Hangin' with Donald Miller

If you enjoy this blog, you can thank Donald Miller.

He's best known for writing Blue Like Jazz, an autobiographical story of how he found God despite his church's attempt to reduce spirituality into a set of arbitrary rules and political ideology.  Having lived that story firsthand, I love that book. 

But it wasn't the one that changed my life.  It was after reading another of Miller's books, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, that I decided it was time to start writing again and do something more meaningful with my life.

The first post I ever wrote on this site took a quote from it:

"The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person's story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don't want anything, we are living boring stories, and if we want a Roomba vacuum cleaner, we are living stupid stories."

I decided then to live a more meaningful story. And last night, with this blog within a whisper of its 15,000th hit, the story included a chapter where I got to meet Donald Miller. 

Miller gave a lecture at Belmont University last night, and it turns out we have a mutual friend (who is also a writer), so I got to speak with Don for a just a few minutes when his lecture was done.

Sometimes people complain that they feel let down when they meet their hero. Donald Miller was the nicest famous person I've ever met.

I thanked him for inspiring me to start the blog. He seemed genuinely touched that he'd helped change the trajectory of my life. He signed the book I've re-read so many times by now, and he waited patiently while I awkwardly misdirected our mutual friend Mark how to take a picture with my new cell phone.

Miller writes with such strong opinions, that I was a little surprised that in person he was so pleasantly humble and unbound to his own ideas.  Of course, I don't agree with everything he's ever written (and I've read it all), but the time to discuss that wasn't last night.

Maybe next time it will be.

In the lecture he gave, my favorite analogy he gave was about how no one can prove a sunset is prettier than camel dung. But if you experience them both, it makes that reality undeniable.

It's the same way with God. I'll never prove God is real or argue you into believing what I do. But if those of us who claim to experience a loving power bigger than ourselves live lives that point toward something beautiful, maybe, just maybe, someone else will take a few steps closer to that beauty as well, and be positively changed for having seen it.

That's actually part of why this blog is here.

It hasn't brought me fame or fortune or even a cent of cash.  But among the 15,000 times someone has clicked on this site since Don inspired me to launch it, I hope at least a few of you found something beautiful, something that rang unprovably but undeniably true, or maybe just something funny that made a crappy day, week, or season in life seem just a little tolerable.

And if you did, you can thank Donald Miller. 

Just like I did.

Blogging Through Spain (Part 2 of 3): Holy Toledo!

You've reached the middle part of my retrospective blog diary of my 8 days in Spain. You can read about days one through three, in Madrid, here:

http://www.andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/09/blogging-through-spain-part-1-of-3.html 

(I would post a link to part 3 as well, but I haven't written it yet.)

On day 4, we woke up early to catch a train from Madrid to Toledo. But not early enough.

Day 4:
We're taking a day trip to Toledo. It's a 30-minute ride and it's the city where the expression "Holy Toledo" originated. As we leave our apartment, that's about all I know of our destination, except that Toledo is holy.

We had decided to come here because, prior to its present incarnation as the spiritual center of Catholic Spain, the city was previously ruled by the Islamic Moors and also had a huge Jewish presence.  Because of the three cultures that have influenced it, it's filled with buildings that have alternatively been mosques, synagogues and cathedrals.

As we sleepily wobble out our apartment at the break of dawn to catch our train, I'm already regretting the trip. I'm enjoying Madrid so much.  I'd rather just sleep in and eat more tapas and olives and leave the religious diversity and cultural encounters for some other day, when I'm not so tired.

The situation isn't helped by the fact that we miss our train. Our apartment guide claimed we were a 20-minute walk from the train station. About 25 minutes into our walk, we begin to freak out. We should have been there by now.  We gave ourselves 35 minutes, but it still wasn't enough.

We ran the last stretch of the way, but it still took every minute of the 35 just to get inside the door of the station. It took another 15 to figure out where in the multi-level train station we needed to go once we got there.

By then, our train was long gone.

Thankfully, there was another one a hour and a half later. We had hoped we could use the same ticket for the next one, but, as with every other transaction, I would have to ask in Spanish.

The answer was clearly "no," although I couldn't decipher the specific details. I was then directed to another window ("apunte" from the customer service desk) where I could buy new tickets.

After an extra hour's wait, we boarded for Toledo. When we arrived at Toledo's beautiful Moroccan-style train station, we couldn't even see the city, so we decided to take the $2 bus into downtown.

It would be the best decision we made all week.

The large, overfilled bus whizzed uphill through the winding mountain road, coming inches away from colliding with both passing traffic and hanging cliffs, taking turns to ensure that its passengers on each side were equally terrified. But the alternative would have been to walk up the functional equivalent of the stairway to Heaven.

Or the stairway to Holy Toledo.

Toldeo is at the peak of a mountain, overlooking a river and valley on all sides. The city isn't really a city in the normal meaning of the term. Instead, it's an old medieval fortress that thousands of modern people happen to live and work in. There's a river at the base of the mountain that serves as a natural moat.

