We used to have money with Madoff

One of my friends was complaining the other day about the latest way of establishing the pecking order within her parents’ social circles in Florida.  “People used to rank each other by the properties they owned,” she said.  “Now it’s ‘We used to have money with Madoff.’ Because he was so hard to get into.  Isn’t that sick?”

I was torn between laughing and smacking my hand against my forehead.  “That almost makes me want to defraud people,” I said.  “They’re bragging that they got scammed by the best?”  I have the utmost sympathy for people who have lost their life savings to a criminal, whether by force or fraud.  But it was just beyond me to reconcile that sympathy with the knowledge that one of the first items on some of the victims’ agenda was to assure themselves and their friends that they were still better than the rest of us.

The other day, I revised my opinion, or softened it a bit.  I saw a special on art stolen by the Nazis.  One of the victims was still alive when the special was filmed, and he talked about his family being killed, about his family photos being gone, and about family heirlooms that had been stolen.  He later saw those heirlooms in a warehouse full of Nazi loot.  And I thought how it would feel to see any of my family crystal or furniture (such as it is) in someone else’s home, someone who I knew had stolen it.  I would hate to have to justify a claim for its return, especially if I had been reduced in circumstances.  I would be angry, and in trying to get what is rightfully mine, I would be humiliated.

This made me think about my mother, and her mother, and the contempt that I have always had for their attitudes about whatever family belongings we have.  I have spent the better part of my life listening to one or the other of them talk about various pieces of furniture as though the British Museum is dying to get their hands on our things.  (They aren’t.)  In fact, going to a museum with my mother, listening to her compare things there with what she has in the corner cupboard, often makes me want to paraphrase Carrie Bradshaw to a wrestling Aidan and Big, and scream to her “We’re middle-class!”  The fact is that we are not royalty.  We are not aristocrats.  I love that Mom has some nice china and crystal, but that’s just because I like them.  It isn’t a valid basis for my sense of self.

In this regard, I have a strong difference of opinion with my mother, one that I imagine is very American and very middle class.  I do not like the idea of basing my self-worth on any characteristic that was none of my doing.  She most enjoys praising my characteristics that were none of my doing, largely because if they are genetic, she gets the credit.  Even when she praises my law degree, she adds “talk about salmon swimming upstream,” because her father’s family went to Emory and practiced law in Atlanta.  So, do I get the credit, Mom, or do you?

Five hundred words into this, I’m still conflicted.  I am well aware that I value myself for many reasons other than the simple possession of a human soul.  I value my inherited traits, in spite of the fact that I don’t believe in that.  I value my accomplishments, in spite of the fact that I know that I have the potential to achieve much more.  And I value the fact that I do know how to stay polite even when I am exhausted and it’s ninety-four degrees outside, how to charm the socks off of anyone, how to be equal to any occasion.  I value the fact that my family has instilled the same skills and values in my niece.  Does this make me a snob?  I don’t think so, because I strongly dislike it when others behave coarsely or rudely.  A snob wants to be special; I want everyone to be polite.  That said, I love compliments, and I adore understanding a joke that almost no one else gets.  It makes me feel smart and witty, more so than everyone else.

What about the inherent judgment in this entire train of thought?  Am I castigating people for wanting to feel special about something, working to attain whatever it is that will make them feel special, and then having it stolen from them?  How could I?  Why don’t I simply feel for them the same mild pity that I feel for my mother and her mother, not because they were victimized, not because they’re broke, but because the money, the stuff, is what they feel is– or was– most valuable about them.  That what they are  most compelled to brag about is material.

And that is pitiable indeed.  First of all, anyone who has watched twenty minutes of television knows that money does not create value in a person, it simply allows them to more greatly express and display their own values.  In fact, this can be a detriment, as is evident if those twenty minutes were spent watching Bravo.  Second, as Machiavelli pointed out, money is fickle.  It’s risky to tie your self-worth to your bank balance.  But most importantly, I don’t know anyone who I value most because of what they own.  And if I did, I would write that person off as a waste or a load or both.

