Into the Wild Blue Yonder

My travel tends to follow the trajectory of your average commercial airline flight.  The beginning is all takeoff and ascent because I’m usually excited about the destination.  Once I get there, I do whatever I came to do.  That part is smooth and uneventful most of the time, like being at cruising altitude.  Where things go wrong, in my experience, is the return trip. (Don't believe me? Check out this.)  It’s my personal descent, often ending in a very bumpy landing.   

Recently I had to make a trip to Boston.  The day of my departure couldn’t have started any better.  The weather was perfect, with no trace of superstorms.  Even the normally nasty morning rush hour showed a nice streak: I made it to National Airport in twenty minutes and with time to spare for my 10:30 flight.  

I walked through the terminal and saw an unusually large crowd gathered at one of the gates in the distance.  As I got closer, the group burst into applause, and I quickly understood why: A plane full of World War II veterans had arrived.  

They were unloading to great fanfare and I joined just as the saxophonist in an eight-piece band played the trademark opening riff of "In The Mood."  The scene moved me to tears, and also to a huge grin.  I was in the mood, all right.  I watched and listened for five or six more songs—these passengers moved at a pace that would’ve allowed the band to do a full set—boarded a plane, and headed north.

Once I had done everything I wanted and needed to in the Boston area, I phoned a cab company to arrange a ride.  The dispatcher said the cab would pick me up at 6:00 p.m. Plenty of time to make the 30 minute ride to Logan and catch my 8:00 flight.

When the cab hadn’t shown up by 6:15, I knew I’d dropped out of the clouds and begun the descent.  

Ten minutes later a white minivan pulled up. It had no sign so I stayed put. A couple seconds later the passenger door slid open and a voice that belonged to a woman I couldn’t see said, “Ya goin’ to the airport?”  My ears detected a southern accent when she said “airport.” 

She started to make small talk before I even closed the door and my accent hunch was confirmed.

“Ah offered to pick you up ‘cause ah gotta go see my boyfriend after this and the airport is kinda on the way.”  I was confused.  Neither she nor the vehicle looked very official.  Had the cab company handed me off to some sort of carpool?  

I didn’t have time to ask because she kept talking, loudly, while country music blared from the speakers.

“Ah just moved back up here from Alabama.” This explained the origin of her accent and the reason why she had the heat set to ‘blast furnace’ despite her heavy coat and the fifty degree temperatures outside. 

We didn’t get far before traffic halted our progress. It did not have the same effect on her soliloquy, unfortunately.

“Do ya like country music? Ah do.  In fact my country station in Alabama ran a telethon last year for sick kids. They had a contest for a meet an’ greet with Shania Twain and ah won it. Look at all these red lights.  Ah got a whole coffee in me, honey, so if we don’t start movin’ ah’m gonna have to pull over an’ pee.” 

I felt like I was watching “Honey Boo Boo Finds A Job.” 

It was 6:45 and we were nowhere near the airport.  I needed an out.  Based on the temperature inside the car, spontaneous combustion seemed like a viable option.  I didn’t know how long that might take so I decided to use a work defense instead.

“Will it bother you if I make a call?”

“Aw no, you go right ahead, honey,” she said, cranking up the radio. I found this very considerate.  It ensured that neither of us heard my conversation and also guaranteed that we didn’t miss it when Tricia Yearwood slaughtered “Take Another Little Piece of My Heart.” 

I kept my call brief.  The cabbie’s phone rang moments later, which I figured out only when she turned off the radio.  Some calls deserve that kind of reverence.  At 7:05 we encountered another wall of brake lights.  

She hung up and said, “Ah ain’t never seen it like this, traffic all goin’ into the city. Must be a car’s on fire.” 

A tiny part of me wanted to know why bumper-to-bumper traffic could only mean a car fire (and if so, why the Beltway wasn’t engulfed in flames eight hours a day).  I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

We’d been sitting in silence for eight or nine seconds when she pointed to the right. I looked over and saw a train stopped at a platform.  “The train stops right there,” she said. I didn’t have a response to that.  

At about 7:10, we approached the entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel. 

“We’re goin' into a tunnel now,” she said.  “There’s water on top of it.”  Then it dawned on me: I hadn’t landed in a random carpool after all;  it was an airport shuttle for hypothermic blind people. It all made sense.

As I was preparing to strip down to my underwear, an airport-only lane appeared, and by 7:15 we had reached the terminal.  Though I didn’t have time for the IV drip I desperately needed, I did reach my gate in time for the final boarding call.  

