With Words and With Silence or A Tale of Pinnochio’s Nose
About two mornings a week, a former FBI agent drops an e-mail into my in-box offering to teach me how to tell when someone is lying to me. For a large fee. Now, my father was an FBI agent for 30 years, and I am in favor of retired agents earning a good living. But do I really want to know when someone is lying?
Well, yes. Sometimes I do. The man who tells me he’s available and who has three girlfriends on the hook and wants to me make me number four. Yeah, I’d like to know what he’s up to. But honestly, a little research on Facebook (at no cost) answered THAT question.
Then as an attorney there are my clients. Who are convicted of various crimes by the time they get to me, the appellate attorney. But I do the same job for them, regardless of guilt or innocence. In fact, knowing positively they are guilty would be a real downer. So, no. I don’t care about learning how to decipher their perfidy (don’t you love English majors who write blogs?) by analyzing their handwriting. Besides, the law’s “truth” and everyone else’s “truth” are two different things. (Think Casey Anthony and OJ Simpson.) But we’ll leave that explanation for another blog.
I do wonder what the former FBI agent would teach me as the signs of being lied to. Not making eye contact? Shifting from one foot to another? Nervous tick? Elaborate story that does not stand up under my cross-examination? I’m not sure I need to pay a lot of money to learn that stuff. It’s kind of obvious.
And then there are the “nose growers.” You know. The Pinnochios whose noses grow when they lie. Well, not literally. But with some people if you swallow their story the first time knowing even as you listen it can’t be right, eventually they will fess up to the truth. You just have to wait long enough. I’ve known a number of these people. Patience pays off.
I admit that being lied to makes me angry. It violates my sense of what is right in the world. I don’t encourage it, and I don’t like to encounter it. And I avoid engaging in it. But some social lies grease the wheels of life. Like not telling new parents their baby isn’t beautiful – yet. Or the poor man trapped by the dreaded question, “Do these pants make me look fat?” Or the dinner guest faced with “Don’t you want seconds?” when firsts were nearly impossible to hide under the mashed potatoes. Some social lies just have to be, no matter how we feel morally about the entire subject of lying.
So, even if the former FBI agent could make me an infallible human lie detector, I’m not sure I’d want that skill. And I’m glad noses don’t grow when we lie. Then, too, as Adrienne Rich said, “Lying is done with words, and also with silence.” And those, I think, are the most powerful lies of all.
The Old Man’s Rose – A Tale of an Unlikely Artist
I never knew his name although he was my neighbor. I saw him every afternoon around four o’clock when I went by his condo, walking my Golden Retrievers, Melody and Rhythm. He would be standing by the plastic pot that held his rose bush, smoking a cigarette, and tending the rose. Usually he was tweaking the black irrigation tube that had been jerry-rigged from the main irrigation system to the pot. In the California desert, nothing grows that isn’t watered. So, he had to really love that rose because he had gone to so much trouble for it.
He looked like the Santa Claus figure that adorned his Christmas display every year. He and Santa were short, round, and bald. Fiftyish or sixtyish. He always wore a plaid shirt, and khaki pants that wrinkled over the tops of his tennys because they were too long. Even in the dead of winter, he never spoiled his rumpled look with a jacket.
As I came along the street with my dogs, he would look up from fussing with the rose and waive and smile. Sometimes he said, “Beautiful dogs.” I never said, “Beautiful rose.” Now I wish I had.
Every winter I wondered where he had grown up because at Christmas he covered the handkerchief-sized patch of ground in front of his condo with sheets of cotton, stretched out to mimic snow. Although up close they looked like the forgery they were, from a distance I was always struck by the oddity of snow on the ground on a 75 degree December day in San Diego. Clearly the rose and the snow were important to him. I told him once how much I liked the snow, and he smiled.
I never saw his wife, but I’m sure he had one. He looked like the sort of man who’d have a wife. I expect she was inside cooking dinner in the afternoons while he smoked and tended his rose. I bet she was, after all, the reason he couldn’t smoke in the house.
And I think he had grown children, too, although I never saw them, either. A boy and a girl. And I guessed several grandchildren who called him, “Grandpa.”