From an economic standpoint alone, rarity is what we value most.  And there are a lot of people with money.  Money if fungible; a million bucks is a million bucks; there’s nothing special about your particular million.  Why don’t we decide to value things that matter, and that last?  What about never making excuses?  What about always following your heart in life, refusing to live by default?  What about having the courage to face unpleasant truths and overcome them?  What about having the compassion to remember to compliment a stranger who looks like they need it?  Or having the public spirit to pick up nails off of the ground?  Or the tenacity to work harder than you thought you could?  Or the creativity to throw a fabulous party on a tiny budget, in a shitty apartment, and still make your guests feel special?  When I think of the people I admire most, people I am most grateful know, these are the things that come to my mind.  And I know I’m not the only one.

I adore money, and I’d be furious if someone defrauded me.  But riskier than any investment is the idea of tying your self-worth to your net worth.  And, to my mind, it’s also a clear sign that you don’t know what’s really valuable about you.

Why I am still so grateful to have been born in the United States

You know what?  I bank at WaMu.  I didn’t even bother to move my checking account, EVEN after I read that WaMu had a 2 out of 99 (or whatever it was) a couple of weeks ago.  I trust that FDIC coverage means something.  Besides, most of my cash is in my credit union account; WaMu is just where I keep my checking.  So today I log on to check my balance (having heard that WaMu finally bit it) and I’m directed to JPMorgan Chase.  They’ve bought my bank account.  Everything is fine.  If I had over 100k, it would still be fine.  (Boy, would it, but I guess that’s not the point)  My direct deposit?  No problem; I don’t have to change a thing.

There is NO OTHER country in the world where this would happen (well, okay, the British Pound is really strong for a reason).  I have a Portuguese classmate from high school whose parents used to be rich and are now middle class because their money was in a SWISS bank that failed.  A Swiss bank!!!  We take so much for granted.  Don’t get me wrong; I worry about the erosion of our civil liberties under the stupid brat who smirks from the Oval Office.  I worry about the insane lending practices that screwed us big-time (not to mention the until very recently ever-increasing moral imperative to overspend or be considered less of a human).  I worry about our grotesque infant mortality rate, and the fact that people still starve in a country where everyone I know routinely throws away food.  And I worry about our apparent refusal to comprehend that we can’t all drive giant vehicles any time we want to go anywhere.  (Really! It isn’t feasible.)

But still– 6% unemployment and we consider it a recession?  20th Century economists set full employment at somewhere between 93 and 98 percent, meaning 2-7% unemployment constitutes full employment.  I’ll quote an English guy I dated a couple of times: “You Americans have no idea what a recession is.  Recession is: you lose your job; you lose your house.  Everyone you know loses their job, loses their house.”  It’s so true.  We need a good president, definitely.  We need responsible citizens who live within their means.  We need corporations that don’t knowingly operate on Ponzi schemes.  But we’re still really freaking lucky.

Please, Lord, Rain on the Heathens’ Parades

We had the Pride Parade in Atlanta two weeks ago, in the middle of a massive drought, just like we always do.  The fundamentalists were out en masse, same as always.  And once again, it rained buckets.  I have a theory about this.  I think that they come out and pray together for God to please spoil this display of wickedness, in as spectacular a way as possible, and that God thinks something along the lines of: “Well, they do need the rain.  And most of those so-called heathens look like they’d be more than happy to have their shirts stick to their chests; I mean they have been spending a lot of time in the gym to get ready for this.  And some of those lesbians look like they’ve really had enough and kind of want an excuse to go home.  Oh, all right.  I’m not gonna smite them; I’m not gonna strike them with lightning and permanently brand them, but I’ll rain on their parade.  Take it to mean whatever you want.”

I’ve made some people really mad with this theory, but it does seem to me that enough people praying about a thing does tend to produce results.  No, I do not know why that hasn’t brought peace on earth, maybe because it’s a taller order and it takes more sustained prayer by a larger group.  Maybe because it would require acts of humans, rather than an act of God.  After all, we get rain, not streets full of suddenly converted gays running home in shame.  All I know is that we always have a drought, and it always rains buckets for the Pride parade in the middle of said drought, and there are always droves of protesters standing around praying before the rain.