The descent was short and steep this time, but at least I stuck the landing.   

On Assignment

I write nonfiction most of the time.  But on 11/13/12, a day that’s just a little out of order, it’s time to mix things up.  What follows is a short piece I did or a fiction writing class I took last winter.  The assignment: write a two page story that focused on establishing time and place.  

One woman wrote an inspired tale about a family farming in the Midwest in the late 1800s.  Another person portrayed an angst-ridden adolescent coming of age to the music of Kurt Cobain.  I went for something far less high-brow. Don't judge.  But do chime in with your guesses about when this takes place (the location is self-explanatory, and if you guess wrong I reserve the right to judge you. Mock you, too, come to think of it.) Without further ado, I bring you some very bad fiction...Don't say I didn't warn you... 

Matthew Kelly wasn’t sure which he regretted more: the shots of tequila he downed during last night’s Chuck Brown show at the Bayou or the lunch invitation he’d extended to Jane Kensington after Property class on Friday. He and Jane were initially linked by the alphabet on their first day at Georgetown Law.  They were seatmates in the legendary Oscar Ness’s 10 a.m. Torts class.  In the second week of classes, a stronger bond was forged when Ness broke alphabetic protocol –the one courtesy law professors seemed to grant students—and took aim at Jane instead of Matthew.  

“Ms. Kensington, what is the procedural posture in this case?”  he asked.  Ness’s question was as startling as his choice of victims. He had plowed all the way through the J’s without once inquiring about the minutiae of the case’s journey through the legal system.  

Jane cast a panicked glance at her casebook and attempted to stall, “Well, this case, which is about negligence, went to trial and…”

“Fascinating insights, those, Ms. Kensington,” Ness said. His fat, ruddy face twisted into a sneer.  “Do tell us how you arrived at them. No wait, let me guess: You deduced this case is about negligence because that’s what every case in Chapter 3 is about? Brilliant! And your groundbreaking conclusion that there was a trial –is that perhaps because judges don’t write opinions about cases that settle, Ms. Kensington?”  

Jane had pulled her dark hair back into a severe ponytail that offered no cover. Her cheeks turned a red-orange that reminded Matthew of underripe tomatoes.  The minute hand on the clock above the blackboard lurched audibly past twelve.  Ness turned and looked up.  “Ah, out of time for today, I see. Looks like we’ll be left in suspense. Tragedy, that.”   He frowned with mock disappointment.  Jane leaped out of her seat and bolted for the door as Matthew trailed her, burdened with guilt.  Ness’s Socratic arrow should have been pointed at him.  He tapped her on the shoulder. 

“Jane?”  She pivoted on her heel and glared at him. 

“What do you want? My address, so you can send me a thank-you note for screwing up royally before you had a chance to?”

“No, I, um, well, I just wanted to say Ness is a real jerk.  Everybody knows that. We’d all have been in the same boat as you.  Oh, and I’m Matthew Kelly. You probably already knew that but we haven’t officially met.”  Her glare lost some of its strength and her shoulders drooped.  “Do you have time for coffee?” he said. 

Matthew and Jane had been inseparable since then.  They ate lunch in the cafeteria every day, studied at the library in the evenings, and went to Nathan’s for drinks on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But they’d never been to each other’s apartments. He knew she wanted to be more than friends, just as he knew most of his classmates wondered if he might be gay.  (The latter rumor, like so many on the L1 grapevine, hadn’t bothered to travel incognito.)  Inviting Jane to lunch at his apartment might at least quell the gossip about his sexuality.  It was a brilliant idea. Or so it seemed two days ago, before the tequila shots.  

Matthew’s stomach lurched as he forced himself upright.  Pressing a hand to his forehead, he shuffled across the cheap blue carpet that covered the living area to the puckered yellow vinyl of the kitchen.  The slope of the floors felt especially pronounced today.  Just another charming feature of the three hundred square foot studio that met his requirement for proximity to the law school, to the exclusion of all other criteria for habitable space.  Situated above a fast-food kitchen that catered to the inebriated late-night crowd, its wood-paneled walls seemed to exhale fumes of fried potatoes and burgers.  Matthew tried to blunt the odor with Renuzit air fresheners placed strategically in each corner, but the conical sentries were an inadequate defense against the smelly onslaught.