The "streets" are winding cobblestone walkways that appear to have been unchanged for 600 years. There isn't enough room for cars and people to coincide, so when a car comes by, pedestrians must cling to the fortress walls and pray for their lives to allow room for the car to pass. Thankfully, the city is reputed to be holy because of the numerous houses of worship it contains, so the pedestrians prayers are generally answered.

Aside from the occasional passing car, it looks like we've traveled back in time to before the Renaissance.  It's brutally hot and the winding medieval alleyways ("streets" are too strong of a word to describe them) are impossible to navigate or even map, but it's still impossible not to love Toledo. It's hard to imagine something like this still exists.

I stand in awe. I've never seen anything like this.

"Holy Toledo," is all I can think to say.

We are in a living castle, right down to the moat surrounding us on all sides. I keep looking up at the fortress towers, expecting to see a princess, or a dragon, or perhaps a dragon princess. The noise from the occasional second-floor tv destroys the illusion, but somehow increases the surreal nature of the vibe.

We wander to a couple of former synagogues that look like mosques, but are now cathedrals.  The Moorish architecture on the inside and outside of the buildings looks like a scene from Casablanca. I had always wanted to see Morocco, but I can't imagine this isn't the same thing, only prettier and with a language barrier more easily navigated.

Holy Toledo.

The Islamic African Moors controlled this area for 700 years. When they were finally driven out of control in the 1400s, their architects stayed over, because the pre-Renaissance Europeans couldn't build things this pretty. As a result, even the cathedrals and synagogues built inside the old fortress in look like Mosques. Toledo has eight or nine of these, all beautiful, and they all look straight out of Arabian Nights.

It's hard to imagine how a fort/town this small every supported so many houses of worship. But that's why the city is considered so holy.

After visiting the two synagogues, we go inside a monastery. It was beautiful like everything else in Toledo, but what I remember most is that it had an orange tree in the courtyard. The courtyard was blocked off to prevent people like me from stealing oranges. This made me mad because it seemed like a religious institution like this should have been on the honor system. And more importantly, the fence kept me from stealing a fresh Spanish orange that I'd been dreaming about for months.

We grabbed lunch in a break between architectural wonders. Predictably, the waiter/owner/manager who ran the little shop we ducked into spoke very little English. We did just fine, at least until the clueless New Yorkers wandered in just behind us.

When they struggled to order, I tried to fill in the gaps from the table next over.  The waiter had recommended three specific dishes, but they wanted more details, despite the fact that neither had a clue how to communicate.

Somewhere along the way, they heard the word "tomate," which they recognized to mean tomato.

"Oh, so is that like spaghetti?" one of them yelled to me, sitting at the next table over.

I struggled to find a way to answer their question in a way that both the waiter and these clueless customers would understand. It didn't help that I hadn't even heard what dish they were talking about, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be spaghetti. This was Spain, after all not Italy.

After they finally clumsily and painfully ordered an appetizer ("chicken") using English entirely, I introduced myself.

I offered to help, telling them (in English) that while I wasn't fluent in Spanish, I knew enough to communicate.

"Oh, we do to," they said.  And then they began asking each other if either knew the Spanish word for "chicken."

They didn't.

In fact, the two of them knew a grand total of six words between them, and that's only if you double-counted the three words they both seemed to know. That would have been fine, had we not gotten dragged unwillingly into their constant attempts to grab the waiter's attention ask obscure, inane questions.

We ate a fantastic meal and left, interrupted occasionally by our waiter's requests to translate the bizarre requests of the tourists beside us.

No, the restaurant doesn't have "ranch" salad dressing.
Yes, the papas bravas are "kind of" like French fries, but why did you come here if you want to eat French fries?
No, they don't have hamburgers.
"Carne" means meat. "Calamari" means "calamari."
Yes, I can translate the word for "bathroom" but why did you come here without even knowing that?

And why couldn't you have at least asked me these questions beforehand, instead of forcing the waiter to turn to me when he showed up and couldn't answer your questions in English?

Two hours after we left, we happened to wander by the restaurant on our way to catch a taxi out of town. Our "friends" were just leaving the restaurant. I can only imagine what happened in the meantime, but they looked pleasantly clueless, oblivious to the fact that they'd probably just erased 5 years of the restaurant owner's life.  It was an 8 hour flight to get here. Couldn't you have opened a phrasebook for half an hour of that?

And I just knew from the way the carried themselves that if they ever met a tourist in America would was equally unprepared, they would turn up their noses.

No wonder so many people hate Americans.

After lunch, we see an old mosque that had been converted into a church, and an old church that had been converted to a museum. It was somehow even more beautiful than everything else we had seen.

There are other sites to see, most of them religious, but after the six of them we've seen, we've reached the point of diminishing returns. It's time to move on.

We catch a taxi across the bridge to the hotel on another mountain across the river.  It overlooks the city, so we sit under a tent on the patio and have drinks (and olives) while we absorb the last bit of this crazy place. I still can't believe it actually exists, why they let cars drive on the medieval roads, or why anyone chooses to live in this old fortress. It's magical, but it can't make for an easy life.