I realize that a theory without practical application is pretty damn worthless, especially a theory this vapid, and I also know that your time is valuable, so here goes.  I propose that we use this hypothesis to try to solve the Southeast’s annual drought.  Every month of summer, we could have a different event designed to invoke the ire of the fundamentalists, who would then protest, pray for God to smite the sinners, or show the participants the error of their ways, or whatever, and he’ll shrug and douse everyone with rain.  Since we already have Pride in early July, I suggest Darwin Days in August, with a big Evolution Parade capping the whole weekend.  Papier mache dinosaurs would be utterly ruined by a downpour, and the Neanderthal wigs would undoubtedly smell like wet dog, but the fish with feet would look cool stomping in puddles.

September already has the perfect occasion: the last week of the month is Banned Books Week.  We just have to do it right.  Want to dress up like Holden Caulfield or Atticus Finch and march?  Great, but we really need a Harry Potter or two, if we want to bring out the wrathful.  And could somebody make a float celebrating the girl power of Judy Blume?  Thanks.  Nothing sends your daughters to hell faster than letting them talk to God or be curious and excited about their developing bodies.  As for June, I don’t know, we could make it a sure thing and have Secular Humanist Fair (nevermind that it would be attended ONLY by protestors).  Single Mother’s Week would work, too, or for that matter, Childless By Choice-fest; both would be equally vilified.

Right there, we have three rainy weekends in the heart of drought season.  We have great fellowship activities for countless church groups.  We have parades– gross, but kids like them.  And, we have a reminder that God is among us.  He answers our prayers, even the judgmental ones.  He does it in a way that– eh, might mollify us, but is absolutely not going to hurt our enemies, sorry.  He puts up with all of our nonsense, even mine (yeah, like this right here).  And he washes all of our garbage right down the gutter, without distinction.

Mom, the zany one-woman Greek chorus

I was home for a few days this past weekend, catching up with some old high school friends in town from San Francisco. Since my family home is in Birmingham, and I live in Atlanta, it was easier to bring my cat with me than to board her. Mom loves cats, the nuttier the better, so she made few demands other than “Leave her here when you go out with your friends.” My mother’s relationships with cats can best be shown with a couple of examples. When my little sister found out that she was pregnant, swearing Mother to secrecy, Mom kept from bursting with excitement by telling the cat. And he wasn’t the kind of cat who really gave a shit about other people’s good news. He spit whenever he heard my older brother’s name, for reasons known only to himself. His vet file said “BITES” in huge letters on the side.  He just wasn’t the kind of cat to be happy about a baby, more the kind that would feed the old superstitions about cats sitting on babies and stealing the breath straight from their little mouths until they suffocate.

Then there was the time that I was living at home while going through a divorce and applying to law school. I’d been with the same guy since I was 18, and Mom was kind of freaked about me, and I was pretty damn stressed myself, so her way of helping me was to bring the cat around me and tell him nice things about me, especially things that the cat and I had in common. Basically that we’re quiet and look good, but she made that go a long way.

So I wasn’t worried about leaving Mom with the cat or vice versa. My cat is actually nice, so I felt pretty good about it, as a matter of fact. And the next morning, I found that Mom and the cat had spent a wonderful evening watching an I Love Lucy marathon together. This seemed like the perfect combination of factors for more reasons than I can articulate. First of all, there’s the way my mom feels about cats. On top of that, there’s the way she feels about I Love Lucy. Suffice to say that I think her epitaph should say “She was zany.” But more importantly is the way that Mom is about TV. She’s like a one-woman Greek chorus for the slowest witted TV companion you could ever find. Basically, a TV watcher would have to be very hard of hearing or nearly blind or unable to speak much English for Mom’s helpful asides to be anything but massive plot-spoilers or punch-line jumpers.  For instance, if someone is wearing a wig that is going to fall off at a humorous moment, she’ll turn around four seconds before it happens and stage whisper, “Don’t forget she’s wearing a W-I-G.”  Thanks, Mom, you saved the joke for me.  I never would have noticed the humor in seeing someone’s wig fall off during a tango contest if you hadn’t told me to expect it.  A cat, on the other hand, might actually miss this sort of humor if he doesn’t know to pay attention.  And if it’s a particularly sharp cat who’s already familiar with physical comedy, then at least he probably can’t spell, so her comment will go right over his head.

