paw, and then taking off at great speed, only to return a few minutes later and sneak up on it again.  I learned this technique from my cat.  New Guy played along pretty well (he must also have a cat, although I haven't asked him).  And gradually we got close enough to the big icky thing I didn't want to talk about that we could, you know, talk about it.  Afterward, in the parking lot, I was a jangly mess of nerves.  So I did something I have not done in a while.  I Took Something. It kicked in, in about twenty minutes, by which time I was home.  And calm.  And secure.  And starting to get very darn sleepy.

That, in my humble opinion, is the biggest problem with pharmaceutically-induced security.  It comes with a side effect of unconsciousness.  Joan said she had a terrible time waking me up.  Shaking my arm didn't do it and patting my face didn't do it.  She finally had to take off my shoes.  I don't know why that wakes me up, but it does.  Maybe in a former life I was a World War I soldier in the trenches, and I had to keep an eye on my boots because boots got stolen a lot.  I don't know.  Anyway, I got up and stumbled into bed and woke up this morning with a hangover.  I haven't been hung over for so long I'd forgotten what it was like, but, yeah.  It was a hangover.  That's another downside to the pharmaceutical anxiety treatment.

Still, today's a new day and today I feel better.  No crawling out of my skin, no looming threats of tornadoes or earthquakes or Romneys.  And I'm late for my meeting.  Ciao.

Talk Thursday: Jury Duty.

Yep, it's happened again.  Just when I thought it was safe to open the mailbox.  Cute little white window envelope with a bright orange formy thing inside.  You (yes, you) have been summoned for jury duty.  Oh, for the love of--justice.  I was only down there a couple months ago.  I should be exempt for a while.  Unfortunately, I was down at the municipal Court and this here summons is from the district Court.  The district Criminal Court, in point of fact.  Whole different building and everything.  So it doesn't matter how recently I was down there.  I still have to go.  Unless, of course, I get a postponement.  My boss told me to ask because he's so busy right now, so I'll have to figure out how and hope I get one.  I don't know if they're automatic or if they just give you one if your law firm's donated to the Presiding Judge's re-election campaign recently.

Supposedly, this selection of jurors is random.  It goes by driver's license or voter registration or some other equally arcane set of numbers that I know nothing about.  Considering how many times I've been summoned, I'm a little suspicious, but then again, it sort of has to be random, doesn't it?  They can't be summoning me on purpose.  There's no way any attorney in his or her right mind would ever let me anywhere near an actual courtroom.

Yes, let it be known that people who actually know stuff about the law are generally Not Welcome on juries.  I mean, it happens, but not very often and not to anyone I've ever known.  In my case it's even less likely.  Not only do I know way too much about things legal, I'm also a wiseass.  Example from my last time on voir dire:  Q: "You work for a law firm?" A. "Yes, sir." Q. "And what do you do during the trial?"  A. "I watch the jury and try to guess what they're thinking."  True, dat.  But attorneys tend not to like it for some reason. Can't imagine why.

The first time I was ever summoned for jury duty, I was--hmm, let me see--seventeen years old.  I was all excited, thinking I got the day off from school to see how things worked in the Real World.  Then I found out you aren't eligible until you turn eighteen.  Imagine my disappointment.  I had to wait another eight years and two states to get summoned again.  I walked into the first courtroom and there uponst the bench sat one of my karate students.  (Yes, I used to be a karate instructor.  Well, sort of.  I was one level below brown belt, which meant I was somehow qualified to teach everybody who was one level below purple belt on down.  The judge was below purple belt.  I won't say how far.)  I waved at him and said, "Good morning, Mr. Burns."  He waved back and said, "Good morning, Ms. J----.  You can go."  And out the door I went.

(Just to make this doubly spooky, Joan ended up on a jury in the same courtroom with the same judge, and had to tell the bailiff that she lived with the woman who was once a karate student/sometime instructor at the same school.  The judge decided this wasn't a problem, but it must have been interesting to watch everybody trying to connect the dots.)

My next stab at penetrating the judiciary came while I was working for the Feds.  A day off to do anything was pretty darn cool, since we were working so many hours, and I got full pay for the day no matter when they turned me loose. Surprise!  I didn't get turned loose until 7:30 that evening.  It was a regulatory action, State vs. Somebody Or Other on charges of violating health codes or something like that.  Since I know almost nothing about this particular type of law, I had this fond hope that I might have a shot at jurorhood.  It was a fond, faint hope.  The state's attorney found increasingly creative ways to ask the same question over and over again using different words.  Around and around the room we went, with juror after juror answering variations on the theme of "just because you don't agree with the law doesn't mean you don't have to obey it".  About the third round I got fed up and said, "Objection.  Asked and answered."  The state's attorney turned and looked right at me, which was the first sign that I'd accidentally used my out-loud voice.  Oops.  Well, so much for getting on this jury.

But the defense attorney wasn't going to let me go so easily.  He must have been using me as a ringer.  ("Well, if you get her, then we get her.")  The bailiff kept calling groups of people back into the courtroom, and he always called me.  Every time.  More variations on the same question. Back into the hallway.  Sit and wait.  Then back into the jury box.  By seven in the evening everybody was ready to mutiny.  I couldn't believe I could last this long and not make it onto the panel, but when they finally rattled off the numbers of the jurors they wanted, mine wasn't among them.  And so, tired and cranky and dizzy with hunger, I plodded off toward the parking garage with the other rejects. It wasn't going well for the state of Texas, though.  One of the other jurors leaned over and said to me, "If the State loses this case, it's going to be because their lawyer pissed everybody off."

I've only been in the Criminal Court building one time, and that was for a sentencing hearing that I really didn't want to go to but kind of had to because I knew the victim's mother and somebody had to be there when she took the stand.  I took notes the whole time because, uh, I'm a paralegal and I don't know how to sit in a courtroom and not take notes.  It was ghastly.  Maybe things have gotten better since then?  Maybe if you're not there for a murder trial, it's just an ordinary courthouse?  One can always hope.  I don't know anything about criminal law, either.  So maybe I have a shot.  Just not until February, or at least that's what I'm requesting in my postponement. Remind me not to say "Objection. Asked and answered." this time.

Talk Thursday: We're Not In Kansas.

The praying hands sculpture
outside Oral Roberts University. Eesh.

And we're not in Dallas, either.  Or we weren't for the weekend, anyway.  I was supposed to go up to Tulsa to be in an outdoor swim race, using the term "race" as loosely a possible.  I mean, you've seen Michael Phelps.  And you've seen me.  And you know I look about as much like Michael Phelps as Paul Ryan looks like Heidi Klum.  So when I say "race," here, I'm talking about "making it to the finish line under my own power," as opposed to, say, "being hauled along by a guy in a canoe while somebody calls 911."  Extra bonus points if I manage not to be last.  But about three days before I was supposed to leave, I realized this whole "race" thing wasn't going to happen.  I was having knee issues and fear-of-sunburn issues and if-I-have-to-swim-this-thing-in-the-burqini-I'm-going-to-be-even-slower-than-the-slowest-one-there.  So I quit.  Bailed on the race.  Said to hell with it and drove up to Tulsa with no intentions whatever of jumping into a lake.

So what did I do instead, you ask.  Well, I had dinner with an old friend.  

If you've been following me around for long enough, you might remember my somewhat ill-fated trip to New Orleans for the Pen to Press Writer's Retreat.  While I was there, I met somebody in one of those I've-known-you-my-whole-life sorts of ways.  His name's Rhett, and he lives in Tulsa with his wife and extended family.  We were going to have dinner anyway, back when I was swimming in the race, but, yeah.  I drove 500 miles round trip to have dinner with Rhett.  And you know what?  I felt a lot better for having done it.  

Let's face it, I haven't been having an easy time of it the last, oh, six or eight months.  It's gotten bad enough that I've had to See Somebody about it, and up until I got back from Tulsa I didn't have much hope of things ever improving.  I feel different now.  Well, kind of like things might improve after all, even if they haven't, yet, exactly.  The most important thing Rhett told me is that I have to keep going.  I can't stop mid-novel and just not pick it up again because it's, you know, gotten all difficult on me.  Nor can I stop pimping the one I've already finished to everyone and God.  I've only sent it out to about 107 people.  That means there's 6,999,999,893 people I haven't sent it to yet.  My God, I really have to get moving.  That's a serious lot of emails.  

Speaking of Seeing Somebody, the New Guy said something to me the other day that just about knocked my socks off.  I was describing my fits of anxiety with writing query letters, which, just incidentally, were bad enough a few years ago (when I still drank) that I had to get drunk to write them.  He said he wouldn't be too surprised if a lot of writers had problems with query letters.  There might be a question of degree, what with needing Scaley and Fang framed in my kitchen and so on, but seriously, what I'm trying to do (he said) is very hard.  Writers are superstitious creatures.  Probably most of them have some sort of query-letter ritual they go through when they send one of those horrible things to somebody who might or might not read more than the first six words.

