Red Letter Day

We got the word this afternoon.
The pathology reports confirm the chemotherapy is working.
My wife's cancer finally got the hint. It's overstayed it's welcome and now it's time to leave.
I have a quick word for it:

Good riddance...
Don't come back.

Law and Disorder

*Names have been changed to protect the ridiculous.

I cannot stand Isaac Jacobson*.
There are two kinds of students in my law school class: The kind I like and the kind I don’t.
Isaac falls in the latter category. Isaac's the worst.
Isaac is a squirrelly little fellow. Isaac's smarter than me, and he knows it. Isaac brings his lunch every day. Isaac's wife packs it for him. Isaac's about thirty years old. A former newspaperman, Isaac likes to talk shop with me in the library at lunch. But I can’t ditch him because he’s in my research group and we always meet over lunch in the library.
Back to Isaac's packed lunch. He carries a blue Igloo mini-cooler stocked with the worst junk imaginable: gummy fruit snacks, candy bars, peanut butter crackers, Nutella, Snak Paks, Funyuns, potato salad, packets of mayonnaise. It’s prepostrous. Isaac eats more than anyone I know.
But Isaac is not fat. He either has bulimia or the metabolism of a hummingbird.
Isaac is a trim little guy, but he eats like pre-Subway Jared. Isaac also chews with his mouth open and smells like cool ranch dip. As his daily gluttony winds down, Isaac turns his snack-sized Dorito bag inside-out and licks the foil of all of the residual orange dust. It's as disgusting a sight as you'll see. Ever.
On Yom Kippur this year, Isaac, being Jewish, could not eat until sundown. The observance apparently took it's toll on Isaac. The way he was complaining, you would have thought that Isaac was a starving refugee. All day, Isaac refused to shut up about his rumbling Jewish tummy.
As an academic, Isaac confronts and verbally abuses people who don’t reshelve their library books. Isaac does not reshelve his own library books. Isaac raises his hand an inordinate amount in class and asks ludicrous and nonsensible questions. This seems to please the ludicrous and nonsensible professors considerably. When called upon, however, Isaac usually knows the answer. Isaac is smarter than me. Isaac knows this. Isaac has memorized specific cases by the party names, state and regional reporter cites.
It’s enough to make one want to beat Isaac silly with his own blue Igloo mini-cooler.
And Isaac's not the only one on my bad side after a month.
My biggest fear going in was that I would not fit in with my classmates. Law school sounds like such a pretentious and hoity-toity endevour - only undertaken by the priveledged and wealthy. I am neither. I'm just a midwestern kid who happened to luck his way into graduate school. I was the first person in my family to get a four year degree. My people are good folk, but nothing like the bluebloods I figured I'd be surrounded by. But I'm proud of where I come from and wouldn't trade that.
But to some degree, my fears came true. It's a bit intimidating, a bit competitive. There are some here who'd rather run you over in the parking lot in their BMW than help you fix a flat (this is a story for another time). These people are not nice people. If they were, even their little idiosyncrasies could be overlooked for their inner qualities. But for the most part, they are content to look down at us in class and do their best to condescend. I have to spend the next three years with these idiots.
However, to a greater degree, there are some truly down-to-earth people here who are very helpful and friendly. Several others have approached me to hang out, study together, grab a drink after class, share nightmares about the Socratic method of lecturing. It's comforting to know that there are at least a few students who share a similar background and are just as apprehensive about this whole thing as I am. This is largely a journey into the unknown for most of us and we're all in this together. I think, in the end, I'll fit in just fine.
But Isaac Jacobson.
Man, I cannot stand Isaac Jacobson.


Originally written September 23, 2002.

The Vindaloo Bugaboo

What in the name of Krishna is that smell?
Oh, that’s right. The people from India living next door are cooking curry. Considering that the entire population of my apartment is Indian, this means everyone but me is cooking curry.
What is my problem with curry, you ask? Well, the spices they use have the most offensive odor I've ever had the fortune of smelling. People of all nationalities love curry, but based up my own independent empirical study of Building 13 of the Concord Hills apartment complex, Indian people love it best.
However, being in the middle of several Bengali and Punjabi families, it wafts through the air ducts and into my nostrils, smelling like thick body odor and tickling my nausea. It's like a greenhouse in here. A greenhouse that only grows chicken tikka jalfrezi.
What does curry smell like to me, you boldly venture to ask? Well, close your eyes and picture this not-so-hyperbolic scenario…