But I'm glad they do.

I wasn't excited to come here, but it's the most astounding thing I've ever seen. Three cultures live in one city.  Which is a 15th Century fortress. On the top of mountain surrounded by a moat, and blossoming with orange trees that the monastery won't let me steal.

Holy Toledo.

If you ever get a chance, you have to see this place. It was my favorite day of the whole trip, even with our obnoxious entitled friends from New York who drove both us and our waiter crazy.

We take a taxi to the train station, which itself looks like an Arabian Palace, where Liz takes a final round of pictures, and we board the train to head back to Madrid.

After another wonderful round of showers, we head back out into the Madrilleno night, but we're hot and tired and we've already been to the restaurants that look the best, so we head back a little earlier than the night before.

"What did you think of our day?" I ask.
"It was wonderful," Liz says. "What were your thoughts?"
I pause.  Only one phrase comes to mind.

"Holy Toledo."

We reluctantly go to bed again around midnight, sad at the idea of leaving our apartment the next day, but intrigued by what awaits in Barcelona...

To be continued..
 

Blogging Through Spain (Part 1 of 3)

The bags are packed, the cats are fed. After a whirlwind of productivity the likes of which the world has never before seen, all my deadlines are met for the next 10 days. So for the first time in six years, Europe is just a flight away. It's time to go to Spain!

Don't worry. You can come too. Just keep reading.

Day 1:

Late last night my friend Jason offered to drive us to the airport. He's probably regretting that by now, but I took him up on his generous offer. So he dutifully arrives early this morning and exudes pleasant energy while my wife, Liz, and I triple-check our house for forgotten items, and drives us to the airport. Starting a trip with positive energy is an underrated bonus.

Thank you, Jason.

We arrive Saturday morning at the Nashville airport two hours in advance, like all the experts advise.

Of course, the airport is completely empty. But had we given ourselves an hour, we'd be still be in line as we speak, 9 days later. But as it was, we arrive at our gate in 15 minutes.

This is going to be a long day.

We stop in at the airport bookstore to kill some time, and have the following exchange with the sales person:

Clerk: So, where are you headed?
Us: Spain
Clerk: Oh! Usually I hear something like "Toledo."
Me: Well, we're taking a day trip to Toledo, Spain.
Liz: I just need to buy a watch since my cell phone won't work while we're there.
Clerk: Why do you care what time it is if you're in Spain?

Touche.

A few hours later we board and take off on our connecting flight to JFK. As the connecting flight circles New York, it hits me: New York is one of my favorite cities on earth, and I've never been this unexcited to be here. The vacation doesn't really feel like it starts until I'm actually on a plane that's landing at my destination. And I have a three hour layover until then.

My throat is feeling scratchy already. Maybe staying out late with my visiting out-of-town friends last night was a bad idea.

Liz and I make a round of phone calls to pass the time and taunt everyone we know with our travel plans. I stare out at the skyline.

That building in the distance towering over the New York skyline must be the Freedom Tower, at Ground Zero. Its 1776 feet are sobering to view, but I just want to be in Spain.

Before long the flight will board...

Day 2:

I move my watch forward six hours, which means its already midnight. The flight will last seven-and-a-half more hours. I really hope I can get some sleep, eventually. But in the meantime, I'm going to read that Skymall magazine to check the going rate on a life-sized statue of Bigfoot and some artificial grass that my pets can pee on.

I read a book, eat some airline food, and take a nap, occasionally stopping to translate for the teenage Spanish kid beside me who speaks as little English as the flight attendants do Spanish. I know we're flying American Airlines and all, but how do they staff an international flight without bilingual flight attendants? That's insane.

No wonder the rest of the world hates us.

A few hours later and finally, Madrid is in view. We walk off the plane with dry mouths, crunchy contacts and that groggy but exhilarating feeling that comes after an east-bound Transatlantic flight.  We go into the bathrooms to wash our faces and brush our teeth. Bringing the toothpaste was a good call. The Madrid airport even has a tube of toothpaste already stocked.

It's nice to be here already.

We're going to hit the ground running in Madrid. We have no choice.

Our plane landed at 8 a.m., and we can't check into our apartment until 3 this afternoon. In the meantime, we have to get to the train station to drop off our luggage in a storage locker. I hope my Spanish is good enough to direct our taxi driver there.

"Hola. Necesitamos ir al estacion Atocha," I say to the first cab driver we see, mangling the pronunciation of Madrid's train station. The cab driver asks me a clarifying question, and we're good to go. As I ask a few questions in bad Spanish along the trip, it quickly becomes clear that he speaks no English whatsoever.

This would become a theme.

At the train station, no one speaks English either. I don't know the Spanish word for storage locker, but I can ask for a place to leave our suitcases.

Or rather, I can ask that question in perfect Spanish, but I can't actually understand the complicated directions the customer service agent gives me, which prominently involve the lockers being "apunte" (Or something like that. I never understood the word well enough to even look it up) from the front of the train station. I've taken 5 years of Spanish classes, but I've never heard that word before.