He opened the cabinet above the sink and extracted two dull, orange Melaware plates.  When he moved to D.C., his mom had tried to foist her fondue pot and stickers on him, too, but he’d refused.  The old fondue set would have come in handy now, he realized, on opening the fridge to find a block of Swiss cheese, mayonnaise of questionable vintage, and a half-drunk bottle of Blue Nun.  He reached into the cupboard under the sink where the dry goods were neighbors with the Palmolive.  Ah, the mice were back.  Relief quickly replaced his disgust when he spotted the square, blue aluminum container behind cans of chicken soup and tuna fish.  He had neither the time nor energy for a last-minute dash to the Food Mart down the street.  Spam would have to do.    

Right down the tubes

WARNING: Several kindhearted men in my life have helped me with home repair from time to time.  Those men --and you know who you are-- should not read this post.

SPECIAL WARNING TO IMMEDIATE FAMILY AND IN-LAWS:   Don’t you dare mention this to Papa Yank. He can hardly turn on  the laptop much less find a blog, so if he hears about this I’ll know who squawked.

And now, back to Day 12 at NaBloPoMo...

My house escaped Hurricane Sandy unscathed, but a few days later the plumbing showed some signs of post-traumatic stress. The faucet choked and spluttered a couple times before exhaling a steady stream of water that took longer than usual to drain. 

The toilet wasn't itself, either.  Instead of performing its remove-and-replenish cycle smoothly, it took in a great gulp of air and then sent a little burst of water skyward, reminding me more of a surfacing whale than a working commode.  

I fell prey to the temptation that makes people try something again even when they're pretty sure they already know the outcome.  Another mini-geyser.  

The toilet seemed exhausted afterwards this time, because it didn’t even bother to fill up the bowl all the way.  Less than halfway through its job it gurgled ominously and then lapsed into silence. 

A few weeks before this I’d solved a complex heating problem with two simple tools: Google and AAA batteries.  I searched the former and found a manual for my thermostat. The troubleshooting section suggested replacing the batteries. Aha! I hadn't even known the thing took batteries. The fix itself was simple (unlike the process of prying the thermostat off the wall), and this little victory convinced me to make a permanent space in my toolbox for  Google.    

When the plumbing started acting weird, I reached straight for the Google.  A search on the toilet's symptoms turned up dozens of posts, all pointing in the same direction: blocked exterior vent.  This theory had some intuitive appeal.  The hurricane had strewn assorted debris all over the yard so it wasn’t much of a stretch to envision the wind plopping a stray squirrel or two into the roof vent.  I considered going up there to check it out myself but was dissuaded by the DIY community’s unanimous advice to stay grounded.  

I didn't admit defeat right away, though. I tried a couple little things first. 

I jiggled the handle, as required by the Yank Code.  It’s my father’s primary, no, only, solution for plumbing maladies.  No dice. 

Then, I took the lid off and messed around with the arm-and-chain flushing mechanism. (Bonus points to me for not saying “thingy.”) That wasn’t the culprit, either. I gave up and called a plumber.

A two-man brigade arrived.  I described the symptoms and led the men to the second story bath. As I prepared to give them a demo I worried that the toilet, after days of misbehaving, would suddenly act like a model loo. 

My fears were unfounded.  The commode did exactly what I said it would. I almost felt proud of it for not making me look like some ditzy chick who didn’t know what she was talking about. 

That's a feat I am perfectly capable of doing myself, and I didn’t need some crummy piece of porcelain trying to steal my thunder.  

With confidence I gave the plumbers my Google-based diagnosis. The larger guy looked dubious and said, “Ma’am, a blocked vent would be surprising unless everything else is backing up.”  I nodded knowingly. Google had told me the same thing, so I pointed out that the sink had been draining very slowly.

The smaller plumber took the lid off the back of the toilet, flushed it, and watched its innards at work. Then he reached in, did something I couldn’t see, and said, “You’re all set.” 

What? He hadn’t even needed the ladder, or even so much as a dab of elbow grease as far as I could tell.  I requested a tutorial and he happily obliged.  It was the bowl refill tube, he explained.

In all my Googling I had somehow failed to look closely at how this tube—the conduit that directs water back into the bowl post-flush—was connected and aimed. Or connected and misaimed in this case. All it needed was a little redirection.

I made a lame attempt to save face.  “But what about the sink?”

The plumbers indulged me again and pulled up the drain piece, bringing with it a large glob of black sludge.  No tutorial was required to explain why the water took its time exiting the basin.