Imagine the dirtiest, scruffiest person you know. The most unkempt, disheveled, disgusting, stinkiest mess of a person you have ever associated yourself with: a street person who hasn't known a shower in months, or that hippie dude down the hall from your college dorm, or me during puberty.
Now imagine that person’s sock.
This is no ordinary sock. This is that individual’s favorite sock. He never takes it off; he perpetually wears it. He sleeps in it, he labors in it, he works out in it. He hikes and plays racquetball in it. Later, he spills his dinner on it – a dinner of garlic sauerkraut and fish tacos. He goes to the toilet room in it. In the absence of tissue, he makes desperate use of said sock.
Now imagine if one day that person did take the sock off. Deciding that it has finally worn out, he then wads it up and throws it in a corner of a closet underneath a pile of musty, wet towels.
Years pass.
Mold grows.
Now imagine you find that sock under that pile of reeking mildewed stanky rank.
Then for some unfathomable reason you hold that sock up your face and inhale deeply through your nose…
This, my friend, is what curry smells like.
Like sweat, rotting carcasses and dog vomit.

Now Indian people are not necessarily dirty. They do not necessarily have poor hygiene. That's not the statement I'm trying to make. People from that region who come to America bathe often. I know because I hear them next door running their screeching showerhead in the wee hours of the morning while I’m trying to sleep.
Their feet are not dirty either. They don’t wear socks. I know this because I trip over their sandals everyday when they take them off and leave them haphazardly in the hallway.
It is not their socks I smell. It is their cooking. Their ridiculously foul-smelling cooking.
Being from Indiana, where there are only a bunch of white folks, three black people and a smattering of Mexicans, I am not cultured. I feel terribly guilty when I can’t understand the cashier's accent at China Buffet. I am intimidated by diversity, partly because of ignorance, and partly out of fear of the unfamiliar. This, I assume, is true of many who do not grow up without the surroundings of varying ethnicities. In this respect, I’m a product of my environment and I have a lot to learn.
Detroit is wildly diverse and all the better for it. Part of the reason why I wanted to move from Indianapolis is the exposure to different ways of life, ways of thinking, different cultures.
Law school is going to be a great education, but perhaps this culture shock is going to be an education in and of itself.
I think of how out of place I sometimes feel, and then realize that this is how all those who leave their home country to come here feel. And I can sympathize a bit with them a little bit. In reality, I’m the lucky one. I can drive thirty minutes to the suburbs and it feels like Indiana. But this is the only place they can maybe hope to feel comfortable – their little pocket of the community. And I’m the one invading their territory.
So will all this perspective make me stop zealously campaigning against curry?
Of course not. It smells like rotten garbage.
But it does make me stop and appreciate the fact that I have had it pretty good compared to some. And to be tolerant and understanding of those who are away from home in a strange new land.
I just won’t be asking them for any recipes.

Originally written on September 11, 2002.

14 Mile

They say that Eight Mile Road is the economic and racial dividing line between the rabble and ruin of Detroit’s city limits and the suburbs surrounding the town. This was famously memorialized in rapper Eminem's movie of the same name.
Supposedly, on the south side of the road - toward the city skyline - gangs roam freely, picking off innocent bystanders and randomly beating prostitutes. They say it's a real life Grant Theft Auto game: cars burn throughout the night, casting an orange glow through the urban smog, illuminating the struggling families caught between their impossible desire to achieve the American Dream and the violence of the dealer wars on the corner.
However, evidently on the north side of that road - just a pedestrian bridge toward suburbia - no one locks their doors and they have ticker-tape parades every weekend celebrating their whiteness; unicorns graze on candy corn flavored grass and children frolick hand-in-hand chasing rainbows through the lollipop forest.
This isn’t true. In either case.
Yes, there are places in Metro Detroit, from Downriver to 21 Mile, where anyone, black or white, shouldn’t be walking around at night without a high caliber weapon. But there are also places, some just blocks from the aforementioned zones, that one can enjoy music, food, entertainment, and culture safely and freely.
I live on 14 Mile Road. The area where I live is sort of the melting pot of Detroit. It’s safe enough to feel comfortable living there, but I still deadbolt the door. Last month there was a serial rapist on the loose just north of my apartment complex and although he was targeting only college-aged women, I don’t want to have my door unlocked when he decides to switch hit.
And it’s a little different than Indiana. I’m the only white dude in my building. I stick out like an pudgy albino sore thumb.
I do go to school right downtown at ground zero, however. It’s not so safe. I have to duck down a dark alley to get from my parking lot to the building entrance (editor's note: in the writing world, we call this 'foreshadowing'). But don’t tell my mother; she’ll worry. My admissions counselor told me that a few of the students carry baseball bats in their cars for protection. Obviously she's never seen me play softball. I couldn't hit a beach ball off a tee.
So I’ve kept a journal of these experiences between the fourteen miles that separate me from the true danger across the river: Canadians. The forthcoming is a semi-truthful account of how I’ve spent the first time of my life when I've truly been by myself. Some of it will hopefully make you laugh, maybe make you cry, but definitely make you pity.
Enjoy.