I ask her to repeat herself, but she just keeps telling me to go "apunte." We just wander in the general direction until we find it. Which we eventually do.

We drop off luggage and wander "apunte" toward the big Sunday flea market that all the guide books told us to see. We get there and find it consists of women's clothes and a bunch of cheap, crappy trinkets that no normal person would actually want. I bargain with two or three vendors for a dress my wife likes, but no one wants to give the confused-looking American with broken Spanish a good deal.

My Spanish is getting us by, but we're amazed that we haven't heard a word of English yet. Paris, Venice and Amsterdam weren't like this. There, you never forgot you were in a foreign country, but you always had the sense that the locals were a perfunctory native-tongue greeting away from resorting to English to make your life easier, even if they weren't very happy about it.

Here, the people are glad to repeat themselves more slowly if you ask, and even glad to teach you Spanish words, but that's the only tool they have to offer. You get the feeling from the smiles on their faces that they would gladly fill in the conversational gaps with the proper English word if they knew it, but since they can't, they have to wait patiently for my Spanish to come through. And unless I'm trying to follow directions involving the word "apunte," it generally does.

There's something weirdly awesome about the whole scene. I'm terrified and was unprepared for the scope of this challenge, but I've never soaked in a culture that's this authentically different from the one I know. At any given moment, we're one Spanish-language brain fart from me away from being helpless.

If only there weren't a KFC on the corner, I could blog about this.

We "flee" the market (you see what I did there?), and head to the big public park. It's beautiful and perfectly landscaped and there's a big lake in front of one of those monumental sculptures they only have in Europe. 

We get a nice table by the lake and order tapas and horchata, the local morning beverage of choice. I order a waffle with strawberry ice cream. I actually wanted vanilla ice cream, but I felt the need to show the waitress that I knew the Spanish word for "strawberry." I thought about asking that she put it "apunte" to my waffle, but I still haven't figured out what that meant, so I don't get too crazy.

A couple hours later, we were ready for a nap but still had an hour to kill before our check in. So, in the time-honored tradition of homeless people everywhere, we napped in the park, and hear American music playing in the background while a roller blading troop practices. It's the first sustained English we've heard all day.

Eventually, we make it to our apartment and took the world's most fantastic shower, followed by the world's most fantastic naps.

We look for a little market where we can buy the world's most fantastic picnic dinner, to be eaten on our balcony, which is also fantastic. We end up settling for the grocery store 2 blocks away, but somehow get hopelessly lost on the way back. Those wine bottles start to get heavy after about 30 minutes of aimless wandering.

After we wander long enough to get frazzled, an old man finally takes mercy on us, and starts giving us directions without even asking where we're going. I tell him we aren't trying to get to Puerta Del Sol, to which he's trying to direct us.  So instead, he gives us directions to where I ask. But I can't really understand what he's trying to tell us, except that we need to go "apunte" from the main street once we reach it. 

I realize that I need to demand a refund on my Spanish classes.

But when we get there, we finally figure it out. Not what "apunte" means, of course, but how to get to our apartment.

But a few tapas and a cheap bottle of wine are consumed on the balcony, and day 2 turns into:

Day 3:
I'm still exhausted, but Liz wants to get moving. Our agenda is purposefully limited today, but we were hoping to get to the Reina Sofia (the Modern Art Museum) before the line gets long.  We failed.

The line is long and it's already hot, but there's really nothing else on our agenda for the day, so we suffer through. Some people are walking straight in, though, while a long line of people wait in the line in which we find ourselves.

Liz asks that I investigate further, but I feel stupid and intimidated by the idea of asking what's going on, for fear that the conversation will go something like this:

Me: (in broken Spanish) what is this line for?
Other person: For the museum, dummy.

So instead, I walk to the front of the line hoping for a sign I can read. The signs have English subtitles, but the translation is so broken that it's just confusing, and it seems to contradict the Spanish version above it. All I know for sure is that there's a museum, I'm standing in front of it, and I have no idea what I need to do to get in. My wife waits in line in front of the museum, or possibly "apunte" of it, while I stand dumbfounded.

This would also be a theme.

An hour later, and three fruitless trips to entrance doors in hopes of talking to a roaming customer service agent, we finally get to the front of the line and figure out how to buy tickets. In the meantime, a roaming homeless woman asks us for money.

When we ignore her, she doesn't move down the line, as would happen in the US. Instead, she starts yelling and attempts to steal my wife's water bottle. I finally manage to tell her to go away, but we created quite a scene in the meantime. I guess one manages interactions with beggars differently here.

Interesting.

We hit the museum and see Picasso's famous Guernica, but we can't get into the Dali exhibit until two. In the meantime, we have amazingly good tapas at a café across the street and the best sangria I've ever tasted. While we have leisurely and ridiculously cheap lunch, a Spanish guy introduces himself to a pretty blond woman who walks by.

