Heartache, Heartbreak, and the tale of the game of Mousetrap...

I turned 26 yesterday. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since my last birthday, but somehow, the days have turned into weeks, weeks have turned into months, and a year has gone by without anything significant to show for it.

Many years, I try to look back on my past year and tally up the kinds of things that happened to me during the year, good and bad, to see whether I can think of it as being a good year, a bad year, or somewhere in between.

My first impression is that this past year wasn’t one of my best. I’ve been accused, without evidence (indeed, in spite of significant evidence to the contrary) of being a modern devotee of Adolph Hitler. I’ve had a complete stranger ridicule my life, my beliefs, and lash out at some of my most vulnerable emotions and memories without explanation or apology. I’ve had an acquaintance die, and have dealt with the grief and suffering of people about whom I care. My beloved uncle died from a medical condition under bizarre circumstances in a way that caused him to waste away in front of my eyes. My brother has become more distant to me, and a life he formerly split between his friends and myself has been diluted even further by the addition of his wife to the mix. I have unsuccessfully attempted to deal with the loss of four of my five friends - four female friends who turned their backs on me for reasons I still don’t understand and who deny me friendship or closure to this day. Former friends won’t return e-mails or phone calls. Even faceless corporations refuse to return answers to my letters and e-mails. I’ve hit rock bottom psychologically more times in the past year than in any year since my disastrous sophomore year at KU when I used to stand on the top railing of the Grace Pearson fire escape and silently dare the wind to blow just a little harder. My life is daily plagued by uncertainty, melancholy, crippling self-doubt, and apprehension.

At the same time, I have to stop and consider the good things that have come in the past year. I made a major decision about my future life and about the people close to whom I would like to live. I have gained a sister my own age and a brother just a little younger than me. I have gained a new little sister (3rd grade) who loves listening to my stories, wants to play “Mousetrap” with me, and has been asking her big sister when I’m coming up to visit next. I’m almost finished with education that will make me the most educated person in my family (excluding a 4th cousin who became a medical doctor). A professor I respect told me that I had definite talents that should cause me to consider pursuing a professorship someday. I’ve begun tutoring a woman in preparation for her imminent entrance to law school. I’ve proved to myself that I can manage a decorating a household, following a budget, and effecting standard household repairs. I’ve gotten the highest grade in my class in several classes, and near to the highest in several more. I’ve even managed to scrape together enough money out of my investments and savings to send to charitable organizations that I support.

I’ll have to think on it a bit more before I judge my past year, but the tally is closer than normal. Instead of a dull year in which small good or bad things have happened, the past year has been a non-stop rollercoaster ride of ecstatic highs and crushing lows. Where it averages out isn’t clear to me yet, but I’m hoping that this coming year will be better.

Memory Lane

Last night, after finishing my readings for Native American Law, I decided that I wanted to get another book to read. I wandered into my den and started browsing through my library when I came across my old yearbooks from junior high and high school. On a whim, I pulled them out and glanced through them. I was surprised by how much I’d forgotten, but absolutely shocked when some folded pieces of paper fluttered out of one of the yearbooks. I immediately recognized them, but couldn’t understand how in the world I had ever forgotten that they existed.

In order to understand, though, I have to start the story much earlier. I know how everyone (although I’m wondering who I mean when I say ‘everyone’) must surely hate it when I engage in long-winded recollections about my youth, but bear with me.

As I’ve mentioned before, I was a fairly solitary kid. Moving around a lot as a child kept me from forming lasting relationships, and when my family settled in Topeka, I didn’t know how to relate to other children my own age. Largely until the end of my high school career, I spent most of my time alone. During these years, though, every so often there would be people who would enter my life and make me feel like I was somebody who was really worth knowing. It made me feel like maybe all of the people who wouldn’t deign to associate with me were the fools making the mistake. It made me feel a little bit less like the outsider and more like a normal human being.

I’ve written already about the debt of gratitude I owe a friend named Nik for his contribution to my life, and of the guilt I hold at not being able to keep him from killing himself. There were others as well, though – people who stepped in and brought vibrancy and color to an otherwise pedestrian life. Among those were ‘the girls.’

When I was in eighth grade, I took Spanish as one of my electives. I’ve always learned languages quickly, and was a full year ahead of my peers. I was in the Spanish class normally taken by ninth graders instead. Normally being the loner, I wasn’t all that concerned about being in a class where I didn’t really know anybody. In a way, it was par for the course.