Originally written August 18, 2002.

See (Detroit) Rock City

I went to lunch yesterday with an old friend I hadn't seen in quite awhile. He worked at the college I attended and it was good to catch up. He naturally asked what I had been doing for the past six years. I told him that when I graduated I followed my wife (then fiancee) up to Detroit, Michigan to attend law school. It got me thinking of those first few months on my own living in that crumbling ghost town of a metropolis. Much like I do now, I kept a journal of those experiences. I stumbled across that journal recently and thought that they might make a good addition to the Tortfeezor. I have to type most of them over, so it may take a while to get them all out there. And since nothing really is happening in the present (other than having my identity stolen by an online bankrobber), I thought I'd take a peek into the past. All entries will be tagged with 'Detroit' to avoid any confusion with the new stuff. I trust my readership (all four of you) can follow along.

More to come shortly. Stay tuned...

A Victory for the Fat Kids Everywhere

When God sat down to create me, it's unlikely that He thought to Himself, "I'm gonna make me an athlete." No, I think His intentions were more along the lines of, "I'm gonna make me a slightly effiminate, doughy man-boy who would rather spend time at JoAnn's Fabrics than the batting cage."
Well, if the latter was His intention, then He hit a big home run with me. (By the way JoFabs is having a sale this weekend. I'll see you there at four.)
Today was different, however. Today, irony cast a long-overdue smile in my direction. When it comes to the race of life, usually irony is a cruel timekeeper, pointing its starting gun in your face and pulling the trigger. But sometimes, like today, it meets you at the finish line with an Aquafina, a hug, and a stale bagel.
In my 28 years, I've never placed first in any kind of athletic competition. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to name you anytime I've finished in the top half. But that trend was bucked earlier this morning when I completed a 10k as the top finisher in my age division. Number one! Numero uno!
They placed a medal around my neck. People clapped and cheered. And no, it wasn't the handicapped or disabled division. It was a legitimate first place finish for males ages 25-29.
Now back to reality. The truth is, I was the only male aged 25-29 who showed up.
This is strange because there were lots of competitors. There were plenty of females aged 25-29 and plenty of other males aged 1-24 and 30 and over. But no one in my age group cared to show. And when opportunity presents itself, I will pounce on that opportunity like it's a delicious Little Debbie Snack Cake.
So I've had time to reflect on this twist of fate. I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed. I guess I'm a little of both. But at the end of the day, I was the one crossing the finish line. Albeit sweat-soaked, waddling and throwing up a little. But it's not my fault my peers didn't show up. I'm keeping the medal.
And if they want to take it back, they'll have to pry it out of my thick, chubby fingers.

Albatross

Somewhere in the sun-soaked, pre-twilight landscape, deep amongst the thorny shrubbery - solitary and cold - it is lost and alone in so much rural sprawl, obscured and exiled to the sand and dirt under sticks and rocks, forced to commune with the rush and sedge, waiting (just waiting) to be found, celebrated, ultimately exonerated for it's wayward wanderings. Beneath a boulder perhaps, cloaked in the waning day's whisper of dew, yearning for absolution forgiving its mistaken meanderings.
Eureka!?! Could it be? A glint of stark possibility within a melange of kelly and emerald vegitational tincture. An ensnared orb, grinning a dimpled smirk, half-buried in mud - lost, yes...but not forgotten!
I have found my golf ball.
And so continues this sub-Carnoustian round of perpetual yips and mulligans. Each time my beleaguered, discontinued Callaway X-out caroms off my knockoff discontinued Callaway club, it retreats into the dense, thick scrub and brush - begging, pleading, yearning not to be discovered. For it is a curious and undesirable thing, being batted around with some hybrid rutter by a 45-handicapper with an apocraphal score card. And, evidently, a dictionary.
But I love golf. Or rather, I love the idea of golf. For me, it's not so much a competition as an excuse to be outside, smoke cigars and eat hot dogs at the turn after the ninth hole.
The problem is - I'm terrible at the actual game. I shoot consistently in the hundreds, am usually involved in a cart accident and look absolutely ridiculous in knickerbockers, argyle socks and tam o'shanters. My hands blister, I burn easily and I sweat rather profusely. It's altogether a fairly uncomfortable experience.
Yet I've spent thousands of dollars on clubs, balls and greens fees, but no amount of practice seems to do me any good. I've had lessons and club fittings, spent hours on the driving range, read books and web articles on how to fix my swing - but none of it helps.
There's an amateur rule that says if you shank your tee shot and it doesn't reach the red ladies' tees, you have to spend the rest of the hole playing with your trousers around your ankles. If this rule was enforced to any degree, I wouldn't even bother wearing pants to the course. I'd just show up in the clubhouse in my boxers and saddle oxfords, putter in hand, ready to play.
Technically, that kind of shot is called a plonker. Just one of many fascinating words associated with the game of golf.
For example, if you told a non-golfer that you just hit a sandy scramble shamble chippy sticky golden ferret using a mashie niblet, they would probably back away and point you to the nearest insane asylum. But if you told a golfer that, he'd say, "Oh, you hit the flag from the sand bunker using your six-iron and it went in the hole. Nice shot."
But I would never hit a sandy scramble shamble chippy sticky golden ferret using a mashie nibblet. Why? Because I usually sprachle.
So I continue to pursue the elusive holy grail of my golf game: a score in the nineties. The score that says, "I'm just good enough not to embarrass myself at this second-rate municipal course, yet I probably possess enough accuracy to hit the ball picker on the range." In the end, that's all I really want.
That, and a hot dog for the road.