She agrees to an impromptu date, but her Spanish is bad. The Spanish guy is suave and appears to have done this before--he even speaks English.  And then for the first time in three days, I hear a conversation in English, albeit a cheesy one where some random dude is attempting a cross-continental pick-up. I guess it's romantic, in a certain way, even though it seems obvious this isn't going anywhere.

We see the museum and head back for siestas. Early mornings in Madrid are cool and beautiful, but the temperatures are near 100 by about 11. By 2 or 3 p.m. your body literally gives out. I understand how siestas came to be. It's a glorious tradition.

After long naps, we wander back out for maybe the best meal of our lives.

As it happens, true to Spanish form, we would eat it at six different restaurants.

The Spanish make an event of their tapas. It's not a meal: it's a lifestyle. You order one tapa at each restaurant, and then move on to the next. At each, you get a free serving of olives, or maybe some other little appetizer.  Or maybe you just have a palate-cleansing drink, which is also accompanied by, as everything in Spain is, a free serving of olives. And you continue accordingly until the wee hours of the morning, when you finish the evening off with a serving of churros and hot chocolate.

It's a fantastic way to live.

From 8 until 11, we stroll, eat, drink, stroll, and eat some more. It was the best six-restaurant, three-hour dinner I've ever had, even if I don't know the word for every tasty-looking tapa we encounter. We dine and stroll, and walk through the big public plaza full of street performers and families and happy children, even Monday night at midnight.

Two musicians are singing by the square. Their voices and rhythms are brilliant, but I can't quite decipher their rapid lyrics. As I sit, with my mouth savoring tapas and olives and a pleasant afterglow from a few glass of 2-dollar wine, with my life's troubles a continent away, I suddenly wish my friends were here too.

We will meet up with my sister in two days in Barcelona, and she'll understand why we loved it here as much as she did. My oldest niece had wished she could have come. She would have loved it here too. My friend Andrew would have delighted in the cultural idiosyncrasies. Chris would have raved about the nuance of the red wine. Michelle and Donnie would revel in the food and the fun. Daniel would make inside jokes from that Spanish 1 class in high school where we first became friends. Kelsey would notice something about this scene that I'd completely overlooked, but that would make it seem even more meaningful. Corinne would keep us up past our bedtime to squeeze in a little more fun, but we'd be glad the next day that she had. Cameron would amusingly critique the interpersonal vibe and wardrobes of every group we passed.

It's just so pleasant here.  I wish I could share this picture with a larger percentage of my world.

But you guys were all somewhere else. Possibly "apunte." And we had big plans the next day, so we reluctantly cut the night off at midnight, which is early by Madrid standards. We have one more night in Madrid anyway, but tomorrow morning we have a day trip to "Holy" Toledo.

And what the next day held was outside of our wildest imaginations...

(Read all about it in tomorrow's blog)

Little White Lies

"I don't actually read your blog," he told me. "But it's really good."

I could have asked why he didnn't read it if he really thought it was good. Or I could have asked how he had an opinion about the quality of my blog if he didn't actually read it.  But I didn't feel like going there.

Besides, we both knew he was lying.

The truth, we both knew, was that he read my blog all the time, and that we both thought it sucked.

But I wasn't mad at him for lying to me. He was just trying to be nice.

That's the reason people lie about small, seemingly harmless stuff all the time.

If your significant other asks where you've been, you can't say that you've been out shopping for his or her birthday present, even in the rare case when that's actually true. You can't ever tell someone that they look fat in that dress, even if he's an NFL offensive linemen.

You have to pretend to like your friend's new boyfriend, even if he wears skinny jeans and constantly talks about how all the formerly good rock bands have sold out. You have to pretend to like your friend's girlfriend even when she starts a fight with him about what toppings should go on a salad, and then calls you at 2:00 a.m. to complain about the exchange.

I grew up in Southern Baptist circles hearing that it was always, always, wrong, not to tell the truth. 

That, of course, was a lie.  

The Bible is packed with people who became heroes by lying.  The wise men told King Herod they would report back to him the location where he could find Jesus, that newborn king all the herald angels were harking about. But then they figured out that kings like Herod usually don't just love to come worship challengers to their throne, so they found a detour home.

If the wise men had fallen into that trip, we probably won't include them in our manger scenes (and we certainly wouldn't refer to them as "wise men").  Of course, you'd think baby Jesus could have had the situation covered without needing the wise men resorting to deception, but He moves in mysterious ways.)

In an Old Testament story, Rahab the harlot's is remembered for telling a well-placed lie. Her life was saved because she lied to the locals about not knowing where to find those invading spies she was hiding, who would ultimately conquer the land, spare her life as a reward, and then write flattering words about her in the both the Old Testament and New Testaments. True, they were probably writing the stories in the King James version, but that's still more acclaim than you and I have ever achieved.

Jacob lied to Esau and to his father Isaac. Jacob's uncle lied to him, tricking him into marrying the ugly duckling sister of the woman he'd labored seven years to marry, both of whom happened to be his cousins. But, other than having dueling sets of inbred kids (who sold their brother Joseph and his amazing Technicolor dreamcoat into Egyptian slavery), Jacob still managed to do just fine with his life.  He could never put together a team to go on Family Feud, but that creepy Richard Dawson guy was the host at that point anyway, so it wasn't a big loss.