Again, I had to hold on to my socks.  Seriously?  Not only am I consumed by anxiety, but I'm not even unique?  Holy cats. I don't even know what to do with that.  Except to keep going.  To keep going is easier than stopping.  If you don't know that, you've never driven back from Tulsa to Dallas on a Sunday afternoon in a beat-up '98 Corolla.  

Yep, I came full circle on that one.  Without stopping at the Choctaw casino, even.  

Talk Thursday: "Annie Lennox Called...

...she wanted me to tell you she loves you."

Yep, that's quite the topic heading from which to take off.  Particularly when you consider the fact that if Annie Lennox ever did call and tell me she loved me--or even leave a message to that effect--I'd probably flip.  I mean, Annie Lennox.  Annie fucking Lennox.  Hello?  Not only is she gorgeous, she's intelligent, multitalented, obviously possessed of a sense of humor and last but not least, Scottish.  That's about as good as it gets in this crazy world.

That said, the number of people who call and leave messages that they love me are rather few and far between.  My parents, of course, and my sister.  And Joan, once in a while, when she's farther away than the average text message.  Still, if any of you want to call and tell me you love me, please feel free.  I was thinking the other day how awesome it would be if someone were to walk into my cube once a day, tell me I was doing a great job and pat me on the head.  This is about as likely to happen as, oh, Annie Lennox calling and leaving a message that she loves me, but it'd still make me feel a lot better.  Woe unto today's grade schoolers, who get trophies whether their team wins the soccer game or not; in Real Life (TM), nobody pats you on the head and tells you you're doing a great job.  Well, okay, it happens once in a great while.  When it does happen, you save the card or letter or email in your file marked "Hugs" and go through it on days when you're depressed, because it doesn't happen very damned often and you know that when it does happen, they Really Mean It.

Most of the time, I get a voice mail, as opposed to a message, but when I do get a message, it tends to be, "So and so called.  He's really pissed off about (blank)."  (Blank) is inevitably something I have no control over, but rather than be allowed to recruit the person who does have control over it, I get stuck returning the call anyway and apologizing on someone's behalf, then telling So and So that the situation, whatever it is, will be fixed forthwith, which, again, I don't have much control over.  Here's a Buddhist conundrum:  I basically have no control over anything, yet my job is asking me to have control over a great many things I have no control over.  When I show up; I sometimes have control over that.  (Though this morning, I was half an hour late.)  Whether or not I bring doughnuts; I usually have control over that.  (This morning I brought doughnuts.  If you're already going to be half an hour late, you might as well go for forty minutes and bring doughnuts.)

Here's something else I have no control over: Money.  The other day we found out that Joan is going to need oral surgery, and it's going to cost five figures.  Not all at once, thank God, but over the next five years or so.  The really big ugly final number was so big I couldn't even wrap my brain around it. It was like somebody telling me the nearest star is four light years from here.  I have no concept of how far light travels in a year.  Just no concept whatever.  And that much money--that's half my take-home pay for a year.  I mean gas, groceries, mortgage, electricity, food, vet visits, therapy bills, washing machine repairs.  Just an unbelievable amount of money.

So today I did something one should Never Ever Do.  I rolled some money out of an IRA.

I expected the earth to crack asunder, the temple curtain to tear from top to bottom, the sun to split and turn black in the sky.  That didn't happen, but I did sort of feel like throwing up.  I mean, this was the financial equivalent of traveling forward in time, finding my old lady self and stabbing her repeatedly in the chest.  Borrowing from your retirement fund is like--like passing a bill in Congress increasing the budget deficit, or something, and expecting your grandchildren to pay for it when they get older.  Surely our wise leaders would never do such a thing.  It would just be wrong.

Well, rightly or wrongly, it's done and I did it.  And we have the first round of oral surgery more or less sewn up, if you'll pardon the expression.  I'll need to adjust my tax withholding for the rest of the year, and I guess we'll worry about next year next year, but there we are.  If Annie Lennox feels like calling me up and telling me she loves me, this would be the perfect time.  Not only is she gorgeous, intelligent, multitalented, funny and Scottish, she's also rich.  Hello?  Annie?  I'm waiting.

Talk Thursday: Convention

As I crash the Muslim restaurant of my sweet dreams, I'm pondering the whole concept of convention.  Why?  Because it was my idea, that's why, and also because everybody I follow on Twitter is absolutely refusing to shut up about the hurricane that's going on down in Tampa.  No, the one in Tampa, not the one in New Orleans.  You know, the one where whoever's keynote speaking can't go more than two minutes without saying something stupid that offends half of America.  Or the other half.  Sometimes both halves.  I'm trying not to pay it too much attention.  I may just have to sign off Twitter for the duration.  And I'm not sure what I'm gonna do when that other convention fires up.  Different keynote speakers, same two-minute habit, except they generally don't offend me personally.  The last few days I've felt like scaling Fountain Plaza and yelling, "Can't we all just get along?" as the helicopter buzzes by to film the opening sequence to Dallas.  

Apparently we can't.  Apparently it's been the fate of personkind to be divided into two factions that fight over everything since we were cave men (and women).  The only thing that's ever united the two feuding factions is the presence of a bigger, badder enemy.  So, unless there's an alien invasion (we can always hope), we're stuck with our two sets of clowns until November.  Which, despite all appearances to the contrary, slowly approacheth.  

(A guy I know on Twitter is trekking all over Europe.  When he was in Scotland last week, a Scotsman came up to him and asked if he was American.  When he acknowledged that he was, the Scotsman asked, "Are the lot of you fucked in the head?"  The sad thing is, I don't know if he was talking about Todd Akin or our latest mass shooting.  Latest.  Mass.  Shooting.  Think about that for a second.  I mean, that's like saying World War Two to a space alien.  "Wait a minute.  You had a world war and you did it more than once?!"  How embarrassing.  Please, if any of you ever have a close encounter of the third kind, try to keep off the subject of recent American history.  It's best if you just explain about Steven Spielberg and go from there.)

Meanwhile, I've been having a tantrum.  Tantrum, midlife crisis, whatever you want to call it.  I saw one of my docs today, and he summed it up pretty well by saying, "I imagine it's pretty hard to be you."  Well, uh, it is.  Thank you for noticing.  I have, as they say, A Lot On My Plate.  The latest thing that I feel absolutely outraged at not having under my firm control is the fact that I have nothing under my firm control.  That is, I'm forty-three years old, I have a house, car, cats, wife, responsible job and all the other trappings of adulthood (even my very own credit card debt!), and yet I can't take care of myself like an independent human being.  

I can hear all of the Buddhists laughing out there.  There is, of course, no such thing as an independent human being.  All of us rely on each other.  Don't think so?  Well, take a look at this laptop, here.  The one I'm typing on.  I didn't build it.  Yeah, regardless of what Obama said or didn't say.  It's true.  I did not build this laptop, yet it is essential to my well-being in ways that only become screamingly obvious when you take it away from me.  And I do mean screamingly obvious.  I didn't make my clothes, my mala bracelet, my car or even this unbelievably delicious fried kibbe and akawi pie that I'm snarfing down between sentences.  Other people did all that.  I need them, and they need me.  You can't navigate a lawsuit without a paralegal.  (Well, I suppose you can, but you wouldn't want to.)  You can't run a law firm without the guys that make the copy paper and the pens and the cute little laminated tabley things that pass as desks anymore.  You can't make copy paper without trees, and you can't make trees without dirt and sunlight and a lot of time.  So, technically, I am a product of sunlight and dirt and time.  And I can't take care of myself.  That's obvious.  So what, then, is the Big Deal?  

Well, the Big Deal is that besides the dirt and the sunlight, I seem to need a team of advance-degreed professionals.  Sometimes I end up in their offices, like I did today, and they say stuff like, "I imagine it's pretty hard to be you," and send me into a tailspin.  I called up Joan and ranted and complained and wanted to know why, after all this time, I still couldn't take care of myself.  And she said, "Jen, you are taking care of yourself.  You're going to see your doctors when you're supposed to.  You're taking your meds when you're supposed to and you're doing everything you're supposed to do."  She's right.  I've even been off sugar for (gulp) seven days now.  The New Guy has inspired me to new heights of--of high things.  "But I don't want to have some committee following me around for the rest of my life," I said.  "I want to be able to stand on my own two feet."  "You do stand on your own two feet," she said, "and those two feet take you where you need to go, when you need to go there."  (Well, she said something like that.  I have a good ear for dialogue, but it's not perfect.)  

