The Wild Winds of Fortune

Yes, I know I did not post anything yesterday. I wrote a post, but lack of Internet in my doctor’s office kept me from posting.  The Rocket Scientist suggested I post it today and back date it, but that seems like cheating.

In a prior post, I spoke of the social anxiety and imposter syndrome to which I seem to be increasingly prone. Over the past five years, I have gone from introverted to at times damn near reclusive. I’m working on this – it is one of the reasons I keep going to Tuesday night trivia.

As most people know, the way to deal with things you irrationally fear is to keep doing them, also known as the“getting back on the horse that threw you” principle. And,unlike the thrown rider, there is really no reason for me to be afraid of other people.

So, last week, I approached the horse.

A professor from SLS was giving a talk in San Francisco titled “Prosecutors Run Amok?.” I have developed a casual interest in criminal justice, and it seemed like a potentially interesting talk. So I talked myself into driving into San Francisco for what was at most an hour-and-a-half to two hour talk and reception, even though I knew no one else who was going to be there. I had the faint stirrings of what would later become the worst cold I have had in several years, but I refused to let myself back out.

Dress was “business casual.” What the heck is that, these days? I settled on a dress and (gulp)pantyhose. I actually purchased hose: these days the only time I wear them a<re for rare job interviews. I also bought another pair of flats.

And I got my hair cut. My stylist spoke English with a heavy Russian accent, and I am not sure at all that our understandings of what “long layers” meant coincided, or that she quite comprehended what I wanted. Afterwards I was rather unhappy.

I then got ready – having to ditch the hose after poking a hole in them (I hate designed obsolescence) –and set out. At that point, my carefully laid plans fell apart.

The drive from Mountain View to San Francisco took two hours. Even for rush hour on a Monday, that’s just ridiculous. I managed to keep myself calm by having a conversation with an imaginary companion. She was a woman who, like me, had given up the law for other responsibilities and who was fighting her own sense of inferiority.

“Look,” I told her. “Just because you opted to do other things doesn’t mean you have thrown away your brain. They do not repossess your law degree simply because you’ve chosen to stay at home with kids.” It was a little while before I understood that I was really talking to and about myself.

I finally arrived in the city, and then had to find my way using Google Maps. It was fine while I was in the car, but on foot I had to resort to using (gasp) actual maps.Since I cannot navigate my way out of a paper bag using visual maps,* it took me fifteen minutes to get from the parking garage under 3 Embarcadero Center to the building at the corner of Battery.

By that time, I was forty-five minutes late. I still made myself go in, as flustered and nervous as I was.

The talk – of which I caught about half – was interesting. The audience appeared to consist of a few criminal lawyers, both prosecutors and defense lawyers, with the many of the others being civil litigators. The speaker discussed the Duke lacrosse rape case, and I came away knowing a lot more about the case than I did before, and with a great many thoughts about how messy rape prosecutions are, and how to reconcile a deep belief in the importance of the criminal justice system with an understanding of the way that system fails rape victims, and how knowledge of that second can cloud judgment with regards to the first. (That is a post I am still fleshing out in my mind, which I hope will be up shortly.)

I stayed until the end of the talk, did not speak to anyone other than the most simple pleasantries. Still,I went.

I rewarded myself by taking the long way home, through the city to the Great Highway, down the Devil’s Slide on south to Highway 92. It gave me a lot of time to think.

I am going to try and do more horse-riding.  I can’t see any reason I should deprive myself of chances to learn and grow, or deprive others of my, ahem, occasionally scintillating presence. Tuesday night trivia is a given, of course, and there is another SLS talk in early December which looks interesting. (Unlike the previous one, it is at the Law School, a mere half-hour from my house. Phew.)

Look out world, I’m heading out.

I was a Joe Paterno fan.  I thought a great deal of how much good he had done at Penn State, and not only by virtue of winning a lot of football games.

I can’t be anymore.  Not in the wake of the child-molestation scandal erupting in State College.

Paterno had been told by a graduate assistant that former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky had raped a child.  Paterno reported the incident to his superiors, as he was required to do by law. Which was, by law, all he was required to do.

He did not call the cops. He did not follow up on the investigation. However he may have filled his legal obligations, he failed in his ethical ones.

A friend on Facebook mentioned that he was reminded how people tend to talk about Bill Clinton and the Lewinksy scandal, ignoring all the other things Clinton accomplished while in office.  I see his point, to some extent.  But for me, the analogy is not to Bill Clinton, but to another president who accomplished a great deal but whose name is forever linked to unsavory incidents.

Joe Paterno is college football’s Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon accomplished a great deal during his presidency.  He opened trade with China, He signed Title IX, the Clean Air Act  and the Endangered Species Act.  He drove the creation of the EPA and OSHA.

But when people talk about Nixon — a president that, absent other considerations, would be listed among the good  ones — the starting point is always Watergate.  Or his enemies list.  Or the dirty tricks his re-election committee engaged in.

