You Can Wear a Tie Under the Robes, Mommy

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 28, Verse 4

"To complain about the law is to praise wickedness.  To obey the law is to fight evil."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

I've wanted to be a cop.  Went into the academy in 2002, washed out.  The seven year itch (SERIOUSLY! IT REALLY WAS SEVEN YEARS LATER!  WOW!) set in and I took some county police tests and, well, you know, it didn't go so well.  The FBI didn't want me either, which was especially sad for me, because the FBI combines three of my affinities: suits, overcoats, and, I guess, law enforcement.  

I tried to become a lawyer, too, a long time ago.  Fresh out of college.  Again-- suits, overcoats, and the law beckoned and, this time, it seemed to make sense.  Nice Jewish boys from the suburbs don't become cops, but they definitely do become lawyers.  Finally, THIS was a career move my mother's son could make that would be appropriate for her to talk about to her patrons at the public library.

Alas, it was not to be.  I got the LSAT's lowest possible passing grade.  Widener Law School offered me a provisional acceptance and, like someone who REALLY wanted to become a lawyer, I wrote them a letter refusing, in no uncertain terms, their tepid acceptance.  

When I was a boy, I was fond of watching Judge Joseph Albert Wapner on "The People's Court" (he's still alive, at a thoroughly judicial 93, in case you were wondering) and I had youthful aspirations of becoming a judge.  I had all the necessary qualifications, I reasoned, as a nine-year-old.  I knew when people were lying to me, I was quickwitted and had no interest in listening to anybody.  What more could the American justice system ask for?  Plus, I looked good in black.  

"And you can wear a tie under the robes, Mommy, and it'll show," I said at the kitchen table once while my mother was making dinner and probably considering suicide, "because the robes are V-necks."

We weren't a very law-and-order type of house.  My father was kind of a rebel growing up.  He grew up like many Israeli Jews of that vintage-- hyper-religious.  But, at age 16, "I threw my yarmulke into the sea and said, 'Fuck this!'"  (Well, he said it in Hebrew, but I don't know how to say that in Hebrew, much less type it.)  My mom rebelled, too, getting married and pregnant at a very young age and splitting from her parents.  We weren't taught about Johnny Law and reverently imbued with respect for things like property lines and stop signs.  Yet, somehow, I became very intrigued with laws and the enforcement thereof.  Maybe you might say "obsessed", and I can accept that.  Whereas lots of people in their teens and twenties had problems with authority, I had problems without it.  I instinctively look to ties and suits and graying mustaches for guidance.  And maybe that's why I dress as formally as I do.  Maybe that's how I want to be seen-- as a comforting symbol of direction and surety.  

Which is about as big an illusion as I am capable of conjuring up, because anyone who knows me will freely tell you, as freely as I'm telling you now, that I'm full of shit.

It's funny, though, what a button-down shirt and tie can do for a guy.  One day, when I was maybe in my early twenties, I happened to be taking a train from Philly to Washington.  I was standing in the station, looking particularly, at least I thought, bewildered, when another hapless traveler came up to me and started asking me questions about train schedules.  I thought maybe this guy thought I had Aspergers and had memorized all the arrivals and departures for fun, but then I realized, oh.  I'm wearing a navy blue three-piece suit with a pocket watch chain strung across the vest.  He thinks I work for Amtrak.  

Right.

I love laws.  As someone who has generally very minimal direction in his life, laws tell me what is okay and what is not okay.  I thrive on structure.  I get off on order.  Give me guidelines in explicit lengthy detail, and I might start humping your leg.  I need to know what is okay.  I have to know how not to be a bad boy.  If I don't know, then how will I know?  How will I ever know?  How will I know when to arrive?  How to behave?  How to dress?  How to cross my legs-- like a girl, like a fag, like a guy with big balls?  What do I do?  What do I say?  What isn't right?  I'm funny-- is it okay to be funny?  Can I say this in public?  Is this a word that's only okay for the house, Daddy?  Can I not say that in school?  

Please.  Tell me what to do, and how to do it.  Please.  I'm so scared.

That I'll break the law-- hurt the law-- hurt the spine of the book, the screen on the phone, the plastic coating, the foam insert, the shoulder blade, the flower petal.  I'm frightened, Aunt Em.  I'm very, very frightened.

A women interviewing me for a job this afternoon remarked, trying to be humorous-- I hope-- that, upon reading my resume, she thought to herself, "Now, what does this guy want to be when he grows up?"

Well, obviously a cop, a lawyer, and a judge.  And a writer, too.  But only if I'm allowed to wear a tie.  Where I work, you can't wear a tie.  It's too dangerous.  If it isn't in the employee handbook, it should be.