Big sigh.  Minor grumbling.  Settling down, wiping the foam off my face.  Okay, okay.  I may not be able to exist as an independent human being, since no one really can, anyway.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.  And I don't, just for the record.  It'd be interesting, though, if we could get everybody in the same place at the same time and just hear what all of them have to say.  The New Guy and Dr. Patel and Dr. Simon and Dr. King and Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and what's-his-name from China.  Throw in Avalokishvara for some variety and maybe a little Vishnu.  Good heavens, it's starting to sound like--a convention.  Nobody call Fox News.    

Talk Thursday: Resigned

So we're going to trial on a case that I was more or less sure would settle.  I don't know why I bother guessing anymore, because I've been wrong so many times.  The one I'm positive will go to trial settles way before mediation, the one where I'm sure we'll settle, nobody blinks and we're at the courthouse for days flinging unrelated side motions at each other.  When we go to trial we're very damn good at it, thank you, but we'd rather not.  We'd rather just reach a good settlement for our client, because trial is both expensive and risky, and hard on everybody from a nerves and exhaustion standpoint.  But a "good settlement" is often hard to define, and our definition doesn't match the other side's definition by the time we're talking about whether or not to go to trial.  So, off we go.  Hope nobody needs me the second and third weeks in September because I'll be indisposed.  Busy, too.

Meanwhile, the Talk Thursday topic-o-meter is down to me and Cele.  I'm not sure how that happened, but I have scads of good topic ideas, so don't worry, Talk Thursday fans.  I'm just kind of wondering what happened to everybody.  Maybe that whole life-getting-in-the-way thing again.  Me, I think I'd go a little crazy if I weren't writing this column (or another novel or--or something).   So I keep churning out the words, resigned to my fate.  Or somebody's fate.  What happens if you get the wrong person's fate? Do you get to trade it in?  Seems like there should be a fate exchange someplace, because I think I'd be a great marine biologist or test pilot or Buddhist monk or inventor of nifty office products.

Not that I'm not a fine paralegal, but I'm sort of having a midlife crisis here.  Or menopause. Or something.  First sign: Driving like a maniac.  Or like a Texan, more to the point.  Listen, I used to drive in L.A., and Texas drivers flat out scare me.  When I start driving like they do, something is definitely wrong.  Second sign: Sugar. I'm not supposed to be eating sugar in quantity.  It messes me up, plays hell with my meds and makes me feel rotten, after I feel good for maybe ten seconds.  I'm trying to get off it altogether, and I have uneven success; three days free here, four days there, maybe two days over there.  I got up to 60 days once. When I suddenly start eating lots of the sweet stuff, something is definitely wrong.

Third sign: Forgot my laptop this morning.  I think it's been at least two years since I've forgotten my laptop on a Thursday, especially seeing as this is the first Thursday after Eid-al-Fatr and therefore my first opportunity to get back to Afrah and snarf down some of their amazing pita bread.  Something is definitely wrong.  And has been wrong for a while.  And so, after seventeen years of marriage and roughly six months of continuous nagging from my psychiatrist, I'm seeing this guy.

Yeah, okay, this guy is a psychologist/therapist.  So it's not as exciting as it sounds.  But this is interesting.  I've only been to see him three times and it already feels like a matter of life and death.  As in, I'd better show the hell up and work hard or who knows what could happen.  This isn't a problem; I'm very obedient with health care professionals.  After all, I'm paying them to tell me what to do.  It would be kind of stupid to pay them to tell me what to do and then not do it.  (Well, okay, there's this one exercise my physical therapist gave me that I'm kind of slacking off on, but I'm doing all the other ones.)

I've been down this road before, or a road like it, or at least a road that had similar signposts and a big statue of Sam Houston in the middle of nowhere. (I-45 south of Huntsville on the way to Houston.) That guy (they're always guys; women therapists make me really uncomfortable) told me when I moved to Texas that I needed someone to keep an eye on me.  In contrast to my usual being-obedient-with-healthcare-professionals thing, I completely ignored him.  In retrospect, he was probably right.  I find this both embarrassing and annoying.  I am, after all, a grown-up.  Looky: House, car, job, cats, wife.  I should not need "looking after." But then, I shouldn't need to go to OA meetings, and I totally do.  I should not need to avoid alcohol, and I totally do.  I should not need all kinds of things that I'd probably shrivel up and die if I had do do without.  So you might say I'm resigned to needing things I wish I didn't need.

Here's another thing I need: I need to dash off to work now.  Because sooner or later I'm going to need a pay check.

Talk Thursday: The Constitution and My Stomach.

It's not my fault.  I was just looking at a sheet of advertisements for various legal publications, and one of them was a book about the Constitution.  So I said to myself, "Self," I said, "wouldn't that make a great Talk Thursday topic?" and somehow my laptop managed to email Cele without my knowledge and tell her about it and the next thing you know, it's a Talk Thursday topic.  What a way to run into trouble.  Almost 250 years we've been arguing about the Constitution and about all we've decided is that it's the worst form of government ever invented until you look at all the other ones.

What I really don't like is discussing the Constitution with people who've never read it, or who might have read it once in high school but don't really remember it and haven't a clue what it means.  Come on, people.  It's not even ten pages long.  If the Supreme Court can talk about it for nine months a year, the least you can do is read the thing.  That way you won't pop off with something like, "Let's ban handguns because it says in the Second Amendment only the militia can have guns!" only to be told that, in fact, that's not what it says at all and you might want to read it again.  But remember, I'm not a lawyer or a Constitutional scholar, so you shouldn't take my advice.  I just read English pretty well and string words together okay.

Lots of stuff that people think is in the Constitution isn't really there.  Take, for example, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Sorry, that's the Declaration of Independence.  And if you really wanna have some fun on a Saturday night, take that document out to the public square and read it out loud, changing the words "parliament" to "Congress" and "King" to "President."  On second thought, don't.  You might "disappear" into Guantanamo, never to be seen again.  You know, kind of like what might happen to Julian Assange if he ever leaves the Ecuadorean embassy in London.  (Hang in there, Julian.  I have it on excellent authority that an airdrop of Asti Spumante and all nine seasons of the "X-Files" is on its way right now.)

What else isn't in the Constitution; "Last of all, to thine own self be true." That's from Shakespeare, Hamlet.  "Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety."  Ben Franklin.  Yeah, he did sign the thing, but that's splitting hairs.  "Four score and seven years ago, our forebears--" Lincoln, kids.  At Gettysburg.  "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."  Sorry, that's Mark Twain.  Well, surely "Weaseling out of things is important to learn.  It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel." is in there somewhere.  Nope, that's Homer Simpson.  And it doesn't say anything about a Constitutional right to act stupid in public, either.  We've just sort of unofficially adopted that one.

I like "constitution" for its other meaning; guts.  Well, rather, the quality of guts.  If you have a strong constitution, it doesn't mean your copy of the book about the Constitution has particularly tough covers (though for what books like that go through, it probably should).  It means you're strong, healthy, robust, well-suited to go traipsing through the Highlands after rogue sheep and, I dunno, cows or something.  If you're sick, it really helps to have a strong constitution, because that'll mean you'll get better sooner.  Lately my constitution has gone flying out the window, which is bad because how will I know what the Second Amendment says about an upset stomach?

In all seriousness, I'm finding This Thing Called Life a little bit overwhelming at the moment.  Maybe that's why my cube at work is totally stacked with files and large piles of paper.  Or maybe it's the piles of paper that are causing me to feel a little bit overwhelmed.  I'd clean them up, but I don't have time.  Or rather, I would have time if I wasn't trying to do five other things at the same time.  Which is a little overwhelming.  The other day a client showed up for an appointment and I ended up having to sit with her for about fifteen minutes and go over her medical records.  I actually asked the manager if she'd come in there with me, not because I needed protection from the Big Bad Client (she was a little abrupt, but not rude or anything) but because I needed to be sure I'd be on my best behavior and I wasn't sure I could be, with the head space I occupied at that time.  She said no, I went in there anyway, behaved myself and survived, but it was a close thing.

I'm starting to think I might perhaps need a tiny vacation.  Maybe I'll fly over to D.C. for the weekend and check out the Smithsonian, with its original copy of the original Constitution.

If my stomach's up for it, that is.

Talk Thursday: On the Flipside

Now this'll be a challenge: Trying to explain the significance of "On the Flipside" to a generation that may have never seen a record.  A record?  Well, it's a big black vinyl disc that produces sound, see, and some of them were bigger than CDs and some of them were just about the same size as CDs, and the small ones were called "singles," and--what's a CD?  Oh dear.  Well, back in the Pleistocine, before there were iPods...