The only thing that keeps Mom from being an ideal cat owner– well, there are a few.  She’s allergic.  Okay, she could maybe deal with that.  Except that she also has lots of antiques that she really doesn’t like broken or pissed on, and her cats tend to be psychotic, so they piss everywhere and break things.  And, of course, she likes to watch them sleep and then kiss them on the nose– right, wake the cat up with a large predator’s mouth right in his face.  Two stitches to the eye, and she took it really personally.  Then there’s the fact that she really beleves that cats speak English and are intelligent.  Sorry, Mom, sorry all cat lovers, but while they may speak English, they have the intelligence of about an eighteen month old human.  If my siblings and I had still had the intelligence of eighteen month old humans when we were eighteen months old, we’d be dead.  Mom has no patience for the slow, in spite of the fact that she caters her TV commentary to them.

I guess that’s Mom’s deal with cats in a nutshell: she treats them like they’re her children.  Speaking from my own experience, that means that she feeds them milk that’s “just a little blinky,” but also gives them fresh whipped cream and homemade soups, dances with them (probably to Amy Winehouse), dotes on them madly, scares them silly by telling them about the nice ghost she knew when she was a kid (and the poltergeist who threw her grandmother across a room by her braids), and generally overstimulates the poor creatures with everything but structure and supervision.  If anyone knows of a pet who responds well to this kind of treatment, please, please, please tell me.

Middle child generation

I’m the youngest person in my Sunday school class. It’s a literature-based class at the Episcopal cathedral (and no, I don’t mean genre “Christian fiction,” I mean Reynolds Price, Steven King, and Alice Walker stories that have faith-related themes.) We talk about other things besides just the stories that we’re reading, and last week several members of the class started talking about political activism and what the fuck is up with our nation’s young people that they don’t protest anymore. I kind of looked back at them matter-of-factly, and said that I understood that the current crop of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds are very politically active. They said something along the lines of “about damn time,” gave me a funny look, and changed the subject. (Episcopalians have good manners.)

It got me thinking about what the fuck was the matter with my generation– I have no idea what a statistician would classify as a generation, but I tend to group it as all of my siblings, plus some people older than my older sister, minus our little brother Trent, who was born in 1980. He has always had MTV and VCRs, so he is different. Generation X, more or less. Anyway, why did we never collectively hoof it and spend a couple of years getting out the vote, screaming in front of administration buildings, putting our life on hold while we fixed the world? It occurred to me that it’s probably because we, as a generation, are a lot like a middle child.

I am the most middle of middle child that you can be: I have an older sister, older brother, younger sister, and younger brother. I have every kind of sibling that you can have, and naturally, it’s affected my life. People tend to think that I must have grown up in orphan-like squalor and neglect, but in all honestly, it’s affected the way that I live my life at least as much as it’s affected the way that other people treat me. I read once that middle children always try to be different, and boy, is that true. The problem with that is that if your siblings are engaging in more or less standard rebellion, as mine were, you deliberately eschew a bunch of fun. Not that I avoided that sort of thing altogether, but generally I had this jaded attitude of how trite it all was when faced with drug use, casual sex, moving out of home at age eighteen to live in a really unsafe neighborhood with three roommates, and that sort of thing. I never liked the Violent Femmes, for instance, because my sister, Ginny, played them ad nauseum when I was about eight years old, and I was terribly scornful of anyone who thought that they were cutting edge when I was in junior high and high school. I still believe that they recorded their first album shortly after the Civil War, and that everyone “discovers” it when they hit junior high. (See what I mean about the jaded attitude? I’m jaded about something I didn’t even do!)

Luckily I had the chance to more or less rectify the situation when I went to law school. Since it was right after my divorce, in my late twenties (and thanks to all the clean living, I looked way younger), I decided to go ahead and use it as my golden opportunity to rack up some misspent youth activities. And I did, although given how firmly ingrained it was in my mind by then that I’m kind of lame, I still suspected that it had the air of “Norman Rockwell’s great-niece gets a little crazy!”

Whatever. We are who we are, and I have some major advantages from being a middle child. All this determination to be different has made me hyper-aware of whether I’m wringing enough enjoyment out of life: I’ve tried every hobby I ever wanted to, from grappling, to ice skating, to improv theater. Having something to prove has made me apply myself and get somewhere: I’ve got a nice condo, I’ve traveled internationally several times and for good stretches of time, I have a law degree and have tried a bunch of cases– I’ve gotten people out of jail! And I can get along with anybody. I can figure out what motivates anybody. I’m very adaptable, which as Darwin theorized, is the big secret of success.