For my airhead finale, I performed the Disappearing Checkbook routine.  I had only $25 in cash and the plumbers didn't take credit cards.  Online banking came to my rescue and enabled me to make the $100 payment for Commodes 101 electronically. 

I started beating myself up for not figuring out something so obvious.  The whole episode made me feel like a damsel in distress instead of a smart, independent woman.  Which gave me an idea. 

“You know,” I said to the plumbers as I walked them to the door, “you guys oughtta do a Plumbing Basics for women. You’d make a fortune.”

The first guy nodded but the second didn't look like he was on board.  “You can probably do it online already, ma’am," he said. "Just try Googling.” 

Thanks, pal. Why didn’t I think of that?  

Thanks a lot, kid.

The Smash Hits had a match in Herndon at 9:00 last night.  We field three teams of doubles for every match, and my name wasn't in the lineup.  My mother's was, though.  She's my favorite partner, in part because she didn't press charges for assault when my errant serve beaned her in the back of the head during a match last spring.

Since I wasn't slated to play I volunteered to be the substitute.  Most times we don't need the help and the sub doesn't even go to the match, especially when it's as far away as this one was.

Geographic inconvenience and substitute status aside, I actually had planned to show up. A chance to watch my mom play a match rarely presented itself and I wanted to seize it.

Mid-afternoon yesterday, my phone rang.

"Hey, Wheat," my mom said.  (Hardly anyone in our family calls me by the name on my birth certificate.  When I was a little kid, a teasing neighbor tousled my hair and declared it "wheat" for its noncommittal blondish, brownish color.  The nickname stuck and had long ago displaced my actual name, which, oddly, also owes its origins to a neighbor. More on that some other time. We're only 11 days in to NaBloPoMo and I might need the content. ) "Looks like you'll be playing tonight after all."  Mom explained that one lady's sick child and the unexpected travel of another's spouse had poked a couple holes in the Smash Hits' lineup.

I said I'd be happy to fill in, breaking the other golden rule: Never lie to your mother.

In truth I had no desire to play whatsoever.  My heart had been set on watching my mom's match and sank with the weight of disappointment. I'd really been looking forward to a role reversal.

Much ink has been spilled on the topic of swaps in parent/child dynamics but most of it centers on  aging in our society and how we who were once nurtured by our parents may eventually become their caretakers. Yesterday, I saw a chance to reverse a set of completely different parent-child roles, namely athlete/spectator, and I couldn't wait.

My parents spent years watching as my siblings and I swam, kicked soccer balls, threw baseballs, and hit tennis balls.  At the time, I didn't appreciate their selflessness. Instead, as they schlepped to fields and pools all over Northern Virginia to watch our various scoreboards, I kept one of my own: Did Mom and Dad go to as many of my games and meets as they did my siblings'?  Instead of thinking, "thanks," I only thought, "more."

Those thoughts appall me today.  As an adult, I have a complete understanding of how unbelievably present my parents were and how they supported every single of one of us in everything.  Mom and Dad did this without complaint and while juggling countless other demands.  I don't know how they kept the plates spinning and airborne, or how they made something so hard look effortless.

I didn't appreciate it then, but I do now.  Years ago I managed to pull my fuzz-covered nose out of my navel and realized that, when it came to the parental lottery, I'd hit it big. Huge.

I can't go back and redraw my child self as a portrait of appreciation. But I can work on my acceptance speech for the Ungrateful Brat Award (Lifetime Achievement category) and show my parents some thanks and support whenever the opportunity presents itself, like at a tennis match.

At 8:55 last night our full complement hadn't arrived so I swapped out my spectator garb for athletic clothes. Just as I was about to plod on to Court #1 with a partner I'd never met, the missing Smashes showed up.

Thrilled to be benched, I sat down to enjoy my mom's match. The only thing more rewarding than cheering her on was watching her fire up an ace. Way to go, Mom. I'm proud of you.

If you can't say something nice, say, "Woobie Pants."

The bottom half of the PJs I wore this morning were the blue, plaid, fleecy jobs I call the "Woobie Pants."  My ex-husband, "Mark," gave them to me.

Gifts from exes can be complicated little items but I know exactly how I feel about these.  I love them.
I love them because they improve chilly mornings, soothe me when I'm sick, and give me something positive to say about Mark.

The value of that last characteristic can't be stressed enough.  It can really come in handy, especially if someone brings up the ex in conversation.  This happened to me recently as I shared dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in over a year.  Because she had missed most of the divorce stuff she had all kinds of questions, including about logistical stuff like where I had lived during that time.