But that is not my central point.

The point is, that in light of these examples, maybe, just maybe, is it ok to fib sometimes?

Not when you're under oath or part of an investigation, mind you. Not to get away with something you shouldn't have been doing in the first place. But maybe when being a little fuzzy with reality prevents some greater evil directed at someone else?  Or maybe when it spares someone's feelings from unnecessary pain? 

Even those exceptions are tricky, though. If you tell your sensitive nephew that he's a good singer in order to preserve his feelings, he might end getting hurt even worse when he's ridiculed on American Idle as the latest tone-deaf, geeky kid lacking any semblance of self-awareness.

If you befriend the lonely guy at the office and pretend to take an interest in his never-ending stories, he might start coming back twice a day and offering you sneak peaks at his forthcoming comic book series.

Which you would also have to pretend to like.

So what's the answer?

I've thought about it for at least 135 second, and only have one solution: deliberate vagueness.

Open-ended answers prevent you from having to lie to save your friends' feelings, but also save you from directly encouraging whatever bad decision it is that you're trying to avoid having to confront. They also cause the people to whom you speak to think about what the heck you just said,  even after you've left. You remain in their thoughts even after you've gone.

Everyone wins.

"What are you talking about," you might ask? "Can you give me an example of what you mean by 'deliberate vagueness?'"

No.  I'm not going to tell you anything more. You can interpret my previously given answer any way you like.

And that's exactly the point.

Random Thoughts: My Vacuum Cleaner Sucks

I spent most of my narrative energy this week working on my book idea and fighting a sinus infection and bulging disk in my back.  But it's been awhile since I shared another edition of my second-favorite running gimmick for a column, so I figure I can at least give you that.

As always, here they are: Real thoughts. Really random. Let's go!

Is there anything worse than grabbing a cookie that you thought was chocolate chip, taking a bite and discovering those dark spots were actually raisins?  Not only are you left with an inferior cookie, you've wasted an indulgence. Ugh.

The other day I drove by a building that said "Mechanical Pump and Electrical Company." In their front yard was an employee manually pouring out a big bucket of water.  I guess their equipment isn't exactly up-to-date.

People keep expecting me to have strong opinions about the Martin case. But I make it a policy to ignore completely whatever story CNN is obsessing about at the given moment.

The doctor asked me today whether I had a fever. Wasn't it her job to figure that out for me?

If your vacuum cleaner sucks, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

The other day I caught a shuttle bus at the airport. As I climbed aboard, I heard a 400-pound woman tell the guy next to her, "Oh, I've been taking diuretics for years."  I bet she's fun at parties.

Rule of Life #162: the availability of mindlessly entertaining programming on tv at any given moment will always be directly proportional to your need, at that same moment, to get things done. Also, the amount of noise your neighbors are making late at night will be directly proportional to your need to get some sleep.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.

If your son is a priest, do you have to call him "Father"? 

A friend just posted a facebook article about a scientific finding that those who have a friend they could call about anything at 4 a.m. tend to live longer than those who don't. Fair enough. But I can't help but think that people who are asleep at 4 a.m. would probably fare even better.

Would anyone complain if we took a day away from July and gave it to September?

Summer is pointless when you're an adult. 

Sign you're getting old number #146: someone asks you how you spent your weekend and you can't decide whether it was more significantly diminished by your achy back or your sinus infection. 

I just saw a commercial for an app on the Kindle Fire where parents can set the device to turn itself off after the kid plays on it for a predetermined length of time, so that the parents don't have to manually raise their children. And word is that the next Kindle Fire will have a retractable arm that can spank your kids each time they try to turn it back on.

Why do hotels always tuck the sheets in so tightly into the beds that you can't even raise your feet up underneath them? And how come the hotel provides you with shampoo and conditioner and occasionally mouthwash but never toothpaste?

That's it for this week. I'll back next week with something less random. Please come back then, provided that your Kindle hasn't automatically shut itself off by that point.

Dealing with Lawyers

I've often said that the worst part of being an attorney is having to deal with other lawyers all day.

If anyone were giving out medals for bad opposing counsel stories, my collection would win me at least a bronze.

The most obnoxious lawyer I've ever encountered was from St. Louis. When I was in private practice there, one of my first depositions there involved a lawsuit with three parties involved.  I don't remember what the case was about (and I couldn't tell you if I did), but the first deposition we took in it was something I'll never forget.

The parties sat down and we waded through the opening formalities, albeit with noticeable tension between the other two lawyers.  Then about two minutes into the proceedings, one of the opposing counsels, a plump, grey-haired, haggard looking man of about 60, started making faces at the other counsel as she questioned his witness.

Really.

The old man stuck his tongue out.  He rolled his eyes and puffed up his cheeks. At first I thought that maybe he was having a seizure, but then he started mouthing the words of opposing counsel's questions in a mocking fashion after she said them. 