In my part of the country, they didn't actually call it the flipside.  They called it the B-side.  The A-side was for the main song, the "real" song, the reason you bought the record.  The B-side was for Some Other Song.  Sometimes it was a dance mix or something of the A-side song.  Sometimes it was something else from the album (see, kids, the big vinyl discs were called "albums") that the band liked and wanted to get out there even if it was never going to be A-side popular.  (Yes, I know you just download songs in like ten seconds these days.  No, don't tell me about it.  When the RIAA comes knocking on the door I don't want to be an accessory after the fact.)

Once in a while, though, you got a rare treat.  A B-side song that was as good as, or better than, the A-side song.  When that happened, it was sort of like the world stood on its head, because what was this B-side song doing on the B-side when it should clearly be on the A-side?  Rumors would swirl around the release of the A-side.  Conspiracy theories would be launched.  Whole plots and counterplots could spin out of a few dark bass notes.  Sometimes I really miss being fourteen, when you could spend most of an afternoon talking essentially about nothing.  As opposed to now, when we talk about the economy and our jobs and which of the Presidential candidates would look best in a Speedo.  

In my lifetime, I have been so fortunate as to come across a B-side that was so good I can't remember what the A-side even was.  Oh, sure, I could probably Google it, and get half a dozen hits from half a dozen people even more obsessed than I am with random bits of obscure trivia, but if I actually found out, some of the magic would be gone.  The record was by Big Country, it was from the early 1990s (CDs were just coming in) and the song was called "Never Take Your Place."  Not only was it the best B-side I ever heard, it was one of the best songs I ever heard.  I can still hear it in the back of my head, and remember most of the lyrics all these crazy years later.

Okay, nobody panic; I'm not going into one of my Stuart-killed-himself-ten-years-ago (eleven this December) and-I'm-still-not-over-it fits of mopeyness.  I decided, recently, that I'm never going to be over it, so there's no point in trying to get over it.  It hurts, but I can live with it most of the time.  Some wounds don't heal.  Maybe this one will scar over eventually, but I'm not holding my breath.  Okay?  Okay.  On with the story:

If you want to hear the track, you can download it for a mere 99 cents right here.  I highly recommend you do exactly that.  It's a dark, dreamy, haunting sort of song that will stay with you for quite a while.  I'm particularly taken with the lyric, "All the gold of Africa will never take your place."  In context of the song, it's striking and sad.  In context of what eventually happened to the singer, it's a bit spooky.  In fact, a lot of BC's lyrics seem to point to Stuart's end; particularly disturbing is one from "Seven Waves" a few years later: "I might just swim out on the waves tonight, and lay right down and drown." Do normal poets write lyrics like this?  I don't know any normal poets.  I don't, for that matter, know any poets, though I just met one two weeks ago.  Once I get to know him better I'll ask him.  (And he'll probably look at me quizzically and start playing his harmonica.  Well, you know.  Poets.)

I wonder if, another 50 years from now, our ancestors will look back at the 1980s and wonder why we judged our entertainment value on whether it was A-side quality or B-side quality.  They'll probably be transmitting songs through the air by then, and playing them on passing clouds or the backs of beetles.  Then they'll get hold of Never Take Your Place and have to revise all their theories, which will ruin half a dozen master's theses and more than a few recording agents.  If there are recordings.  Recordings?  Well, children, long ago music needed an actual solid object to exist...

Talk Thursday: Technology, Magic, and Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer

So I'm at a La Madeleine near SMU campus, and celebrating my having successfully navigated here through the usual nightmare of rush hour on the 75 by jumping on Barnes and Noble's free wi-fi.  Thanks, BN.  (I logged in so they'd know it was me.  My Nook and I spend LOTS of money over there.)  I'm snarfing down a quiche Lorraine--at least I think it is a quiche Lorraine; it's a quiche, anyway, with cheese and eggs and spinach and a nice crusty crust--and some bread before I change into my bathing suit and head over to the natatorium for the warm-up, the prep for the Big Swim.  I guess we can call it the Little Swim.

I realize this is unbecoming a Buddhist but I'm starting to get nervous.  Last year I went off the blocks too fast and almost crashed and burned at 900.  I seriously thought I was going to have to quit, right there in front of God and Joan and everybody else.  I managed to recover, slow down a little bit, get my breath back and soldier on, but it was a close thing.  A couple of days ago I did 2350, which isn't that far from my personal-distance best.  And I'm feeling pretty good, so really, I should be okay.  It's just that in addition to feeling pretty good, I also feel pretty tired, and in addition to 2350 I've also turned in some 1400s.  So, yeah, a little nervous.

Now, consider that my nervous self is typing this paragraph on a keyboard that's attached to a monitor that folds down over the top of said keyboard and disappears when I don't need it.  The paragraph then floats through the air, over to the Barnes&Noble, where it slides inside a wi-fi hub (I don't know what one really looks like, but I imagine a big black box with many relay switches) and down a phone line and into the ether.  I don't know what ether is.  It used to be the stuff between stars that nobody could prove exists, but since we proved it doesn't exist, I guess we could call it dark matter now.  Somehow, the paragraph navigates this dark matter and comes back out through another wi-fi hub and across empty space to your laptop (or cell phone or iPad or whatever) where you are now reading it.  And just like that, it's the paragraph heard 'round the world.  Well, I suppose there are plenty of more significant paragraphs out there, but still, that's pretty darn cool.  So.  Is it technology or magic?

Some of you are probably at least passing familiar with the Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer.  Back when Saturday Night Live was actually funny, the late Phil Hartman (he wasn't late then; he was right on time) would show up in a suit and play Keyrock, the cave man.  Keyrock fell into a Big Giant Hole In Ice one day about, oh, 100,000 years ago.  In 1988, some scientists found him and thawed him out.  He eventually went to law school and became a personal injury lawyer.  The modern world frightens and confuses him.  "When I see a solar eclipse, like the one I went to last year in Hawaii, I think, 'Oh no! Is the moon eating the sun?' I don't know.  I'm a cave man.  But," he would continue, "I do know that my client is entitled to millions of dollars for his injuries suffered in that horrible car crash."

Keyrock didn't survive to see wireless Internet access, but I expect he'd have opinions as to how it works.  "I may believe there are little men in my laptop sending smoke signals to other little men in the wi-fi hub," he'd probably say to the jury, "but I also believe my client is innocent!" Actually, that's as good a guess as any.  I have no clue how wi-fi hubs work.  I know it has something to do with radio signals and phone lines and cable TV and G4s, whatever those are, but beyond that I am stumped.  It might as well be magic.  Poof!  Oh, hey, an e-mail.  "You May Already Be A Winner."  Geez, I get a lot of those.

Okay, I admit I was roundly disappointed when I discovered that no matter how much you waved the magic wand you'd made out of one of Dad's barbecue skewers, a tie pin you found at a thrift store, and some duct tape, your favorite doll didn't really come to life and become your best pal. (I should have waited for the teddy bear movie and realized what a bad idea this was to start with).  But I managed to survive this poor deprived childhood and make it into a world where I can get on a big metal tube with lots of other people, fall asleep and wake up in London.  Where I can get stock quotes, movie listings, traffic reports and the calorie count of a Starbucks pumpkin scone on a device I carry around in my pocket.  Which also makes phone calls, however infrequently.  And just incidentally, it also takes pictures.  So you should be able to see me swimming like mad for the end of the 2k right about, oh, say, tomorrow at this time.

Unless I fall into a Big Giant Hole In Ice.

Talk Thursday (on Friday): Family Feud

Just wanted y'all to know that the mighty Law Dogs continue unvictorious in their spectacular inaugural season.  Last night we were 5 to 14 against the Desperados.  But don't I look fierce in my warrior pose?  Yeah, I think so too.  So what if all I'm doing is limpin' up to home plate with my leg in a stupid brace, whackin' the ball and making this weird loping run/walk toward first.  I get tagged out pretty fast.  It's the brace, people.  I feel like a cyborg.  And it's impossible to run in a leg brace.  Well, if it's not impossible it's still pretty darned unlikely.  But, while I was heading to first, my boss was heading home, and so we scored.  That was good.  I'm just afraid that one of these days I'm gonna show up at the field and find Charlie Brown on the mound and Snoopy in the far outfield with Woodstock on his head.  And if you don't get that pop-culture reference, my friend, I cannot help you.

Meanwhile, back at the pool, things continue swimmingly (ha ha ha).  I'm a little bit ahead of my daily count (thanks in no small part to that marathon 2500 meter session) and should hit 10 miles this morning, if I didn't hit it yesterday.  And I just signed up for the 2000-meter swim at the end of the month, which will no doubt help if I get behind.  So if you were worried about placing a bet on my getting to 24 miles, be soothed.  I'll get there.  And all funds raised go to Survivors of Torture, International. They're good folks doing a tough job.  They could use your happy thoughts, prayers, etc., as well as your cash.