The garage sales began innocuously in the fall two years ago. On Saturday mornings, as Melody and Rhythm and I passed by, his drive would be filled with odd pots and pans, stacks of dishes, mismatched chairs and tables, a basket of used clothing, and, once, a sewing machine cabinet.
He averaged about one sale a month that winter. Bit by bit his life went up for sale to the bargain hunters in minivans and SUV’s. But the saddest one – the one when I should have realized something was up – was in January. One Saturday morning, not long after all the “cotton snow” had been rolled up and put away for another year, plastic five-foot Santa sat in the midst of the garage sale offerings with a $5.00 tag around his neck. Despite all his tackyness, I should have bought him for old time’s sake.
Then came the saddest day of all. In late May the dogs and I passed by one day to find the little old man tending his rose as ususal, but the pot was nearly invisible because moving boxes were stacked everywhere on the sidewalk. The man waved and smiled but didn’t invite further conversation. Where was he going? He had abandoned Santa. Would he abandon his rose?
Two days later, I saw he had left it behind. No more boxes on the walk. Empty house. And the rose still blooming in its pot, but without the old man beside it. Would it survive and thrive without him?
It did. I suppose he left it as tiny legacy of beauty for the rest of us. That corner of the world had no other ornament, and he knew his irrigation lifeline would keep it thriving, even without his gentle touch every afternoon.
I’ll never know his story, but my dogs and I still pass his rose every day, and I think of him. He didn’t look like an artist, but he created something beautiful and gave it away. So, I think, he was.
TMI Colonial Style or Trapped By A Tour Guide
I have not visited Colonial Williamsburg in many years. It has always been One of My Favorite Places, and it continues to be. But today I experienced Too Much Information, Colonial Style.
The visit to the Brush-Everard House began like most of the others on our two-day tour, with a fifteen minute wait outside for admission in a group with a guide who would take us through the house. But once inside, we were TRAPPED by DETAILS. For example, we had to hear the excruciating story of the recovery of unused 250 year old china from the bottom of the sea. Piece by Piece. For my money, just saying, hey look over there in the china cabinet would have been fine. And then, we learned it was not a china cabinet at all. It was a “bowfat” or, as we all know now, a “buffet.” Could have survived without that piece of trivia, too. Then there was the history of EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FURNITURE in the room. Sorry, it was enough for me to know they were all period originals.
We learned the history of every print on the walls, the hue of the paint, the way wallpaper was hung, and how carpet was woven and sewn together. Upstairs, we heard every detail of the daughthers’ marriages and deaths. I mean every detail.
Back downstairs, all of us were waiting for a chance to dash through the back door. As the tour guide followed us out, wailing, “Don’t you want to hear about the outbuildings?” our group was making a break for it through the side gate, one by one. I do love history and Williamsburg, but word to the wise: there are only so many details that are (a) interesting and (b) pertinent and (c) that the human brain can absorb in a sitting. Anyway, we made up for being BORED with a good lunch and a walking photo shoot this afternoon. No more being TRAPPED inside on guided tours.
More Adventures of Elvis the Conch Shell or Argument, What is It Good For?
Last week, I told you about Elvis the conch shell living in my ear. The doctor called Elvis an ear infection, but – as I told you last week – I know the sound of the sea when I hear it. Anyway, Elvis has mostly left my ear, but likes to come back every morning to check the fit of his jumpsuit before he heads for Vegas. Annoying, but better than having him full time in my ear. Bye, bye, Elvis. Leave the building for good. Thanks.
Now, as I told you last week, according to Louise Hay, whom I admire, Elvis took up residence in my ear because of the presence of arguing in my life. And, as I was quick to conclude, she can’t be right because my three children have grown up and found their own nests. And we didn’t argue much, anyway, when they lived here. And I can’t argue with my two Golden Retrievers. I mean, I could try; but they’d only lick me and love me to death in response. So it wouldn’t work.
But then I remembered what I do for a living. Truth to tell, I’m a professional arguer. My work life is just one big argument. Still, that doesn’t seem like the kind of raucous noise that would invite Elvis in. In fact, my job is largely silent, except for keyboard keys clicking.