Judges don't normally come to depositions, so the only people present for this display were us three attorneys, a court reporter, and the crazy attorney's own witness.  None of us were quite sure how to respond. Even the defendant looked more than a little confused by what was happening.

As for me, I sat silent.  What to do when one opposing counsel starts making silly, childhood faces at another one was not one of the things that ever came up during law school.

Unless maybe I was out that day.

So I just continued to sit there stunned. I was only a couple years out of school, I still owed $60,000 in student loan debt, and I came to the realization that I'd spent a fortune and my life's ambition to be part of a profession that closely resembled clown college.

I became a lawyer to argue for justice and truth. But here, I found myself the middle man in a playground dispute that seemed likely to be won by whoever could make the most effective cartoon face or schoolyard putdown.

This sort of thing never happened in any of the Grisham books. 

The counsel being mocked, a 40ish year-old woman, lodged an objection for the recorded transcript.  But the petulant old man continued to make faces and indecipherable noises undeterred. He verbalized nothing inappropriate that could be recorded for the transcript, except that at one point he called her "honey." His uncanny ability to be annoying without leaving demonstrable proof of his unprofessionalism showed that this was clearly not the first time he'd tried this trick.

But by his use of the "honey" line, it was suddenly clear to me what was happening, and why.

After no more than 5 minutes, the woman gave up, called off the deposition. Before the recording stopped, I narrated for the record everything that had happened in the prior five minutes and admonished this jerk for wasting our time. 

But the transcript didn't reveal anything directly from that obnoxious old man other than some language that was politically incorrect and the unverifiable accusations from me and the other attorney.

The woman later filed a motion for sanctions, but the judge didn't want to deal with it, so he just issued a warning and reset the deposition for some other day.

The scene was completely ridiculous, but it drove home and important point that I've carried with me throughout my legal career: too often in the legal profession there are no real repercussions for being a complete jerk. As a result, attorneys often feel emboldened to act like complete jerks, although generally in a manner at least slightly less childish.

It still aggravates me when opposing counsels break basic rules of human decency, but, thankfully, I've found a way to deal with it over the years. 

When I start to get annoyed at some ridiculous tactic my opposing counsel attempts, I stop myself, take deep breaths, pray for God's wisdom, and re-focus on my greater purpose of helping to bring justice to the world. 

Then I make a funny cartoon face. 

The Parable of Abed and the Shepherd

There once was a man named Abed who lived a happy life in a small village by the desert.  Abed had a good job and good friends and a fluffy dog named Cedric and was happy with his life. At least he was happy with his life until he came home one day to discovery that his house was in pieces.

Cedric was fine, but parts of Abed's house were strewn about everywhere.  Abed didn't know what happened or why, but he blamed the wind and began gathering the pieces together.

What else could he do?

Most of the first pieces he found had blown into the desert, so Abed starting rebuilding his house there. Enough material was left so that it wasn't long before Abed had food and shelter and the basic necessities to live in the new house he was building. The spot where the parts had blown was still close enough to town to see his friends and go to work everyday, so life kept on as usual.

Except that now, Abed lived in the desert.

For the next year, Abed slowly and painfully rebuilt his house, finding a few new materials every few days.

The only thing that sustained Abed during that year were his friends and Cedric. It turned out that Abed was an adept dog trainer, and every night Abed taught Cedric a new trick. Abed had treated Cedric kindly for all the years since he had found Cedric on his doorstep as a puppy, but it was during that year in the desert when Abed devoted almost all his free attention to Cedric.  Cedric had never learned much in the years before, but when Abed gave him his almost undivided attention (when he wasn't rebuilding his house), Cedric learned amazing tricks beyond what anyone had ever thought possible.

Soon, word spread about the tricks Abed had taught Cedric. Abed's old village lined up to watch the show when he and Cedric passed through town, and people invited Abed into their own villages for him to teach their dogs too. It didn't hurt that Abed loved to tell stories about Cedric and anything else and could entertain the people even when Cedric was tired.

Abed still didn't like living in the desert. But because of Cedric, he was a success.

After almost a full year of collecting spare parts he found scattered across the desert, Abed had finally almost rebuilt his house. But a few weeks before it was finished, Cedric disappeared. 

Abed looked everywhere: in the house, throughout the desert and even back in the village, but he    couldn't find Cedric. Abed yelled for Cedric as loudly as he could for weeks, but Cedric had vanished without a trace.

Abed was crushed. The only thing that has sustained Abed for the last year had disappeared without warning.

Abed took it harder than anyone could understand.  Other people asked Abed to train their dogs, but he said no. He knew it wouldn't be the same.  And deep down, he didn't really want to be a professional dog trainer. He had something special with Cedric that he could never replicate in another setting.

Abed had not only lost Cedric. He had not only lost his source of comfort.  Without Cedric, he had lost his purpose.

In the midst of his sadness, Abed kept working on his house. When he finally finished, he realized that he was all alone in a house in the desert with nothing left to do with his time.

He thought of selling it, or even tearing it down, but he wasn't sure where else to go. The village he had left the year before had changed while he was gone, and it didn't feel like home anymore. He sometimes dreamed of life in the distant villages he saw on the desert horizon, but that would mean starting over yet again.