Similarly, it will be difficult to think of Joe Paterno without first thinking of him as a guy who turned a blind eye to a horrific situation, who did what the law of the state required, but no more.

There are differences, of course.  Paterno’s sins were those of omission, and their scope was far less grand than Nixon’s.  Not to mention, of course, that Paterno did not break the law. 

At some point the good men do get swallowed up in their mistakes.  And, sadly, helping a great many young men to find success on the gridiron will disappear beneath the fact that Paterno’s inaction may have caused untold harm to children too young to protect themselves.

I was sitting on my bed looking intently at Orbitz to find hotels for an upcoming trip.  I had the cursor next to the Firefox window.

Penwiper walked up, pressed her paw on the trackpad, and once the window had receded (bringing up my mail window), walked off.  She did not walk on the computer, merely hit the trackpad to replace the window I was working with. I think she’s annoyed that I was not paying attention to her.

Next thing you know, she’ll have her own Facebook account.

November 10 is the birthday of the Marine Corps.  For all you Marines out there, I want to deeply and sincerely thank you for your service.

More on the Christmas tree tax:  it was in the works before Obama took office, and the idea came from the industry.  

According to Politifact, the Administration is reconsidering.  Oh, for God’s sake.

There are people struggling to find food in this country.  There are people out of work.  There are people without health insurance or access to reasonable health care.

And we are spending time arguing over a freaking fifteen-cent tax?

And there are people crying over the equivalent of one-quarter of a candy bar?

What the hell is wrong with them?

What I want is someone in the Administration to stand up to the bullies here.  I want someone to say “Oh, for God’s sake.  It’s fifteen cents. If you can afford a tree, you can afford this fee.”

I am simply gob-smacked that there are people so out of touch with reality that this bothers them.

So much to write about in the world, and I lie here, sick as a dog for yet another day.  More NyQuil, please.

The news sites I’ve looked at today were aghast at the Administration’s tax on Christmas trees.  At least one Republican has referred to the tax as a “Grinch” move.

I’ve looked at three separate articles.  All of them give the amount of the tax as …. fifteen cents.

I would like to posit that if you can afford a Christmas tree, which in my neck of the woods can cost fifty bucks for a six-footer, fifteen cents is not a problem.

I went to an interesting talk last night, followed by a long drive where I did a lot of thinking.  When I got home, I only had time to do the hair post before going to bed.  I had been planning two posts for today — one of which discussed the process of getting ready to go out vis a vis social anxiety and imposter syndrome, and the other discussing philosophical issues surrounding difficult rape prosecutions, in particular the Duke lacrosse case. Perhaps a third post about newsu.org, a program which will allow me to get writing instruction at very low cost.

But my throat started to hurt.  Today, I feel like the proverbial death warmed over (although, how would anyone know what that felt like?).  My brain is full of cotton wool, and while I remember roughly what I was going to say, the thought of trying to come up with coherent words makes me want to hole up somewhere and not come out for two weeks.

You know you are sick when the NyQuil starts to taste good.  Time to go to bed again, I think.

I got my hair cut today.  It really needed cutting, the ends had gotten very damaged.  The Resident Shrink told me it’s cute, but I think it looks like a cross between Billie Jean King circa 1976 and Cindy Lou Who.

I have a friend who uses exclamation points when they text.  It works — it fits their personality. Now, I have absolutely nothing against exclamation points (when used appropriately and in moderation — which my friend does) but I’m not an exclamation point kind of person (I rarely use them unless quoting or for ironic value).  Except… when returning their texts.  Similarly, I am never even tempted* to use 2 for to or 4 for for or U for you… unless I am returning texts from my college-aged son, who, sadly enough, uses those abominations sometimes.

I was wondering aloud about this phenomenon this morning (after returning a exclamation point containing text to my friend) when the Rocket Scientist noted that it is akin to adopting people’s accents when talking to them, which I also do.

I have lived in Northern California for well over two decades now.  I now have, realistically speaking, no accent.**  I go home to Florida, to visit my  mother who still retains something of a Southern accent, and the accent I used to have deepens a shade. I go to Mississippi to visit my brother and sister, or to Georgia to visit my in-laws, and my accent deepens a lot. My speech, which tends to be somewhat slow anyway (law school training to get rid of “ums” and “ers”) becomes a drawl. Southernisms such a “y’all” and “fixing to go do…” (as well as what I have come to think of as the Southern pronunciation of “insurance” that once had my common room at Wellesley in stitches — I dropped it soon after) return to my speech. (My relatives have commented how my sons — especially the eldest — sound like “surfer dudes.” So much for there being no Northern California accent.)

Protective coloration, or the remnants thereof.

Part of it is having been eighteen and fancying myself a deep thinker, and being brought up short when older students at Wellesley told me how “cute” my accent was.*** (See above re: insurance.) And learning that the deeper the accent, the more people made assumptions about you — or your family — that were not necessarily correct.  And that people in the Northeast (at least in that pre-Bill Clinton era) sometimes assumed Southerners were naive, stupid, or corrupt, and that most of us wanted to secretly join either the John Birch Society or the KKK.

