October 29th 2014 - Day 60 Part 3

The Hennepin Avenue bridge curves and peaks in the middle like the brim of a baseball hat, maybe all suspension bridges do that, I don’t know.  This young lady had picked the absolute pinnacle of the bridge.  When I approached, slowly, I could see she was standing on the outer edge several feet from the railing.  It reminded me of the movie Staying Alive.  She’d found a place that was safe, too far from anyone’s reach.

“Hello,” I stated. I remained calm spoke quietly.  She stood facing the Mississippi river below making no attempt to communicate with me.  She didn’t respond but her body language shifted - aware I was there.  Her shoes were stark white like nursing shoes with no distinct pattern but very comfortable and soft.  She wore bleached blue jeans too short for her legs and a white puffy coat.  She had black hair cut at her shoulders and her skin seemed dark but I really couldn’t see her face.

She was whimpering with occasional moans.  Her shoes were halfway over the edge barely hanging on.  I felt that she was going to leap at any minute.  I focused on the water below.  The water stared back up providing no solace, it spoke to me and said it couldn’t intervene.  It was neutral, dark, and scary.  I realized the leap wasn’t far enough to take her life.  It wasn’t a question, it was a certainty, and in that instant I knew I was going in after her. 

Saint Anthony falls was no more than a quarter mile down the river.  Nicollet Island split the river with Saint Anthony Falls toward the East shore and the main body of the river toward downtown.  The city created an artificial falls to direct flow on the West side.  She chose a location not high enough for the fall to kill her, but the current would pull her down and drag her over the man-made falls.  Unless she was an amazing swimmer it didn’t look good.  I calculated the distance between where we were standing and the Western shore; it would be difficult but a ladder leading up out of the water, about 300 feet away, was the plan that flashed in my mind.

I was not going to watch her die.

“Can I talk with you?”  I asked.  She didn’t say no, so I took it as a yes.  I didn’t analyze, formulate, categorize, or quantify my words.  I just talked and hoped she would listen rather than jump.  I was convinced she was going to leap at any instant.

“I can’t imagine what put you on this bridge tonight,” she didn’t respond, just whimpered, “what’s your name?”

She waved her left hand up in the air and for a moment I thought this was it.  And then I could see in her palm was an ID, it was the only thing she carried.  She swung her arm and threw it straight into the air.  It flipped and turned like a playing card.  It bounced off of the railing barely missing the gap to the river below.  I stared at it resting along the concrete about fifteen feet from where I was standing.  I couldn’t just go, I was tethered to her, I was connected, if I went to get it, that could be the moment she chose to end it.

“Don’t go anywhere?  Okay?  I’m going to get your ID,”  She didn’t say okay.  I sprinted to the card and picked it up and ran back as fast as possible; my chest tightened as the space between us increased.  She was still there when I got back.  

I was at stake for her, there was no question, we were in it together now.  I read the ID.

“Candice, I will not leave you!”

October 28th 2014 - Day 60 Part 2

In 1997 I wanted to believe the maximum score on the MCAT was 25, but that is my memory altering reality to protect my ego.  Actually, the total possible score was 45, three sections that total 15 each and the writing sample (scored from J through T).  My score was a 17.  Not so low that it was embarrassing (pretty close though), but not high enough for a medical school to ask me for an interview; even with two doctor’s as parents (and alumni).  The writing sample was better, I scored a “P”.  Still not sure how or where a “P” fits into the rest of the score, nor how a medical school board would interpret it.  Maybe something to the effect of “well Tom and Jan, at least your son can write!”  I was fond of the 17, it’s a prime number, and the “P” is the first letter of my name, so in the end I could live with that.