But, still, there was a self-awareness about the whole thing. I knew that I wasn’t the center of the universe. I always knew that. I knew that other people had done X,Y, or Z before me, and I saw the effect it had on their lives. I heard the way that whatever they were doing was dismissed by adults as a phase and I saw that it often was, in fact, a silly phase, a predictable phase. When you’ve seen the same people go through the same motions every generation, it’s hard to see the point repeating the process. And as a generation, we lived in the daunting shadow of the Baby Boomers, who had so thoroughly, loudly, and publicly done everything that young people do that we had every right to be jaded about something we’d never done. Why give ourselves up to their scrutiny? Why set ourselves up for derision? Why deliberately engage in what could only amount to an imitation of what everybody on the planet had just finished doing? No, thanks.

So we didn’t spend our youth saving the world, I suppose. But maybe we’ll figure out how to do it differently, on our own schedule, when we understand why we want to do it in the first place. I expect it’ll be similar to what I did with my extended travel, my law school clubbing (and whatnot), and all the assorted goings-on that I still find myself getting into, now that I appreciate why I want to get into it in the first place. A good friend of mine is seriously considering leaving a high-paying job to enter the Peace Corps in a year or two. I work as a public defender, and write about how the system is screwed up and what we can do to fix it. Another friend recently left a seriously high-paying job to visit an ashram for three weeks, then took a six figure pay cut when she got home, to work in public interest.

So maybe instead of rebelling and then “selling out,” as first child generations seem to do, or just coasting altogether with lots of funding from our parents, as youngest child generations seem to do, my generation has decided to see the establishment from the inside, and then reject what we don’t believe in and keep what we do. Maybe there’s a really good chance that we’ll have a lasting effect on society by learning more about how it works before we try to change it. And we’ll do it with a solid foundation of education, a sense of perspective and maturity, and a thrill to be given the chance.

Tell ‘em what they want to hear

I am a terrible liar. Always have been. It’s not that I can’t think of amazingly believable lies, it’s that I find it physically uncomfortable to deliver them. This is especially true if it’s someone I respect, but even to a total stranger, a total stranger who I know wants to be lied to, I have to tell the truth. Fortunately, I’m a lawyer, so I’m required to tell the truth as part of my job. Okay, stop laughing. Seriously, there’s little that physically disgusts most lawyers more than a member of the profession who will lie in court. I also can’t lie to my clients. They hate me for that. They sometimes fire me for that. For instance, my former client who was charged with DUI and told the arresting officer, by way of explaining his refusal to take a breath test, “I beat a DUI before and I’ll beat this one, too.” I told him the truth about our chances, and he fired me. But it’s better than losing my license if I promised him an acquittal (or dismissal– why not?) and he went into trial trusting me to take care of things.

My former job was a bad job for a bad liar: I was a recruiter. It’s basically sales, and I’m sorry, but people seem to need some softening around the edges of the truth when you’re in sales. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell somebody what a great employer some  company was if I knew nothing about the place. My colleague Martha, who’d been in “head-hunting” since the glory days of cold-calling in the seventies, was frustrated beyond belief by this. She took it as a sign of bad character that I would NOT lie to clients about their futures, as though I wanted to steal food from the mouths of her grandchildren.

Now that I think about it, my mother wouldn’t lie when she worked in sales, either, and it earned her a huge following. She sold high end women’s clothing, and if something was unflattering, she wouldn’t be mean, but she never lied about it. If she could tell they weren’t excited about a garment, she not only refused to pressure them to buy it, she gave them an easy out: “Well, I can see you’re not really jumping up and down about it.” They adored her. She had customers coming to her for years. Management, of course, was horrified every time they saw her in action, or would have been if she’d been naive enough to let them: she kept her mouth shut when they were around, listened like she cared during meetings about suggestive selling, and did her job as she saw fit. Finally, tired of any business in which she was the most scrupulous person, she left retail and started working at a library.