On, then, with today's topic, from Don this time.  I think of the Hatfields and the McCoys when this subject comes up, and no, I didn't watch the recent miniseries; I tend to avoid anything that stars Kevin Costner.  I have, however, seen a few documentaries on that famous fight, and I think it got way overblown in the media (What? Our media?! Surely you jest!!).  As in, without all the national attention, it might have calmed down all by itself and before anyone got killed.  A lot of things are like that.  

Every family probably has something it fights about.  You know, the kind of thing that gets dragged out at holidays after too much eggnog, gets thrown around the room, bruises everybody with a sort of casual efficiency and, having sufficiently rattled tempers, crawls back into the ornament box to await the next holiday.  Uncle so-and-so did this.  No he didn't, that was Aunt Whoever.  You're both wrong, it was the tax collector.  If your grandmother had done something, none of this would have happened.  This is your side of the family, you realize.  And on and on.

For some reason I can't think of anything like that in my family, although there might have been a few things in previous generations.  But for my parents' generation, and those of us in our so-called childbearing years (and presumably for the children; I don't have any children, but most of my cousins do), there really doesn't seem to be any one thing.  I attribute that to the Lutheran Church. Not for spreading peace in our time and encouraging the quick resolution of disputes, but for instilling an absolute tyranny of Everything's Fine Here, Thank You and How Nice.  Hint for non-Lutherans: Memorize those two phrases and you can pass as a native, as long as you remember there's always coffee and bars in the church basement after Sunday services.  Old joke: Why don't Lutherans have confession?  Because God knows what you did and doesn't want to talk about it.  Or much of anything that isn't Fine and Nice. 

Every now and then we get a New Employee at the office, and sooner or later that New Employee figures out that I'm gay.  I don't run public service announcements.  No pics of my wife in my cube, no rainbow stickers on the bookshelves or anything like that.  Still, there's always a Moment when the New Guy (or Girl) has to look at me as a gay person for the first time, and there's that "Oh? Oh!" followed by rapid blinking as their entire cerebral cortex shifts around to make room for me in the Gay Box.  It's sad, in a way, because if I had to list the top five things that made me what I am today, being gay would probably be number five, if it even made the list.  Up top we have being Scandinavian, Lutheran, fat and female.  Then, maybe gay.  Or maybe a Democrat (in Texas, no less) and then maybe gay.  I go back and forth on that last one.

Yes, I'm a Buddhist now, but I was a Lutheran for close on 27 years.  That's a long time and a lot of coffee and bars.  I don't expect a significant background color in my life to ever just disappear, though if I could get the taste of lutefisk permanently removed from my memory, I'd do it. Hey, isn't there a movie coming out about something like that?  

But for this, I am happy: There ain't no room in the Lutheran church for much feudin'.  Or if there is, nobody talks about it.  We're all fine, here, thank you.  Would you like a lemon bar?

Talk Thursday: The Sweet Spot

Okay, I have a topic for Talk Thursday, but I dunno how I'm going to talk about it.  I mean, something momentous happened today, and ever since then it's like talk on all other subjects has been banned.  News commentators were going crazy.  Sean Hannity was foaming at the mouth.  Everybody at work is buzzing about it.  Opinions have grown heated.  My boss's boss, who generally keeps his opinions to himself, actually raised his voice.

I'm talking, of course, about Afrah's appearance on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

This is a Big Deal in the life span of my favorite restaurant.  The owner had to triple his wait staff.  Rumor has it there's a major remodel in the works (though I only know that because I saw the owner peering over something that looked suspiciously like blueprints with a couple of guys that looked suspiciously like architects.  Architects.  You can spot 'em a mile away.)  I'm here on an ordinary Thursday and almost every table is full, even the ones outside.  I was lucky to squeeze in near the door.  Which is scary.  I mean, I need a table for this laptop.  It's not like I exactly have a lap.  But it's all good.  It's great to see something you love get recognized for its, uh, inherent loveability.  And its chicken shwawarma, which is the best in the world.  And its pita bread, which is the best in the world. And its gelato, which--okay, okay, you get the idea.  Anyway, come up to Richardson (Greenville and Belt Line) and frick'n eat something, already.  You won't regret it.  And security is excellent (the police station's right across the street).

I suppose I should say something about that other thing that happened, that Supreme Court Affordable Care Act thing. As a Legal Person I am sometimes asked to comment about things I know nothing about, like, say, the Supreme Court.  Really, I don't know anybody who knows anything about the Supreme Court.  They're very mysterious.  The only thing I can say for certain is this:  They're harder to predict than a jury, and juries are--well, hard to predict.  It's been an interesting week, watching lots of people on both sides of the debate talking about the decision like it had already happened, and in their favor.  Alito on the side of throwing out the whole thing?  John Roberts (George W. Bush's John Roberts) on the side of keeping the whole thing?  Never would have seen that coming.  But then, it's hard to see anything coming with these guys.  And despite one of my wacky representatives allegedly saying something about the Supreme Court not being the final word on the constitutionality of something (if I could find the original quote, I'd link to it, folks), uh, yes, it is.  A wiser law professor than I said it best; the Supreme Court isn't last because it's right, it's right because it's last.

Which brings us to the sweet spot, how?  I'm not entirely sure.  When the topic first came up, I thought immediately of the G-spot, which is just the way my brain works.  If I can get something X-rated out of it, I'll go there first.  But this being a religious type establishment, I'd better not talk about that.  I'd better talk instead about my process server friend.  His wife had breast cancer eight years ago.  She's been cancer free all this time, but they don't have health insurance because it would cost them $3800 a month.  Yes, that's $3800 a month.  Note that the insurance company didn't deny them outright; it just made it impossible for them to afford coverage.  If by some chance they both live until 2014 (and I think they will; they're both pretty stubborn), they will be able to get coverage at the same rate the rest of us pay.  (Which is what?  I dunno.  It comes right out of my pay check, so I never think about it.  I think mine's about $600, which is far more reasonable.  You will note, however, that it's not cheap.)  Today has to be a pretty sweet spot for them.  And doubly so for the 50 million people who will at least have a chance to get some health coverage.  And the 26 million of those, who are young people aging off of their parents' health insurance.

And for moi?  Well, I have a table, and I have shwawarma, and in 45 minutes the Law Dogs will be taking on Parkland Hospital. So today's pretty sweet for me too.

Talk Thursday (on Saturday): Six Words and Enabling

It's a two-topic kind of day. (Or was, Thursday, when I was supposed to be writing this.  Hey, I had a softball game.)  First topic:  Write a story in six words.  Here goes.

I married Joan.  My life's complete.

Okay, that's a statement of fact, not a story, but I'm sticking to it.  Besides, I'm up against Hemingway, King and some very big wheels who have written extremely good six-word stories.  A long-winded person like me should stick to 109,000-word stories, approximately.  Besides, my favorite six-word story ever is by my friend Suzy, and it will be hard to top:

Voice-activated wishing machine?  Hell.  Oops.

Did I say softball game?!  Yeah, I kinda did.  Somehow I got talked into joining the Law Firm Softball Team.  We are the mighty Law Dogs, and in our inaugural opening game against Got the Runs (I don't make up these names; I just show up) we went boldly into the field and, uh, got clobbered 16-5.  Which is, as Wayne would say, both bogus and sad.  But, it was fun.  Yours truly actually hit the ball her first time up and made it something like 2/3 of the way to first base before being called out.  I have an Actual Position (catcher) and by the fourth or fifth inning I was, you know, catching things.  I think I stopped balls with basically every part of my body except the glove, but that's not the point. (I have all these little round bruises all over my arms and legs.  Hmm.)  

So about this enabling thing.  Which has nothing to do with softball (or maybe it does; we shall see).  Enabling is where you do something that lets someone else continue his or her bad behavior, generally an addiction of some kind but could also be rudeness, narcissism, grandiosity or any of a long list of character defects.  I'm of the opinion that the two most obnoxious character defects of human beings are entitlement and hypocrisy.  Why I've fixated on those two, I don't know, but it's interesting that when I was breaking up with The Boyfriend I did plenty to let him continue feeling entitled and never called him on his hypocrisy.

Like, for example, here's a chain of events that's fairly easy to understand: If you quit your job, and then fail to look for another job (because you're too good to work at McDonald's), you will eventually run out of money to pay your bills.  If you run out of money to pay your bills, you will not be able to make your car payments.  If you don't make your car payments, the people to whom you owe money will repossess your car.  And then you won't have a car.  Fairly easy to understand, right?  Well.  At every point along the way, I not only didn't point out reality, I kept feeding into the entitlement.  Of course he was doing the right thing by quitting his job; his boss was completely unreasonable.  Of course he shouldn't take a job at McDonald's; he had two years of college, he was above all that now.  Of course the car loan people were being ridiculous and arbitrary; they'd never treat a __________(fill in the blank with an income level, skin color, ethnic origin and/or religion different from my boyfriend; last time I got "middle-class dark brown Sikh Baha'i") like this.  And when that car got repossessed, nobody was more surprised than I was.