A few months later, there was a big celebration in his old village. Abed wanted to go, but there was a rare desert storm that day, so Abed just sat on his porch and stared. As he was sitting, he saw a rain-soaked shepherd walking by.

The shepherd looked familiar, but Abed couldn't place where he had seen him before.

"Hello, friend," the shepherd said. "Why do you live in this desert when the village is only a few miles away?"

"My house blew down," Abed said. "And the wind took most of the parts here, so this is where I had to rebuild."

The shepherd paused before responding. 

"The wind didn't blow your house down, and the wind didn't blow the parts here," the shepherd answered back. "I am a carpenter as well as a shepherd, and I am the one who built that house of yours in the village."  The shepherd paused again, this time for a moment longer.  "I am also the one who tore it down," he said.

"You did what?" Abed cried, rising from his chair.

"I tore the house down, but I also helped rebuild it," the shepherd said. "The wind didn't bring the building materials here. I left the parts you needed every day in a place where you could find them.  Had you decided to rebuild in the village, I would have left them there. But since you started rebuilding here, I brought them to the place where you were."

"Why would you do that? And why did you make you make me go through all this trouble? Do you have any idea what the last year of my life has been like?  I'm not even the same person anymore that I was a year ago!"

"Indeed you are not," the shepherd said. "You are a now a person who knows how to build a house, a person who knows how to survive in a desert, and a person who has seen what he can do through perseverance. Imagine what else is possible!"

"But you've left me here in this desert!," Abed protested. "Why?"

"I brought you here to start picking up the pieces, but you are the one who chose to stay. As I said, I would have brought the remaining parts to you wherever I could find you. But yes, I lead people here sometimes. From the desert, you can see more clearly for miles in all directions.

"And think of Cedric," the shepherd continued. "You would have never achieved so much with him in that village, amidst so many distractions."

"Did you take Cedric too?"

"I didn't take Cedric. But there's something you don't know. I've known Cedric even longer than you have. In fact, he was mine as a puppy before I left him on your doorstep. I let you keep him because you took good care of him and I knew what you could accomplish together. He left because you had taught him all you could.

"I showed him an opportunity. I didn't make him go, but I didn't stop him. What I showed him was exactly what I had planned for him all along. If you let me, I'll do the same for you. Even today, I've walked through the rain to talk to you, because it was the first day you'd stopped working long enough to listen."

"Why would I ever trust you about anything?" Abed asked. "You've taken away every single thing that ever mattered to me."

"You will see Cedric again, somewhere down the line and his journey will make sense to you then," the shepherd said. "But until then, what if I gave you a new dog to train? One that could learn even more tricks than what you taught Cedric."

Abed frowned. He had loved Cedric, but he didn't really want to be a professional dog trainer. He cared for Cedric because Cedric had fallen on his doorstep and they were a perfect fit for each other. With a different dog it wouldn't be the same.

"I see that isn't what you're looking for," the shepherd said. "So what if I found you a new house in one of those distant villages you see on the desert horizon? Or what if I helped you find a new house in your old village, or even helped move your new house back there? What would I have to do for you in order for you to trust me?"

Abed sat quietly. He knew that he was in some ways a better person for all he had been through. He had learned how to build a house. He had achieved more with Cedric that he ever thought possible. He wasn't sure what he really wanted at this point, but he knew that it wasn't a new dog, house, or village, or any other gift the shepherd might magically give him as some kind of Karmic Consolation Prize.

Besides, he was still mad at this stranger who saw fit to cause all these changes without so much as asking.

"It doesn't really matter what I want," Abed said. "My plans don't seem to matter much lately. Why don't you just show me what you, in your infinite wisdom, had in mind?"

The shepherd smiled a wry smile and pointed across the plains. When he did, the gray skies cleared and Abed saw more than he ever had.

Near the horizon were families trying to build houses, but who didn't know how. Closer in, there were dogs running wild, while their owners tried in vain to control them. Just a few yards away were travelers wandering through the desert, sweltering and miserable with thirst.

Abed was moved. He had never noticed any of these groups before.

He realized that he might not want to build another house, but maybe he could teach someone else how to do it. He might never want to train another dog himself, but he could help owners who were about to give up to break through. Abed might not like living in the desert, but he had learned enough while there to tell others the tricks to survive while they passed through it. Maybe he could even plant enough grass seeds to bring the desert and the village closer together.

And if Abed spent his time doing all these things, he wouldn't have much time left over to spend in the desert anyway.

Abed suddenly realized that all this was what he really wanted. His dream was not to build houses or to train dogs or to move to new places, but to share the story of how he done these things. In the process, he would find purpose in all that had happened to him and maybe help anyone else for whom his story might sound a little bit familiar.

Abed turned back to reveal his revelation to the shepherd, and ask for the shepherd's help in making it all come to pass. But the shepherd was gone.

Abed stood puzzled for a moment. 

Then he realized that nothing stood in his way.