Cutting it Close - Another Tortfeezor Original Poem

As I readied for work the day before last,
I glanced in the mirror as I hurried past.
I noticed my hair was starting to shag,
But going to the barber is kind of a drag.

I could have gone on another week or two,
Before having to pay for a new sleeker ‘do.
But I supposed my poor boss would probably scoff
At my near-‘Flock of Seagulls’-pompadour coif.

It was ducktail meets mop-top meets smooth pageboy flip,
Matching the beatnik soul patch just under my lip.
I get chided for my mane, but cut me some slack -
It’s all business up front and a party in back.

But salons are expensive and my budget is fixed,
And my experience with Great Clips has been decidedly mixed.
And it would cost me a fortune to have a pro cut my strands,
So I figured I’d take these matters into my hands.

I got out the scissors and clippers and comb,
Why pay for something you can just do at home?
A snip and a clip, a trim with some shears,
I altered my tresses and lowered my ears.

But before I knew it things got out of hand,
And my hair was much shorter than originally planned.
The floor of the garage was covered in fuzz,
I had given myself a high and tight buzz.

Much to my great disappointing dismay,
It seems that my excitement had now given way,
To a style that I, much to my alarm, found,
Makes me look quite unbelievably round.

But there’s more to this story than may meet the eye,
I did shave my head but there’s another reason why.
I don’t mean to puzzle, perplex or confuse,
But reasons above are merely a ruse.

So before I go on, I must give a pause,
And tell you the haircut had a meaningful cause.
You see my wife’s chemo is taking a toll.
It changes the body and vexes the soul.

For women the hair loss is a devastating effect
Though they usually know what result to expect.
And it’s not proud pretension or inflated conceit,
It’s part of identity and not being complete.

It’s nothing to do with narcissism or vanity,
And if it were me I’d likely lose all my sanity.
So she does her best not to cry and complain,
But I know it hurts when it goes down the drain.

No one can yet tell that she’s losing her hair,
She’s shedding a bit but most is still there.
But there may come a day when the worst will occur,
So my closely shorn scalp is a reminder of her.

So we'll put up with hair that’ll be thinning,
If it means in the end it’s the battle she’s winning.
I like to think the effects of the meds she’s infusing,
Is a promising indication that the cancer is losing.

Well I’ve heard that God knows the hairs on your head -
Everyone one of them numbered, at least so it’s said.
So I don’t worry much because I’ve got the feeling.
He’ll spend much less time counting and much more time healing.