Or was I?  I was trying to break up with him, after all.  Was I perhaps just trying to ensure that he no longer had transportation, so that he could not continue to stalk me?  It's hard to stalk from a public bus. And I am, at times, a devious little weasel.  Which would also make me--a hypocrite.  Who no doubt felt entitled not to be stalked.  No wonder those character defects bother me so much.  


Other stuff that could be considered enabling:  Your husband repeatedly passes out drunk on the living room floor, and you go get him up, get him out of his clothes, and put him to bed.  Your kid, whom you suspect is a heroin addict, keeps coming to you for money, and you keep handing it over "because at least she's not stealing or prostituting herself."  Your toddler kicks and screams when he doesn't get his way, and you end up giving him what he wants to "avoid a scene."  What you're supposed to do, according to the People Who Know This Stuff, is leave the husband on the floor, tell your kid no and inform him or her that he or she can't drop by unexpectedly anymore, and let the toddler kick and scream to his heart's content.  Unless, of course, you're on an airplane, and you're surrounded by hundreds of angry people who feel that they are entitled to a quiet flight.  In which case, you have to break all the rules and give the kid whatever he wants.  You hypocrite.


Well, that's about it.  I don't know how to wrap this up, so I'll go for another six-word story:


Dumping the boyfriend.  I'm a lesbian.


Seriously, I'd have had a lot easier time in my 20s if I'd figured that out sooner. 

Talk Thursday: Giving Up, Giving In

It is not a gloomy topic.  Well, it can be, but it doesn't have to be.  Giving something up can be great.  I gave up sugar (again) ten days ago and darned if I don't feel pretty good.  Fewer dizzy spells, fewer mood swings, and many fewer hot flashes.  I didn't give up all sugar, of course.  That's practically impossible; there's sugar in everything. But I gave up recreational sugar, the kinds of foods that are supposed to be sweet, like candy and ice cream and Pop-Tarts and most especially, cake.  Cake is like crystal meth to me.  The frosting, in particular.  If it were possible to freebase cake frosting I would have done it by now.  My birthday was two days ago and we had ceremonial cake for me and the two other people in the office that had June birthdays.  I had a moment of total panic when I realized I was somehow going to have to not-eat-cake through this event.  I finally called a friend of mine, who told me that if I were to eat something else, like, say, an apple, nobody would notice.  He was mostly right.  I got through cake time with only one frosty look from the manager.  Not frosting, frosty.

Oh, did I mention it was my birthday two days ago?  It was.  I'm 43.  I had this big birthday blog post planned, full of all the cool stuff that's happened since I was born (The collapse of the Berlin Wall! Men walking on the Moon! The Statue of Liberty!  No, wait a minute--I'm not THAT old.)  But my firm softball team had practice, and by the time I got home I really didn't feel like doing much more than going to bed.  Yes, I said "firm softball team."  I forget how I got talked into this.  Our first game is next Thursday.  I actually did hit the ball a few times, so maybe there's hope.

Here's where I get weird on you guys and start talking about a third-rate horror film called "The Mist." Well, actually it's a pretty decent horror film, for all that it was made on a low budget, and it's based on a Stephen King story.  (Major spoilers ahead.  You have been warned.) If you're still there, what basically happens is that a creepy fog takes over a town and traps a bunch of people in a supermarket.  There are creatures out there in the fog.  Creatures with tentacles and long insecty appendages and big wings.  In short, giant bugs.  We only gradually get to see them, and I'm pretty sure we don't get to see one full-on until about halfway through the movie.  Conditions in the supermarket deteriorate, people start going crazy, one woman starts a psuedo-religious cult and the few that are still sane decide it's time to make a run for it.  They get as far as a car and escape onto a deserted road where they can't see more than ten feet ahead.  Are there giant bugs everywhere?  There are.  Does it seem like all the humans have been killed?  It does.  Has civilization been wiped out?  It looks quite possible.  The people in the car start to bicker, then get into a heated argument, then finally decide if they don't find safety before they run out of gas, they'll commit collective suicide with the one gun they have between them.

Well, this being a Stephen King story, the ending's not that simple. (In fact the ending changed slightly from the story to the movie, but I'm not going to tell you how.)  The car comes to a halt, night starts to fall, and the intrepid travelers discover they don't have enough bullets for everyone.  So the brave hero guy offers to kill everybody, including his young son, and take his chances on the road.  He shoots his fellow passengers in the head, saving his son for last, and then gets out of the car, fully expecting to be eaten by a giant bug.  Instead, a cordon of Army troops marches out of the fog and "rescues" him.  And after all the stuff with the mist and the giant bugs and the psuedo-religious cult and How People React In Very Tense Situations, it turns out that what the movie was actually about was giving up.  When do you do it?  Why do you do it?  And how do you live with yourself, if God forbid, you give up ten minutes too soon?

Obviously I'm getting to something here.  I should stop messing around and just address the frick'n point, already.  I'm talking about Mindbender, kids.  I sent query letters No. 106 and 107 this morning.  Is this a big deal? No, not really.  Having apparently worked through most of my query letter anxiety, I think I can keep writing query letters until the cows come home, or until the giant bugs attack, anyway.  But let's consider: I wrote the book in, I think, 2001.  (When did I have my breakdown?  I think it was late 2001.  Didn't everybody have a breakdown in 2001?  It was not a good year.)  So, okay, it might have been 2000.  And then I had the breakdown and did nothing for three years, and in 2004 I started writing the new draft, and then we moved to Dallas, and a bunch of other stuff happened, and I wrote another draft, and then I met Kellum and Sally, and I started writing Spellbinder and Soulmender and then I went to that thing in New Orleans and--okay, I think we're caught up.  If Mindbender were a human being it'd be demanding a Nintendo DX and a new ten-speed.  It would be almost five feet tall.  It would be angsting about starting middle school next year.

You're getting the idea, right?  I'm wondering if I might be Wasting My Time.  Or somebody's time, anyway.  I'm wondering if the Time For Getting Mindbender Published has come and gone.  Or if it never came in the first place.  Look, I string words together pretty well.  I don't doubt I can write a publishable novel.  I just wonder if I've done it, this time.

Or if I should go back to the proverbial drawing board and, you know, give up.

Anybody?  Hello?

(crickets)

At least I hope they're crickets and not, you know, giant bugs.  Like in a Stephen King story.

Talk Thursday (on Friday): Enemy Mine

Well, the topic's supposed to be "The Sun", but when I think of the sun I always flinch and look over my shoulder to make sure it's not glaring at me, so I think my title's pretty darned appropriate.  Yeah, I know.  It's a golden G-type star within the life-sustaining zone of Sol III, and if it didn't exist, we hairless bipedal beach apes wouldn't, either.  But the sun and I are not friends.  We have never been friends.  We will never be friends.

This goes back a long, long way, back when I was just a cute cuddly toddler splashing around in the waters of Lake Metigoshe (Bottineau County, North Dakota; Where Vacation Land Begins!) Okay, it was the early Seventies and it's not like the whole concept of sunscreen had exactly caught on, but my folks were about to find out that I, like my dad, could sunburn in less than ten minutes simply by sitting there.  Put me in a bathing suit and drop me in the water and it takes even less time.  The glare of the sunlight off the water, probably. And lest you think there can't possibly be enough sun in North Dakota to burn anything, brother, you have not been there during the dog days of August.  No air conditioning, either.  We used to run off the dock in our pajamas, climb into bed soaking wet, and sort of sleep, kind of, until morning.

And I shouldn't even be complaining, really, because I have a sister and she has it worse than I do.  I'm pale.  She's a whiter shade of pale.  (In fact, that was my ringtone for her, with my old phone.  Now it's "Viva Las Vegas."  I'm getting more classic-rocky in my old age.)  She wears a hat and glasses everywhere, never leaves the house without sunscreen and wears fake sleeves and gloves when she drives her car.  (It looks kinda classy, actually.  Very Grace Kelly.) In short, she does all the stuff I'm supposed to do.  Though I'm getting better at it.  Really, I am.

Sunburns?  Oh, honey, we can talk sunburns.  My mom was hypervigilant with the sunscreen and kept us in during the brightest part of the day, but the sunburns happened anyway.  I read somewhere that just one severe sunburn in childhood -- just one -- predisposes you to skin cancer. I think about all the severe sunburns I had and wonder why I'm not already dead.  (I'fact, if we lived long enough, we'd all die of skin cancer, says my doc.  The sun is nobody's friend, in that respect.  But we'd have to live an awfully long time.)