My little sister, Susan, has trouble lying, too. Unfortunately for her, she works in sales. Over the years, she’s found ways of succeeding in jobs where you generally have to lie, in spite of her inability to engage in it. When she worked at a dessert and martini bar, for instance, she often got asked about the signature drink, a raspberry and chocolate martini. It was nasty sweet, and she told them so: “People say it tastes like cough syrup, ma’am.” She found that people were generally grateful for the advice, but I think this is rare, and my friends in food service back me up.

A friend of mine used to wait tables at a high-end restaurant with veal on the menu. When he first started, one of his experienced colleagues noticed his efforts to find out the answers to all of the questions that customers asked, and quickly put an end to it. “You don’t have time for that. Don’t be afraid to bull-shit them. If somebody asks you about the veal, just say that it’s Montana free range.” Maybe you find this offensive, but I see the logic here. If you’re asking about it, that means that the menu doesn’t indicate where the veal comes from, and I’m sorry, but any restaurant that ordered free range veal from Montana would damn well tout that on the menu. Anyone who stopped to think about that would realize it, so it’s easy to rationalize that the customer just wants their veal rationalized.

I saw the same thing happen at Alon’s right before Thanksgiving. Alon’s is the bakery where I basically live, and they’re awesome, so naturally they were swamped right before the holiday. One woman in front of the pastry case was obsessing over the cakes she had to buy for an office party. She kept asking people near the case if they knew about carrot cake, and whether her office would like it. Everyone told her what you’d normally tell someone in this situation: their carrot cake is great; yeah, lots of people like carrot cake; yeah, theirs is great. She still wasn’t satisfied, and finally asked the employee behind the counter if carrot cake would be a good choice.

“I have to bring three cakes,” she explained, “and I just don’t know anything about cakes or baking, or anything like that. I’m an ob-gyn nurse, so I just don’t know anything about cakes.” I’d say that’s a non sequitor, except it’s more like an inconsistency. Every time I’ve been to a doctor’s or dentist’s office, half the staff is talking about where they’re going for lunch. Besides, she works with women all day long; how could she not even consider bringing chocolate? Seemed simple to me: get one chocolate, one carrot, and maybe one cheesecake or tiramisu. The counter guy knew at once that a simple solution was not what this woman wanted; she wanted reassurance about the random decision she’d already made. He listened to her carefully, nodded, and then, with a perfectly straight face, said “Well, carrot is the universal cake.” “Really?” she asked, while I tried not to snort. “Yes, the universal cake,” he repeated, as if defying the universe to cosmically contradict such an outrageous load of horse shit. The universe did not. And the customer bought the lie and the cake.

Now that I think about it, it seems like there are some situations when people want to hear a lie, and it’s pointless or mean to give them otherwise.  I have minimal tolerance for this sort of thing, but I see when it has its uses, mainly when the situation is irrevocable (“It seems kind of short to me, but everybody at the salon said it looked good.  What do you think?”) or when the issue is strictly one of taste and yours simply clashes with theirs, in which case, evasion can sometimes do the trick as well as a lie (“You seem so happy together!”).

I can think of several times when I’ve asked for lies in those situations.  Oddly enough, this is one time I can’t call my mother, whose ability to tell tall tales is legendary.  She simply doesn’t do it when it matters.  But I can always get a nice distraction when she totally changes the subject.  (“I’d rather hear about your trip to the beach!”)  This is how I know that she thinks I’m making a mistake.  I suppose in waiter-speak, that would be “The salmon is raised humanely!” which would result in a diner who knows that the calf was confined to a tiny pen and fed corporate slop, all for them.  Such diners don’t enjoy their dinner, don’t tip well, and probably don’t come back.

So is the lie more about the person who wants to hear it, or the person who has to tell it?  I have to admit that it’s easy for me to throw up professional ethics as the reason not to soften the edges of reality for my clients.  And now that I’m required to tell these hard truths, I miss the days when I could give somebody a bout of blissful ignorance about the hideous reality of their haircut or the fact that some fabulous person really doesn’t care about them one way or another.  I guess I can still do that, but it pales next to explaining the probation fees and license suspensions my clients are facing.  I suppose that means that maybe I am a bad liar, but I’m not such a great truth-teller, either.

