Dead Man's Honda

Advent:

Right now I can't focus at all. I have ADD skyrocketing out of my skin.

I'm waiting. It's advent and everyone talks about waiting for baby Jesus (ok maybe it's just our two year olds?)I'm waiting for something else.

My niece. She's due Friday and the wait is KILLING me. I have more pink crap to give her than any one child should receive and I just keep getting more as the days go by. For her own sake, I hope she arrives soon.

Other Things I Wait For:

I'm also waiting for a coherent perspective on that strange and obscurely-defined word "sin". My mind has changed greatly on that subject and I honestly don't know what I think anymore. One thing I actually DO know is that "TransAmerica" is my new favorite movie. Everyone should see it. And cry. And think about the fact that we all exist in a context but rarely accept each other that way. And about how hard it must have been to be a woman playing a man who is becoming a woman.

I'm also waiting for a gift someone sent to my parent's house that I haven't seen; another gift sent to my sister's house that I've seen but have yet to play with; I'm waiting to see my nephew with his stocking; I'm waiting for complete healing in the lives of those I love; I'm waiting for consistency; I'm waiting for something new; I'm waiting for someone to inspire me from the pulpit instead of saying the same things over and over and boring me to tears; I'm waiting for my car to clean itself. I'm waiting for answers, for people, for events, for words, for anyone to be as blatantly frigging honest as they can possibly be......and most of all....I am waiting for someone to be true.

And the good news, I guess, is that I don't wait in vain. But in a world where immediate gratification trains us for nothing, I am told that my waiting, that advent in any form, is silly and futile. I disagree, world, I disagree.

It was only later, when I sat in my car with spitting rain smearing the windshield-- that I threw my head back, and laughed.

When I arrived at the worker’s rights clinic and discovered I was the only one there, I knew it was going to be a unique day since I’ve never been early. While I set up and gave myself mental high fives, I noticed our first litigant arrive and sit on thefar side of the room. He had a lollipop in his mouth— a big, bright one. He looked like a little kid after a visit to the doctor, only he was likely in his fifties.

Soon after that, Josh, a slightly flamboyant, somewhat “earthy”, Yale-educated gay lawyer arrived to supervise. I liked his laid-back manner and the fact that he started singing “I am sixteen, going on seventeen” to me when I told him my name. Only one other person has ever done that and at the time I thought they were on crack. Immediately I liked Josh.

He gave me the first litigant and we sat down at a back table to work on his criminal record expungement case. First I asked how many felonies and how many misdemeanors he had committed and for which ones he served jail time and/or prison.

“Uh, let’s see…well, the first time I was caught using on the streets and they combined it with a bunch of stuff and that’s a misdemeanor but they made me go to prison for that one...which is totally unconstitutional.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised that he went to prison for a first offense. And that he thought it was unconstitutional.

“Uh, no, wait, that time maybe was the time I pissed them off because I told them I didn’t have a record and I DID have a record…and they gave me a choke hold that almost killed me…” “they” meaning the police.

“So, what year was the first time?” I asked.

“Well in 1970 I was picked up for possession and then….oh wait….I think that was before the felony.”

“Ok,” I said, trying to fill out the chart but I was beginning to lose the battle. “Let me get this straight: you had this thing in 1970 and this one in 1972, and then was there anything else?”

“Well, where are the job places getting’ this stuff? I mean, I been clean for seventeen years and it’s still comin’ back to give me trouble.”

My heart twinged with the achy, miserable pain that I feel every time a person who has rehabilitated themselves comes to the clinic because they can’t get a job. It doesn’t matter how many years they’ve been clean or well-behaved, they still can’t get a decent job because of consumer background checks. It’s like watching Les Miserable with Jean Valjean never making it past the priest.

I explained where potential employers obtain there information and then continued trying to fill out the chart. Once I had about five misdemeanors and a felony (all drug-related) down on the chart, I double-checked:

“Are these all of them?” The man leaned back; sucked on yet another lollipop a little bit more and said,

“These are so good,” referring to the lollipop, “I just can’t figure out why I’m addicted to them and eat so many…I really need to get off of them, but they’re really, really good.” I smiled to myself thinking of his clearly compulsive personality and its new victims: Tootsie Roll Pops and his teeth.

“Oh wait!” he added “Didja right down the one in 1967?” Uh, no, I had not since he hadn’t mentioned it. “That was the one right before the first.”

Here we go again, I thought as I kept writing. In the midst of this he leaned forward, pulled the lollypop out of his mouth and raised his eyebrows.

“Once we figure all of this out, can I find someone I can pay who can do all this for me?”

“File the petitions?” I asked him, not sure what “all of this” meant. “We’ll help you file the petitions but you don’t have to pay anyone.”

“No no,” he said, leaning closer and lowering his voice, “Is there anyone I can pay to, you know, just make all of this stuff go away?”

“Well no, sir,” I said out loud and then thought: This is a LEGAL clinic. We don’t do mafia work on the side you silly lollypop addicted man!

When I went to Josh (who was at the counter) to discuss the case, another man had arrived and was standing before Josh in a long, baggy jacket. He stood out immediately as strange because he had long, curly hair, a skinny moustache across his mouth, and the most catatonic expression you can imagine. In addition to this, he had what looked like a “missing person” photo pinned to his shirt and jacket at a cock-eyed angle with wooden clothespins. A picture of a woman’s face was on the flyer, and another similar print-out of the same woman was clothespinned to the side of his jacket as well. Instead of “MISSING: yada yada” on the flyer, it appeared to have her name, and all of her good qualities listed “wonderful, intelligent, free-spirit” ran across the crinkled pages (I assume he’d been wearing them for a few days from their appearance) instead of descriptions on where to find her. I didn’t want to judge, or jump to conclusions, but the guy had “SERIOUS STALKER” written all over him. Almost literally.

I waited as Josh explained a procedure for expungement—clearly, succinctly, and then handed the man the paperwork to fill out.

“But how do I get it erased?” the man asked—barely moving his expressionless face.

“Well,” Josh started again with the tone of someone who would naturally be confused after already explaining the answer to the man’s question just moments before. He explained it again, in different words, and then:

“But how do I get it erased?” the man said again with the same catatonic, zombie-like look. Josh became perplexed for a moment. And he did the entire spiel again. With the man responding in the exact same way. Holy crap, I thought, this is almost more bizarre than the woman’s picture. Then I shook my head. Nothing was more bizarre than the woman’s picture.

Four litigants later (there were only three volunteers that morning and one of them was hopped up on Benadryl, Sudafed and Vicaden all at the same time and couldn’t stop staring with a vacant expression and his mouth hanging open) and I walked out to my car in the rain.

It wouldn’t start.

I’d left the lights on. So I had to jump the car. As I opened the hood of my car and stuck the cables on the battery I thought about the dangers of jumping a car in the rain.

I’m standing here with gigantic electric jumping cables and two car batteries in the rain. In my mind I stuck the clamps on the batteries only to blow myself off of the map.

In reality my car started and I climbed inside just as the rain began to pour down at its worst. And that’s when I finally laughed.