This friend knew that Mark and I had torn down my old house --a quirky three-bedroom rambler in Falls Church that I loved--and built in its place a 6000 square foot yuppie prison that I loathed.  The builders finished the house just a couple weeks before we separated, so Mark and I never moved in. My soul and I had narrowly escaped confinement.

She looked confused.  "So wait a minute, if you didn't live in the new place and you couldn't go back to Mark's house, where did you go?"

"Oh, I went to Lynne's," I said, referring to my older sister.  She, her husband and their two kids lived in a single family house in a suburb outside the Beltway.

"Isn't her house pretty full already?"

I nodded. "But the basement wasn't, so that's where I stayed."

The below-ground portion of my sister's house is a large, fully-finished space with a spare room and full bath.  The basement accommodated me and most of my stuff with plenty of room to spare so I felt quite comfortable there.  But I guess for most people, my friend included, the word "basement" doesn't conjure up visions of a soothing retreat.  She looked indignant.

"Let me get this straight: At age 40, you went from having your own single family home to living with your sister and her family in their basement?" I nodded again.  "It's not fair that you're the one who ended up homeless. You must've hated your ex for that. I know I would have if I'd been in your shoes."

"Oh gosh no," I said. "I didn't hate him for that." In fact, if given the chance I might have thanked him for sending me to my sister's basement.  Lynne and her family were the threads that kept me together when divorce threatened to rip my life and heart apart at the seams.

As I explained to my friend, you can't stay in the pits of despair for too long when your 9 year-old "roommate" comes home from school with a family tree she drew that has five branches instead of four and shows you on the branch just below "Mommy."  Or when your 8 year-old roommate tells you that you should take his last name until you get your old one back.

With reluctance my friend accepted that my living situation during the divorce didn't cause me any ill will toward Mark. But she refused to believe I felt as charitable about the rest of the whole mess, and she was right.

I was about to make a less pleasant observation about Mark when I remembered that maxim about staying silent when you can't say something nice.  And also its corollary: "Don't say anything if you can't improve on silence." (Aubrey,  a NaBloPoMo comrade, reminded us about that one.)

A scathing remark desperately wanted to escape but I didn't let it.  Instead, I pointed out that Mark had at least given me some beloved fleece pajamas.

My random gambit caused her enough confusion to back away slowly from the subject of Mark.  So the next time I don't have anything nice to offer or can't improve on silence, I think I'll give "Woobie pants" another go.

Splat-ter of the Week: Claudia Connell

Never heard of Claudia Connell? We hadn’t either until we got wind of a piece she wrote that appeared this week in London’s Daily MailOnline.  The article, entitled “The Lonely Legacy Of My Sex And The City Lifestyle", offers the perspective of a single female in her mid-40s. 

We can sum it up with a phrase from the Magic 8-Ball we played with as a kid: “Outlook not so good.”

Connell writes of middle-aged singlehood with the despair and hopelessness of a music critic forced to review “Snooki Sings Motown.” (And before you ask, no, we don’t know if this album will be out in time for the holidays.  We made it up for Heaven’s sake. And even if we hadn’t, as hateful gifts go, it can't compete with airline pie.  Duh.)

She states, “At the age of 46, I accept that my opportunity to have a family has gone and the changes of meeting a decent man aren’t looking too rosy either.”  And then she describes people in her demographic –single and 45-64 years of age--as “[m]aterially well-off but emotionally bereft.” 

These lines got our attention.  (The team at Splatospheric was single at 39, married at 40, and divorced at 41.)  They also got Connell this week’s Golden Pancake.

Connell, a journalist, has been single her whole life.  She chose a bachelorette existence in her 20s and 30s and embraced the lifestyle glamorized by SATC. 

Once content with her status as a poster child for the iconic series, Connell now laments it.  (Maybe the poster has started to fade and droop in areas that were perfectly perky ten years ago.)  

According to the article, Connell regrets spending her 20s and 30s making money and partying it up when she could’ve been nesting and pairing it up.  She claims the herd of available men starts to dwindle when women reach their mid-30s and is nearing extinction ten years later.  Moreover, men who are available don’t want to date women their own age.  In sum, she believes she's doomed to perpetual loneliness. 

Connell performs a root cause analysis of her still-single state and blames herself for setting standards that were too high for the suitors who pursued her in her heyday. 