What you need

I recently decided to sell my car, buy a scooter, and rely on my bicycle, MARTA, a 49 cc scooter, and Flexcar as my means of transportation. I don’t want to own a car anymore, at least not until tens of thousands of dollars doesn’t seem like a hell of a lot of money to spend for something that I really know nothing about. I live in midtown Atlanta and work at the courthouse and the jail. The courthouse is five train stations from my house, the jail is a quick ride on my scooter (4 or 5 miles), and I hang out solely within the perimeter. I almost never use a highway, and I almost never go more than five miles from my house. I don’t buy in bulk, and I live alone. When I do need a car, I can reserve one from Flexcar, pay by the hour or day, and not worry about insurance, registration, repairs, or gas. To me, this was one of the most liberating decisions I’ve ever made, but I’m amazed at how many people think that it’s impossible.

“You’re gonna have to get a car.” “You need a car.” “You have to have a car.” Even my French neighbor, Jean-Francois, whose other house is in Place de la Bastille, has his doubts. So far, I’ve been fine, but in fact, there’s no way it can be true that I “have to have” a car. Lots of people don’t have cars. Many of those people don’t have scooters, or car reservation services, or even bicycles. Life is damned inconvenient for them but they manage. And honestly, life was far more inconvenient for me with an ailing car than it is without any car at all.

It’s always enlightening to find out what other people think you have to have. I went to Emory law school after growing up and attending college in Birmingham, Alabama. One of the reasons I went there (scholarship notwithstanding) was that the student body didn’t look like the people I’d grown up with, and I wanted to broaden my horizons. I distinctly remember calling my big sister a couple of weeks after classes started, fretting that I didn’t fit in. “Ginny, those Yankee girls don’t look like us. There’s this one girl who wears gold velour sweat suits, like the kind Jack Tripper used to wear on Three’s Company, with gold jewelry, full makeup, and a Vuitton bag. Sometimes a Gucci or Chanel bag.” She told me about Juicy Couture (Ginny reads US Weekly), and for some reason, that reassured me and I eventually got used to it, except for the makeup and jewelry with sweats.

It’s probably obvious that what I ended up doing was adding to my knowledge of humanity by learning not just what educated but low-key Southerners are like, but also what people from Florida and New York who’ve known since birth that they were expected to be lawyers are like. I’ve always thought Emory was a stellar school; a surprising number of my classmates spent the first semester stunned and ashamed over not being at an Ivy League law school. A couple of them actually said “I don’t belong here,” or “I’m supposed to be at an Ivy League school.” Then they got their first semester grades and had a whole new set of worries. They had to get into the top twenty-five percent, minimum, because they had to get a big firm job. Apparently everyone has to have these things, which may explain why many law students steadfastly refuse to try to do math.

The things that they had to have didn’t end there. One of my good friends grew up in a very affluent family, and has more self-imposed pressure than anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t know if there’s a drug that could make her comfortable with herself, make her feel good enough. She and her husband started house hunting as soon as she got a job offer, and of course, the stress was killing her. On $120K a year, there was simply no way they could get what they had to have. “I don’t know how people do it,” she fretted. I naively assured her that there were lots of affordable houses and condos in the city. No, condos were out. And there were no houses for under half a million. My ex-boyfriend had just sold one, not three miles from Emory, for $165K, so I knew this was false. I mentioned that, and then found out that his house didn’t have what you have to have. “It has to be in a walking neighborhood, with sidewalks– you know, walking distance from shops and restaurants.” I nodded. “And it has to have at least five bedrooms and three bathrooms.” “For two of you?” “Well, he’s a total pack rat.” I started to get the idea. “And it has to be in a good school district, so our kids can go to good schools. You have to send your kids to good schools.” Right, because they have to be able to get into a good college and then law school so they can live the good life like this. (Actually, that’s nothing compared to the lawyer I met who was five months pregnant with her first child and announced during a deposition break that “My kids are going to be doctors.”)

Seriously, I have no doubt that I’ll be bitching about my kids’ educational needs just as soon as I procreate. And I love living in a neighborhood where I can walk to lots of shops and restaurants. But I don’t kid myself that I have to have these things. I’m aware that I think that I have to have a refrigerator. I seriously cannot imagine living without a refrigerator. I’m not even sure that my house would be up to code without one– can I legally live in a house without a fridge? I really don’t know. On the other hand, I also know that lots of people live entire lives without ever staring into one bummed that there’s nothing good to eat. One of the biggest benefits of learning what other people have to have is rethinking my own list.