Electioneering

I voted.
And I just feel dirty.
Our great state held its primary election yesterday and I promised myself that I wouldn't give in to the crushing peer pressure that surrounds today's political climate. Everyone banters around obtuse and antiquated terms like "fundamental freedom" and "civic duty" and "Vote or Die". Well, normally those clichéd platitudes wouldn't phase me. But they came from my mother. And at 28-years-old, she can still guilt me into doing just about anything.
Sitting in a booth at a busy Taco Bell during lunch yesterday, amongst Chili-cheese Gorditas and a Nachos Bell Grande, my mother chose that forum to browbeat me into explaining why I was not fulfilling my obligations to the Social Contract. As her voice rose above the Tex-Mex fast food din of clanging cash registers and crinkling burrito paper wrappers she openly questioned my patriotism and loyalty to democracy.
As I munched on Cinnamon Twists and sipped Baja Blast Dew, I tried to explain to her that I have gone out of my way this time around to remain blissfully uninformed about the candidates because, well, they're ridiculous. This 2008 election season has seemingly lasted since the early 90s and frankly, I'm sick of it. The rhetoric has gotten to such a frenzied pitch that I can't tell a politicker from an infomercial pitchman.
She wouldn't let up, however, and I was shamed into reluctantly skulking into the local elementary school to engage in my inherent right as an American:
The privilege of reckless, uninformed choice.
I wouldn't presume to let you know who I voted for in the presidential primary. After all, I need to maintain my journalistic integrity. But for you super sleuths out there, I'll give you a clue: I voted for a female. Now if you can decipher that little riddle, Encyclopedia Brown, then kudos to you.
However, later in the day while visiting my parent's house, I made the mistake of disclosing my candidate of choice to my ultra-conservative, right-wing father (that's not an insult, BTW, he wears that badge proudly). I was met with the following response: 'You voted for a woman? I thought we raised you better than that.'
That pretty much speaks for itself.
But the phrase 'namby-pamby, liberal, Democrat pansy-boy' was thrown at me as well. Now that's kinda harsh. I'd never label myself a Democrat.
So I asked him what issues or policies that he took exception to in regard to my choice. He told me that he didn't really know much about the issues - only enough to be dangerous. I think I've heard him say the exact same thing about computers, car maintenance and, apparently, parenting.
Then mom came home.
And we all shared a hearty laugh.

Crap Shoot

I haven't posted in a few days and a couple of you have wondered why. And by 'a couple of you' I mean: both of you that read this blog. And by 'both of you that read this blog' I mean: My wife and mother-in-law.
So what have I been up to? Well, Donna, since your daughter already knows, I'll fill you in as well: I've almost exclusively been cleaning up dog poop. Piles and piles of it. Exponentially more than any 25 pound puppy should be biologically capable of producing. It's astounding. She is openly defying the physiological maxim of 'what goes in must be equal to what comes out'.
I feed this animal only 3 and a half cups of Iams a day. But I clean up enough dog mess to fill up a 30-gallon trash bag a week.
Now according to all the pet ownership literature, dogs instinctually don't like to go where they sleep. (similarly, most humans don't either - but if they ever come out with a bed with an integrated toilet so I wouldn't have to get up at 3 a.m. every time I eat Tex-Mex, I would totally be an owner and a stockholder). Therefore we crate train our dog. Crate training is a simple concept. The dog likes her crate because it's like a den. Comfortable, safe, clean. It's effective for housebreaking and seperation anxiety issues. They won't relieve themselves in there because they have a natural aversion to soiling themselves.
Our new dog, however, is quite unnatural.
She absolutely loves to poop in her crate. She rolls in it. Splashes in it. Plays in it. Sculpts elaborate crapcastles out of it. Yet ironically, save for a handful of infrequent accidents, she hasn't gone on the carpet in days. In fact, she knows where to go outside in the yard. But she prefers to do her business in her little wire cage.
She'll be playing in the backyard for hours, then go on a walk and play inside with some toys. But leave her in the crate for 10 minutes and it looks as if her insides exploded all over the plastic tray. There she'll be with a big puppy smile on her face - happily sitting in her own waste as if it's a big down comforter. But all I ask for is a little consistency. In several ways.
So I get a roll of paper towels and get to work. I scrub and I fuss, I scrape and I cuss. It gets under my fingernails, on my shirt, in my hair. It's gross. The dog needs incontinence briefs.
And my wife can't help. With her low blood count due to the chemotherapy, she's prone to infection. Slopping through fecal matter probably isn't the best way to keep her trichinosis-free.
So you ask, is it worth it?
Well, I clean the mess, bathe the dog, dry her off and bring her inside. My wife, who on her bad days, is relegated to the couch in a mound of pillows and blankets, beams from ear to ear when she sees that fuzzy ball of fur coming her way. The pup bounds over to her and nuzzles with her snout. For a brief moment, while they cuddle and snuggle, I think the cancer is forgotten. The fatigue and the nausea and the omnipresent needles and pills fade away and are briefly replaced by a joyous reunion of a wet puppy nose and a great big smile.
So yeah, if it means that for a few minutes a day it can bring some much needed happiness into a household where happiness has been, at times as of late, in short supply - it's definitely worth it.