So what do I do for a living? Well, when I meet people, I often say I’m a legal writer. That’s closer to the truth than saying, “I’m a lawyer” like the irritating guy at the end of “TMZ” every night. But I am an attorney, licensed in no less than two states and the District of Columbia. Conclusion: this chick is good at bar exams.
I’m an appellate attorney which means you have to be a bona fide loser to meet me. Sorry clients. You know who you are. If you lose your case in the trial court because your flashy flamboyant trial attorney failed to charm the jury, I am the next stop on your legal “to do” list.
Now, while I admit to a preference for flashy and flamboyant in my personal wardrobe, my work wardrobe is one black suit which I wear to the court of appeal once every two or three years for oral argument. (Although next time, I swear, I’m wearing the red suit and six inch heels.) The rest of the time, I sit at my computer surrounded by Goldens, writing scholarly, unbrief “briefs.” And these tomes of legal wisdom, gentle readers, are my “arguments.” I tell the court of appeal in polite terms how the trial court screwed the pooch and why my client simply must have a new trial. I put these gems of legal scholarship between Gamma green cardstock covers and ship them off to the court of appeal by FedEx ground. Each one is a fascinating, page-turning tale of legal woe. But the clerk of the court NEVER calls to say, WHAT A GREAT READ! (Although the guy at FedEx who copies, binds, and reads them, sees my potential as a fiction writer.) No, the clerk only calls when I forgot to sign some tacky service page. SIGH!
Several months after I launch my green guided missel into the office of opposing counsel, he or she fires back his or her own lemon-yellow hand grenade, asserting the trial court was brilliant in every way and made not one single mistake in the entire month-long trial. In fact, according to opposing counsel, His Honor is an unbiased saint, and twelve smarter, unbiased jurors could not possibly have been found on the planet. Appellant is just the sorest of losers. Twenty days later, I lob back a chicly neutral Bristol-tan reply brief that says, ever so politely, opposing counsel clearly graduated dead last in his class. He or she does not know what he is talking about.
After that, sometimes I put on my suit, go to court, and stand behind the too-high-for-short-people podium for an oral argument that lasts all of fifteen minutes. But rarely. I mean, after all that writing, who has anything new to say? And the court of appeal will offer to lynch me if I bore them with what I’ve already said.
So, upon reflection, I do have argument in my life. But not the loud kind that would invite Elvis for a week-long sleepover in my ear under Louise Hay’s view of the Universe.
While the stately, professional arguing I do for a living has a purpose – it lets disappointed litigants air their grievances in a safe, controlled environment which is kind of like releasing compressed air to clean a keyboard – I don’t have much use for argument in my personal life. Maybe that’s because I got “argued out” as a child. My parents went at it 24/7. They saw each other – or one of us – and automatically launched an attack. No wonder I grew up thinking being a champion arguer was a badge of honor. Not to mention survival. But no one ever persuaded anyone to change his or her mind. It was all just word bullets fired into our most vulnerable emotional places.
So when my own three children entered my life, I couldn’t bring myself to surround them with the hurtful, constant criticism and argument that was the only way my parents could relate to their children. I mean, when you love someone with all your heart, do you really care if they turned over their soda by accident or forgot to put the toilet seat down, or wanted an extra cookie? (Who doesn’t want an extra cookie?) Looking back, the stuff my parents thought was make or break makes me laugh because it wasn’t all that important. For example, one of my father’s favorite rants was I’d never graduate from any school whatsoever because I couldn’t spell. (Didn’t anyone tell him how English got its spelling rules? Printer’s misspellings!) But enter spell check! And I have three (count them three) post graduate degrees. Cum laude. Guess I showed him I could graduate. Over and over and over again.
But the most interesting thing about arguing is that when I let go of the rope and fail to respond, my opponent has no ammunition to continue the fight. Really, it is the funniest thing to watch in the whole world. Try it. You will die laughing inside when tough guy stares at you with nothing else to say. It is so much fun, you won’t even be tempted to argue back. Silence has enormous power. Said by a professional arguer!
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Finalist, Foreword Reviews Book of the Year, 2013
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