When you’re eighteen, Southern, and going to college in Massachusetts in the early ’80s, you lose the accent fast. Or, as a friend of mine did: exploit it. If people are going to think you’re naive anyway, they tend to underestimate you and you can get away with saying outrageous things (often of a sexual nature) and people (or at least the people he hung with, who were mostly New Yorkers) think you don’t know what you’re saying.  (He got a rude shock when he started dating me and I called him on it.)

In my case, it was also part of a larger issue: I felt myself to unworthy of anyone’s time and attention.  So I would act as a mirror for what they wanted to see — mirroring the accent was merely part of it.  I mirrored body language, speech patterns, sometimes thought patterns.  And all the while, I feared that if anyone knew the real me, they would view me with disdain.  I would not be respected.  I would not be loved.

Many, many years (and much therapy) later, I am better about all of this, although not perfect.  I still worry if my friends really knew me, they wouldn’t like me, but usually my attitude is much closer to “to hell with them if they don’t. Their loss.” (There are a few sections of my life/personality where that fear still holds, but in general, not.) After the age of forty, I decided I no longer had the energy the suffer fools gladly, or to keep hiding.  I became myself, or at least more myself.

And guess what? There are still people who love me.  Who find me intriguing.  And funny. Who think I have interesting things to say about the world.  Who like me for who I am, not for what I can show them about themselves.

Still, habits are habits.  Fortunately, the traits of the chameleon I retain are relatively benign.  It is probably not feasible to regain my Southern accent, but I can resist the siren lure of un-Pat-like punctuation.

So, to my friend… from now on out?  No exclamation points in my return texts.  Really.

*Okay, so I underline a lot of words, which is sort of the intra-sentence equivalent of the exclamation point.  As I said, I really have nothing against exclamation points per se.  And certainly not against the way my friend uses them.

**Except after about four beers, or three pina coladas, or three margaritas….

***For those who have seen Almost Famous (a really awesome movie) it is akin to the scene when Penny Lane tells William how sweet he is and he replies “Sweet? Where do you get off calling me sweet! I’m dark and mysterious and pissed off!”

How do I deal with stress?

I write here. There is something very soothing about getting my thoughts down in pixels.  I am working on a discipline of posting every day, even if all I post are about the weather and small reminders to change your clocks.  Writing forces me out of my own head.

I do crossword puzzles.  Crosswords are useful for stretching my brain without actually having to seriously think.

There is also Facebook and Livejournal.  I always wish that I could use this as a jumping up point for more human interaction, which I feel I desperately need, but it’s a little hard to invite someone to lunch who lives in Oregon or Baltimore or NYC. There are some local people that I need to check with, though.

For complicated reasons, I am a loner.  Partly that is an introversion which has become more pronounced over the years, partly it is a burgeoning social phobia, and part of it has to do with other circumstances.

I’m the person who, once they snap and take out a whole bunch of people in a mall, their neighbors say “but she was always such a quiet person.” Not that I think that’s likely to happen: I like people in general too much to do that.*

There is the aforementioned driving.  I guess I am lucky that my addiction tends to be a fairly benign one. I don’t drink — or  more than very occasionally — partly because it conflicts with my meds but just as much from  sneaking suspicion that if I started to drink heavily I would tend to keep on going. I have enough issues that burden the people around me to add to them.

It’s a season of restlessness.  I am aimless right now, not in the sense of not wanting to do something, but in the sense of having not concrete goals and knowledge of how to achieve them.  That horizon just keeps beckoning more and more each day.

Right now, my mind is not racing but dancing lightly from one place to another.  It settles gently and lightly on subjects, before flitting butterfly-like to something else.  The Red-Headed Menace got his ADD from somewhere, and I am a better candidate for responsibility than anything else.  It does make me wonder, though, how I was able to concentrate long enough to finish college, let alone law school.

I’ll get by.  I promise to find something more interesting to write about, and let go of the navel gazing.** I think it may be time to resort to the writing prompts on Livejournal and the NaBloPoMo website. Oh wait, this might have been one of those Livejournal prompts of a few days ago.  I know they had a “what keeps you up at night” prompt, which is just as likely to result in needless solipsism as “how do you deal with stress.”

Hmmph.  Clearly I am not the only person given to self-reflection ad nauseam.


*As Charles Schulz once said, “I love mankind.  It’s people I can’t stand.”
**Did you know omphaloskepsis is the practice of gazing at one’s navel as an aid to meditation? Now you do!

A classmate from SLS pointed me towards his daughter who is a musician, Elizabeth Gooen.  I first listened to her work out of politeness, and discovered a very young singer/songwriter whose work I seriously like. (My  favorite song by her is “Preowned.”)

I can hardly wait to see what she does in the future.