So, no car. I don’t have to have one. But if I’m going to keep riding this scooter all winter, I really need to buy some better gloves. I saw some on ebay, leather lined with rabbit fur. I’m bidding as we speak; I have to have them.

The monkeys are busy, so of course, I’m not

It’s a very bad day monkey-wise. My sister Ginny may be the only person other than my husband and my therapist who knows anything about the monkeys in my brain. That’s because Ginny has rabbits in hers.

I am nowhere near as crazy as the preceding sentences might lead one to believe, I just have ADD. And so does most of my family, although I am the only one who has been formally diagnosed. I don’t know if it is something you are born with or if it’s learned behavior, but either way none of us had much of a chance of developing any other way with our mom raising us. She has an energy level and attention span not unlike that of a squirrel on crack. I can’t really remember Mom sitting still, or checking our homework, or picking us up on time, or taking us shopping. Mom hates shopping. I always thought we didn’t have much money, or rather that there were so many of us that Dad’s salary didn’t go that far. Dad’s salary was fine, he was spending it elsewhere (nefariously, natch) and leading Mom to believe things were tight. I’m fairly certain the money could have been found, but Mom hated shopping and not doing it suited her fine, so poor-mouthing saved her from it.

I hate shopping, too. Apparently it’s a very common “symptom” (for lack of a better word) of ADD. I get overwhelmed really quickly, get frustrated and anxious and have to leave. Too much stimuli. I can’t sort it out and couldn’t find what I wanted if I tried. I literally feel like shaking my head sometimes when I leave a store and frequently do. The irrational thought being that I can move things back into place. I know I can’t, but as a coping mechanism it’s not bad.

But back to the monkeys. On really bad ADD days, I’m somewhat paralyzed, I just shut down. I can’t make myself work. On these days it feels like I’ve got chimps in my head jumping up and down doing that screechy thing they do. I kind of picture them banging on typewriters (but only because it’s a frequently used image in popular culture). Anyway, it’s hard to concentrate on much of anything, unless I fixate on it, like I have this blog. I should be figuring out dinner or straightening up or making sure Tallulah is doing her homework. But I can’t. And it sucks. There is a stupidly simple quote I need to draw up for a builder on some marble countertops. But I just can’t make myself do it. I will eventually get these things done later tonight, probably…I hope.

The only job I ever had where both I and the monkeys thrived was a page designer at the newspaper. It’s beautiful. You come in, they hand you pages, tell you what stories need to run, maybe give you some art, and set you loose. You’ve got 6 hours to get it all on the page and it has to be done, no exceptions–the pressmen are union and the paper can’t afford your procrastination or, and this is the beautiful part, perfection. Sure, people check your work and you fix any errors they can find, but mistakes, although not liked, are acknowledged as somewhat inevitable. When you finish, it’s over. Tomorrow is a clean slate and there is nothing to worry about needing to get done because it is all done. Ahh. Newspaper, fabulous job, horrible pay.

In the past, the monkeys made me fixate on writing purposely shitty poetry (although it could be argued that most poetry is intolerably shitty and definitely masturbatory), or random thoughts in a different language so passers-by couldn’t read the idiocy floating from my brain onto the page. (So I guess this blog thing is a natural extension of both of those except that I’m not writing it in Cyrillic script and I am putting it out there for all to see.) The monkeys wear me out. When they’re done with their business, I am very relaxed, but unable really to form useful thoughts. Things that are routine get done (shower for Tallulah, make sure she brushes her teeth, and then a bedtime chapter). Take out contacts, brush teeth, watch Jon Stewart in bed and stay up halfway through Colbert hoping he does The Word, and then try very hard to fall asleep. If it strays from the routine, forget about it.

This is not much of an ending, but I’ve lost interest and the monkeys are sleeping so I can’t think of one more damn thing to say. Except this was fun, and self indulgent. Monkeys are a leit motif for me. And if you’re lucky, I might tell the story of Ruben the Spider Monkey next.

–Susan

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