We’ve don’t know Ms. Connell but we do know we see this landscape differently. Here’s how it looks to us:

·       We must have watched a different version of SATC than Connell.  Sure, the show's plotlines focused on the characters' romantic relationships.  But overall we thought the show encouraged women to embrace adventure and march to their own beat, no matter what tune society played in the background.  This theme has aged quite nicely, in our opinion.  Adventure remains as worthy and fun a companion to us at 41 as it was ten years earlier, even if we look for it in different places.  Instead of sitting on a barstool or dancing in a club, you might find it taking a writing class, playing amateur tennis, and going to a Chexican wedding.

·       Adventure is no proxy for family. We get that.  But it may pay to keep an open mind in this arena as well.  “Married with kid(s)” isn’t the only conduit through which the current of familial love flows, or even necessarily the most fulfilling one.  Sometimes its most reliable and enduring arc is the one that runs sister-to-sister, aunt-to-nephews (or niece), or even lifelong friend-to-friend.  

·       Connell worries that she used to be too picky. We don't know her and can’t judge her history but it seems like at one of her present criteria –age—is still a bit restrictive.  Someone who thinks she should’ve said “I Do” to Mr. “You’ll Do” can surely nudge her target numbers a few years in either direction to beef up the herd. 

·       We worry that Connell has elevated form over function.  She notes it might be nice to have someone to cook for, watch mindless TV with, or “just offload to after a particularly bad day.”  And she wishes she had a handy partner who could help her with heavy lifting and other household problems she solves by writing a check.  This doesn’t strike us as a realistic portrait of a companion so much as a cardboard cutout with a toolbelt.  Fulfilling companionship consists of much more than mere physical presence.  While that can be critical, it doesn’t guarantee emotional presence, the quality most people seek in a companion.  We wonder if Connell has ever experienced the feeling of trying to offload a particularly bad day to a partner who doesn’t care.  Or to have a mate who fixes things around the house but constantly reminds you that he does it because you can’t, and that you don’t appreciate him enough.  This kind of “companionship” generates a loneliness that crushes your soul as if it were a ripe tomato rolling into the path of a tractor trailer.  We’ll take singlehood over that kind of isolation eight days a week.  

We aren't here to discount Ms. Connell’s perspective.  It's hers and it's valid.  But we’re still giving her the Golden Pancake because, if she believes what she wrote about the single life, she’s hit the wall hard and has quite a slide ahead of her.  Sounds like it’s lonely at the bottom, too.   

Speech-less

Some people love campaign speeches and just can't get enough. Not me. Not this year.

The debates and speeches of this presidential election were so toxic that the political landscape should be declared a Superfund site.

By the end of the week, I needed a breath of fresh air, speech-wise, and I had to dig deep to get it.

I reached all the way back to the commencement address my close friend, D, delivered in May of 2002 as we graduated from the George Mason University School of Law.

D and I met in the fall of 1998 when the Dean of Admissions introduced us at an orientation session.  I could see right away that D wasn't your average law student.  He looked a little older than most 1Ls, and a lot less vertical.

The former was explained by a prior career, the latter by a bicycle accident that confined him to a wheelchair.

The Dean had been searching for a notetaker to accommodate D's disability and hoped I might fit the bill. Law school was brand new to me, too, so I didn't know if I could even take my own notes competently.  I shoved my concerns aside and accepted the mission anyway.

D and I lurched along for a bit before we got our partnership in gear. The indecipherable, illegible shorthand I used to capture what I viewed as important concepts didn't work so well for D.  Once we realized we could put my pianist fingers to good use on the keyboard of a laptop, I began to take dictation.  At the end of every class, we essentially had a transcript.  As soon as we made this basic but critical adjustment, D and I started humming along.

Four years of night classes, countless hours of Socratic questioning, and one lifelong friendship later, we were on the cusp of graduating.  When the time came to suggest a class speaker, I nominated D.  Votes from our night school comrades catapulted him to a landslide win and on to the commencement stage.

Hundreds of us, along with our loved ones, watched and listened as D gave his remarks on graduation day.

We were impressed by his eloquent description of our Mason Law experience.  We were moved by his words of gratitude and love for his wife and children.  But what really got us was his closing.

As he prepared to conclude, D looked up and thrust his chin ever so slightly forward.  We waited in rapt silence for him to convey one last inspirational thought.

He basked in the dignity of the moment, smiled, and said, "And I'm proud to have graduated law school without ever picking up a book."  Even though D wasn't on his feet, within seconds, every other person in that auditorium was.