About six months ago, I noticed a red spot on my nose.  It had been there quite a while, but it seemed to be getting bigger.  When it sort of failed to act normal, I went to my doc and showed it to her.  She made some "Hmm" noises and said I'd probably better see a dermatologist.  So I went to see the dermatologist, who also made "Hmm" noises.  And then took out a can with a long nozzle on it and zapped my nose with it.  Liquid nitrogen.  She zapped a few other spots that I hadn't been aware of; one next to my chin and another one up by my left eyebrow.  Not to worry, she said; they'd fall off by themselves.  Er, what are they? I wanted to know.  "Squamous cell carcinoma," she said, as though it was the least interesting thing in the world.  "But don't worry.  They don't have roots or anything."

Uh, last time I checked, words that rhymed with Oklahoma were bad in a medical context.  And what's this having roots business?  That was all I needed; something sprouting on top of my nose, putting roots down through my nostril and into the roof of my mouth.  Ew.  Double ew.  Anyway, I have to go back once a year for rechecks; once a squamous cell carcinoma, always a--yeah.  So now my big adventure is to find a sunscreen that f____ works.


Well, that is to say, that both works and doesn't make me break out in hives.  I've been using a Coppertone "sweatproof" 36 SPF thingy in a blue bottle.  It has two major disadvantages; it fails in less than an hour and it's really thick and greasy.  I've worn it twice to two different outdoor swims and both times I've ended up with a light burn across my back and shoulders.  Either the waterproofing doesn't last the requisite 90 minutes, or 36 SPF means the sun burns right through it in 36 minutes, meaning it has another 24 minutes to cook me before I get out of the water. Either way, it's not doing the job.  So I'm on a quest to discover a sunscreen that will do the job.  Talk about your uphill battles.

No doubt you've heard of Neutrogena, the company that makes high-end skin products.  Soaps, lotions, body washes, makeup.  Well, they also make sunscreens, and my sister likes them.  So I tried one; 100 SPF, guaranteed waterproof (though the "guaranteed waterproof" label is going away; seems that the government caught the sunscreen industry out and made them admit that, in fact, there's really no such thing as a waterproof sunscreen).  I didn't get to try it in the water.  On the second day I broke out in hives all over my arms, neck, chest and face.  I was coating myself with Caladryl lotion and not wearing makeup; I looked like my face was peeling off (very George Romero).  So I gave the $11.00 bottle of sunscreen to Joan and tried another one.

This one should have been perfect.  60 SPF, "sensitive skin" formula, hypoallergenic, blah blah blah.  Hypoallergenic, my foot.  Used it once.  More hives.  So I'm back to the Coppertone, and temporarily looking like a zombie.  Fortunately, my cow-orkers have a good sense of humor.

In reality, I doubt there's a sunscreen made that can withstand the Texas sun for more than an hour, so if I do any of the open-water swims or Hurricane Harbor wave simulations I'm gonna have to break out the Muslim bathing suit.  Which is fine.  I feel very safe in that suit.  The ol' devil Sun can't get me.  Well, except on the very tip of my nose.

Where a squamous cell carcinoma used to be.

Talk Thursday: So Here's Where I'm At.

I'm at Afrah.  No, I'm just kidding.  Well, I am at Afrah, but I'm almost always at Afrah when I'm writing these things.  Something about Mediterranean food is conducive to column-writing.  To say nothing of free wi-fi.  Currently snarfing down an akkawi pie with fried kibbe and wondering how life could get any better.  Well, I mean apart from everything I'm about to tell you, which is kind of sucky.  Into every life some suckiness must fall.  Some things are just more sucky than others.

To begin with, I crossed over onto page 101 this morning in my slow-but-steady work-in-progress.  This is a milestone, to be sure.  Your Average Novel turns out to be between 400 and 500 typed pages, so 100 pages is one-quarter of the way there.  Or one-fifth.  If I like actually took more time to work on it, I'm sure it'd be moving along faster.  Right now it's getting squeezed in between getting up in the morning and hitting the pool, which is not a lot of time.  But it is moving.  It still hasn't told me what in hell it wants to be about, which I'd really liked to have figured out by now, but maybe it'll get to that before page 200.

(I might also add, I got stuck for a few days.  My protagonist was attending a funeral and as he was sneaking out the back--since he wasn't supposed to be there in the first place--somebody put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Your Honor." [My protagonist is a judge.]  I was three days figuring out whose hand it was.  I think I pulled it off, but, you know, time went by.)

So there's that, and then there's query letters.  I've also passed 100 query letters for Mindbender, which, to quote Wayne from Wayne's World, "is both bogus and sad."  Now this was interesting: No. 100 was actually a lot harder than 101, 102, 103 and the happy-go-lucky ones that followed.  Something about the symbology of those double zeroes.  100 pages, 100 letters.  It's annoyingly close to looking for a job when you don't have one.

Okay, nobody said this was going to be easy.  And Stephen King wrote six thousand query letters while he and his wife lived in an unheated trailer in Edinburgh in the winter and he wrote the first six Harry Potter books on scraps of construction paper he got from his job at an industrial laundry or something like that. But still.  At some point you start asking yourself if you've written something that's basically unpublishable.  Should you give up and write something else?  Or would that be quitting?

I'm not gonna answer that, mainly because I have no idea.  It probably wouldn't hurt to be pushing two, maybe three projects at a time.  Let's hear it for tracking software, otherwise I don't know how I'd do it.  I'm not sure how I do it even with tracking software.  I can say, though, that since that drawing came into my house, Scaley and Fang are doing a great job of not bothering me.  I attribute part of that to my big cat, Caesar, also.  His job around the house is to keep dinosaurs out of the kitchen.  He's very good at it.  Even when he's napping on the job, you won't see a dinosaur for miles.

Luckily, I have a Team.  Well, more of a Committee.  That's the gang of folks that makes your life easier, whether they know it or not.  Head of the Committee is Joan, of course.  Rhett, my friend from the writer's workshop in New Orleans, is a close second; he sent me the nicest email when I started complaining about Query Letter 100, and then told me to shut up and get back to work.  Then there's Tammy and Tracy and perpetual dinners out, wherever they may be, and everybody at my office who makes the rest of my day halfway normal.  (I need halfway normal.  I am never, ever going to quit my day job to write full time.  It is just never going to happen.  I need the normalness of an office.  It's like heroin.  I also need health insurance.)  And then there's my writer's group.  That chummy bunch of like minded folks who--

--uh, haven't met in three months.  In fact, it may have been longer than that.  According to my BlackBerry calendar, it might have been as long ago as January.

Scheduling conflicts.  Big church holidays.  Work getting in the way.  You know how it is.

So here's what I did.

I cheated on my writer's group.

Yep.  I went and hung out with a bunch of other writers.  And amongst the group I met one guy that would be awesome to have in a writer's group.  I emailed him and told him I was interested.  He hasn't written me back yet.  Don't know if he will or not.  But really, that would be awesome.

Anyway, that's where I'm at.  Smacking up against 100, committing literary adultery with a bunch of total strangers, and not so incidentally about to turn 43 in a couple weeks.  Oh, and at Afrah.  And since this was not an Official Talk Thursday Topic, I'll probably be cranking out another column here in the next couple of days.  Maybe I'll tell you all about the new roof, water heater, plastering work and paint in our library.  I hope so, anyway.  Because I've been waiting a long bloody time for items two through four, and really, I'm ready to have them installed any day now.

Talk Thursday: Jealousy

This is Lyn's topic, and I'll get in big trouble with the grammarians of the world if I don't immediately point out that when most of us say "jealousy", what we really mean is "envy."  "Envy" means wanting something that someone else has, and being righteously p.o.ed when you don't get it.  Jealousy, on the other hand, means resenting someone else's success or advantages.  So unless Bob symbolizes success or advantage, you're not jealous of Susan for dating Bob. You're merely envious; you want to own Bob.  (I don't know if anyone's checked with Bob as to how he feels about this.  Bob?  Are you there, Bob?)  Still, the words get used interchangably enough to where if you say you're jealous of Mitt Romney because he's so open-minded, most of us will get that you're really envious (and slightly out of touch).  Most of us will probably also want to follow you around on Election Day, to see if you actually vote for the clown or get lost in a supermarket somewhere and end up spending the night in the produce section, engaging in constructive dialogue with a bunch of zucchini.

That said, however: My first experience with the-kind-of-jealousy-that-is-really-envy came about when I was a little tyke, and it worked like this:  If you had chocolate, I was jealous of you.  If you had more chocolate than I did, I was jealous of you.  That was pretty much it.  If you didn't want me to be jealous, you would hand over all of your chocolate immediately.  That rarely happened, however, and even when it did, the chocolate didn't survive long enough to make peace in our time, or even Mountain Standard Time.  Still, everyone has a price and it's good to know mine was, at least once, nice and low.