The class was a mid-day class and we had lunch during that period. Lunchtime always posed a special problem for me (and did again when I had to eat in a dining center at KU) because I didn’t know where I was supposed to sit. People would claim their tables and my only option was to try to find an empty table where I could be out of everybody else’s way.

I’m edging toward relevance here. I swear it.

Also enrolled in the class were the four most attractive girls in the school. They hung out together, ate lunch together, and sat together in Spanish. Every guy in the school knew their names. Christy, Hannah, Joane, and Caitlin were the ‘in’ crowd and everybody wanted them or wanted to be them.

For reasons I still can’t understand, they… for lack of a better term… ‘adopted’ me. I sat with them in Spanish. I sat with them at lunch. They even accepted an invitation to come over to my house and swim in the pool once. I got to listen to their conversations and be a part of their lives. I learned about how adorable the girls found it that a little brother of one of them had asked his big sister about what romantic things he could do to help him win a girl he had a crush on. I talked to them about their dreams and hopes. I learned what guys they had crushes on and even hung on their every word about how they did on the last Spanish test. It was amazing. I couldn’t really believe that somehow I was their friend.

The pieces of paper that fell out of the yearbook were notes that they’d written me that I’d hung onto. Somehow, not only had I forgotten about the notes after all this time, but I’d forgotten about the people too. Realizing that made me disgusted with myself. Being part of their group, even if only for a year, made me realize how much I was missing out on.

The scraps of paper that fell out reminded me of how much I miss that type of camaraderie. Male friendships don’t have the type of intimacy that female friendships can have, and you’d quickly lose male friends if you wanted to talk about things being ‘adorable.’ In the notes, Hannah calls me ‘sweetie,’ Christy reminds me that they’ll save my place at the lunch table, and every note is signed with a heart.

I’d give anything to have that again.

Two quick notes:

First, I've never really felt obliged to apologize for anything that I've ever done in my dreams at night, but yesterday I woke and felt guilty. I'm sorry about the grenade and also about pretending to be in a coma. Hopefully my subconscious will be suitably chastised by the apology and refrain from having me do things like that while asleep.

Second, due to the nature of the Washington Bar, I neither have to take or prepare for the MBE or MPRE. Neither are given or accepted in Washington. Everything I have to do is on the Washington Bar itself. And as an added plus, I only have to register 90 days in advance. Awesome.

Literary discussion

I haven’t really talked about it much (or at all, I suppose), but classes have started for the Spring 2007 semester. I’m really enjoying the semester so far, which is a welcome change from how I’ve generally felt all of the previous ones have gone. Each semester, I sign up for classes and expect them to be one way, but usually find that they are slightly different than what I was led to believe from the course descriptions. So far, everything seems to be right on track for this semester, which is great.

One of my courses is going to be challenging in a way I hadn’t expected, though. My Law in Literature class is a class where, ostensibly, we are learning about how law is portrayed in literature and what preconceived notions that clients may come to us with in the future. In reality, we’re reading detective novels and discussing them, as if the class was a book club. This suits me just fine because it is a refreshing change from statutory interpretation and case law.

As fun as it might sound, I’m already somewhat nervous that my classmates are simply not prepared to understand the very nature of what project they are enmeshed in. We just finished reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” and started discussion today. I walked out of that class with the impression that the vast majority of the class finished that book with a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the characters involved.

The general consensus of the class was that Sherlock Holmes was a conceited, egotistical jerk whose relationship to Watson was either written as that of keeping Watson down to make Holmes look better or of a teacher harshly pushing a student to better himself. When I heard these thoughts, I was floored.
How could they all have gotten it so utterly wrong?

When I suggested to the class that Holmes wasn’t really egotistical, the idea was dismissed and a fellow pointed out that Holmes had his feelings hurt when he was unable to catch a suspect in London. Holmes had turned to Watson and told him that, when chronicling their adventure, Watson should not leave out Holmes’ failure to catch the suspect. Some other heads in the class nodded in agreement at the fellow’s recollection of this event.

Could these people really be serious? If so, I worry at their futures as lawyers. Holmes, far from being an egotistical man, is virtually without ego and pride. He is unconcerned with his own feelings and wholly concerned with truth-finding. Indeed, a man overly prideful would have desired that Watson endeavor to sugarcoat or hide the failure in his writings. Holmes was so unconcerned with Watson writing about the failure that he demands that Watson do so. Why? Because it is the truth of what actually happened.

How individuals could try to use the most damning piece of evidence against their theory of ‘Holmes as the egotist’ in their favor bodes ill for their ability to prepare an internally coherent theory of a case later on, I fear.