Fast-forwarding to adulthood, I was once in a band.  Actually I was once in several bands, but this particular band was in Arizona and the primary instrument was bagpipes.  One of the other bagpipers always made me feel a little funny when he was around.  He was an engineer--engineers always make me feel funny; it's probably the tinfoil hats--and he had a nice house outside of Gilbert, a pretty wife and two twin daughters that were, I think, about eight years old.  I think it was the daughters that got me.  If I were ever to have children, which I'm not because I haven't the slightest idea what I'd do with them and I have a sneaking suspicion it's too late now, twin girls would have been the way to go.  Get it it all done in one pregnancy, zip, zop, you're history.   Anyway, one day I finally figured out that I envied him his life.  Which was strange, because I actually didn't want it--I'd be a crummy engineer, and what would I do with a wife and twin daughters?--but I envied him for having it, if that makes any sense.

Well, you know this story's gonna have an O. Henry ending, and it does; the engineer and his wife split up, it turned out their home life was a disaster, they fought all the time, they spent their money as fast as they made it, the house had to be sold, they fought over custody of the girls for years and, well, it didn't end happily.  But from the outside it all looked so nice and, you know, Norman Rockwell.  You just don't know as much about people as you think you do.

People have asked me have I been jealous of other writers.  Answer:  Yes, on very rare occasions. Usually I'm only jealous of something somebody else is doing until I start doing it, too, and then I'm fine.  In the case of writing, that's just writing, not publishing.  Would I like to be the next Stephen King?  Sure, but I'm busy writing over here.  Yeah, he got the multi-bazillion dollar book contract and the high-powered agent and all that good stuff, but he got all that for two reasons.  One, he really is that good.  Two, he was really, really lucky.  I only have control over one of those factors.  Anyway, I'm busy writing over here.

But, again, there are exceptions.  Let's talk Hunger Games. Not only was that the first book in years that made me cry, it's the first book in years that I've put down and wished I'd written it.  I don't think that's happened since Very Far Away From Anywhere Else, and that was in high school, just to give you an idea of the time span.  Oh, sure, there's books I think I could have written better (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, for one; I'd have knocked out the first fifty or so pages, lost that chunk in the middle about the multibajillionaire, moved the stuff about Lisbeth's first guardian closer to the beginning--Jen rewrites Larssen) but that's different.  That's playing armchair editor, which is kind of like playing Monday-morning quarterback.

Hmm, maybe I missed my calling in life.  Maybe when I was a kid staring out the window at the distant stars, I should have said, "And when I grow up, I'll be an editor at Harper & Row" instead of "And when I grow up, I'll be a paralegal at Jackal and Jackal."

Actually, I said, "And when I grow up, I'll be a high-powered political assassin," but I don't think the stars ever took me seriously.  Which is too bad.  The health benefits aren't as good, but the pay scale rocks. Or so I hear.

Talk Thursday: Worst. Date. Ever.

Yep, it's my topic.  Sometimes I think of a few words, type 'em up in an email and hit "send" before I think about it too much.  Other times I've actually got a good story that goes with those words.  And it happens that this time I do, although it's purely a coincidence.

To begin with, this whole concept of “dating” kinda baffles me.  I’m not sure I’ve even ever done it.  Dated, that is.  I’ve gone out on dates, but for the most part I didn’t have to date because I had beautiful women practically falling into my lap every time I turned around.  (Well, Joan moved in next door.  Same difference.)  Besides, at least in high school where we were all supposed to learn how to do this “dating” thing, I was practicing an instrument a couple of hours a day, running back and forth to rehearsals, squeezing in schoolwork here and there (I managed to maintain something like a B+ average; don’t ask me how, it certainly wasn’t for hard work) and, oh yeah, trying not to be the biggest nerd in the universe and having something of a social life, however pathetic.  (Guess which instrument I played.  Hint:)

By junior year I had a boyfriend (yes, I did say boyfriend; I also had a girlfriend but I don’t think anybody knew about that).  That he was older and didn’t go to our school made him nice and dark and mysterious, which he wasn’t, and great for keeping other boys away.   He wasn’t a bad guy, really.  Just, you know, kind of basically hopeless on several levels.  We didn’t “date,” either.  We just kind of hung out.

I went to college in the same town where I went to high school; in fact my high school and my college were less than five miles apart.  (I had this Big Plan to go out of state to college, had picked one out, had done everything but register, and then this college five miles away threw me a four year scholarship.  What was I supposed to do, throw it back?  And why a scholarship, you ask?  See above.)   More running back and forth to rehearsals, practice rooms, auditoriums and football fields.  Only it was more serious there.  My boyfriend (same one) complained that he never got to see me, which was basically true; even when he started school there he never got to see me.  We fought a lot, broke up, “dated” other people (well, maybe he did; I never had time) and then got back together.  Then one time I actually did “date” someone else, and he turned into this crazed dragon, yelled a lot, did insane things like quit his job in a fit of pique, and gradually flushed his entire life down a giant toilet.  I decided I didn’t want to hang around to see how this turned out.  Meantime, I discovered girls (maybe “re-discovered” is more accurate), graduated, moved to San Diego with the then-love of my life and got dumped for a bimbo receptionist after about three years.

And then, folks, we have what’s known as the Twilight Zone of the Blind Date.

Some well-meaning friends apparently decided that it was not good for Jen to be alone, and so they decided to fix me up with as many people as possible as quickly as possible, in hopes that I’d click with somebody and stop doing weird things like, I dunno, leave the milk out on the counter all day and drop my cell phone unnoticed on the stairs outside my apartment.  (Really, it’s not good for Jen to be alone.  I could accidentally kill myself with food poisoning or walk right into a moving bus without half noticing.)  And so there were a number of rather forgettable evenings with a number of nice young ladies whom, I’m sure, were just fine, except that I needed another relationship right then like I needed a hole in the head, and this was probably pretty obvious to just about everybody except the well-meaning friends.

Anyway.  The Worst. Date. Ever.  A woman I knew from work, who had several grown and nearly-grown daughters, had one of them coming back from college with a friend of hers whom, she was told, was smart and not-unattractive.  So arrangements were made for me to go with this young lady to a local country and western bar (leave it to San Diego to have a gay friendly country and western bar; I can’t even find one of those in Dallas—not that I go to bars a lot, or even at all.)  We were meeting this woman from work, her wife, a couple of the other daughters, their friends and a couple of hangers-on, so it was a pretty good-size crowd.  Good, I could hide in the middle of it.  Only I couldn’t, because the wife wouldn’t let me.

I’m not kidding; no sooner had we walked in the door than the wife, who was probably in her mid-fifties, began hectoring me to dance with everybody in the place.  (Hey, I two-step a little, but Fred Astaire I am not, and certainly not backwards in high heels.)  First with the girl I was ostensibly on a date with, but when she said she wasn’t really comfortable dancing, Wife began throwing me at everyone else in the place.  The couple next to us (two ladies in their mid-thirties who were obviously enchanted with each other), the couple next to them (two ladies in their mid-sixties who were not speaking), the woman leaning against the wall a few feet away (she turned out to be a guy; it’s so embarrassing when that happens) and so on and so forth.  A couple of times I made a valiant attempt to say, “Hey, we’re talking and enjoying the music, how about we just do that for a while?”  but I got steamrollered by Wife’s plowing past me (and dragging me along) to introduce me to the couple that had just walked in the door.

I’m not sure I ever got to talk to my actual date.  Truth to be told, I don’t even remember her name.  What I do remember was this becoming a spectacle, people staring, me wanting to disappear beneath the floorboards, my friend from work hiding behind a beer and covering her face with her hands, my date looking confused but not really angry, and other members of our party kind of drifting around wondering what in the hell was going on.  Suddenly, in a fit of inspiration, I excused myself to the ladies’ room and went past it, out the side door and into the night.

I walked home.  It was probably two or three miles and I didn’t go the fastest way.  I got off the main street as soon as I could, thinking that Wife might come after me in her Suburban and throw me at potential dance partners (primarily homeless people, at that hour) all over the street.  As crazy as the whole situation had become, though, I don’t remember being angry.  Just very, very puzzled.  No idea what I could have done to set Wife off.  Surely my date hadn’t done anything.  She just didn’t want to dance, that was all.  And neither did I, by this point.  In fact, I was reasonably sure I would never dance in public again.  (Figure this out, I don’t think I have—except maybe at my sister’s wedding.)

So that was it.  The Worst Date Ever.  I never saw my date again, which was kind of sad, because she seemed nice.  I never really figured out what was going on.  My co-worker tried to apologize about the whole thing, but what I really wanted was an explanation and I never got one.  Fortunately, about a month later Joan moved in next door to me and I didn’t have to worry about dating ever again.  Yep—she fell right into my lap.  The way they always do.