My MO would be to pout, hold my head low and wait for people to ask me what’s wrong.  Very attractive huh?  But I didn’t do that. I didn’t want to talk about it.  It was a Friday night so I decided to have drinks with my friend’s.  We met at W. A. Frost’s in Saint Paul.  Dan, my good friend from the dorm days was tending bar there and we went to crash his scene.  The evening was mostly a bust because Kara brought a girlfriend of her’s that was very manic.  She was dancing all over the bar making a scene because someone had mysteriously paid off her student loan of $27,000.  She assumed it was her estranged mother that was trying to make peace on a lifetime of feuding.  Unfortunately, ‘manic’ would find out later it wasn’t her mom who paid the debt but rather it was a clerical error.  But at the time we didn’t know, so we reveled in her lottery winnings.  Eventually, Dan had to ask us to leave because we were being too loud (‘manic’ was being too loud).

I was quiet enough for Mark to notice because he asked me what was wrong.  I didn’t want to talk about it so I told him that I didn’t feel well and wanted to go home. Not exactly the grandest of Friday nights, but under the circumstances I just didn’t have it in me.

I came home and looked at the piece of paper again.  It had life that number 17 - it had longevity and meaning.  I know it sounds weird to go for a run on a Friday evening but the route I take is beautiful at night and I needed to run fast and see the city and the river.  I suited up in my tennis shoes and a jersey from my high school days.  I stepped out in front of my building as I was lacing up my kicks, a car full of guys’ drove up.  One of the guys rolled down his window and laughed and said, “hey guys it’s Richard Simmons.”

If you’re reading this and you know me, then you are aware I have big hair.  Also, I’m a big guy.  So, from a certain point of view, I could see where he was coming from.  What could I do in a moment like that?  Take offense?  No.  I laughed with them and gave them the six shooter finger-hand-gun maneuver and started on my run.

The route I would take was: across the James J. Hill Stone Arch bridge over the Mississippi; then along the West Bank of the river; back across the river via the Hennepin Avenue Bridge; and finally through Nicollet Island and Saint Anthony.  It was a big square about 3 miles.  The best part of a late evening run was the solitude along with a lit up skyline and the echoes of night life.  No one sees runners and being invisible was exactly what I needed.

As I approached the pedestrian bridge I thought to myself what my parent’s would think running at a time like this.  They would be worried I was going to throw myself over the bridge into the river.  I laughed at the prospect.  The thoughts of the test scores cleared from my mind as I looked up at the amazing skyscrapers lit up against the black clear night.

As I dropped down along the west bank I was surprised by a man on a park bench, his arms outstretched to the side.  Then I noticed the woman kneeling and her head bobbing up and down over his lap.  He was just as surprised to see me as I was him; I just did what anyone would do, I kept on running, although I did give him the universal hand gesture for ‘I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me’.

The Hennepin Avenue Bridge is a beautiful expansive structure linking the heart of downtown Minneapolis with the Northeast.  It was a suspension bridge with lights along each curve.  In the black of night it was like a spotlighted sculpture.  The path continued up to the deck of the bridge via a spiral staircase.  I liked to take those stairs like I was pretending to try out as a firefighter like William Baldwin in Backdraft; other times like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman.

I emerged onto the bridge to see a man running full speed in my direction.  He was dressed in casual clothes not on a midnight run.  I realized he was panicking.  He started speaking very broken english, something about a girl on the bridge and then he pointed.  I could see his Yellow Taxi Cab and then in the dark standing on the precipice was a young woman.  I looked at him and said, “go call 911!”  He sprinted towards downtown and I sprinted towards the girl.

October 27th 2014 - Day 60 Part 1

The fall quarter had started, classes were back in session and campus was busy as ever.  It was October 15^th and a warm fall.  I started the day with a coffee from espresso 22 as I had for most of my four years.  It was difficult to focus knowing my destiny was waiting for me in my mailbox.  I felt as if I was watching my day unfold from a movie theater seat; disconnected, yet my senses were hyper aware.

The test was over and life returned to normal.  As normal as one could expect at the BCA internship.  It was like a constant episode of Law and Order - I had the luck of working another crime scene; the pedophile case (see previous entries); and further research into mother’s that murder their babies.  But time passed as I waited the sixty days for the test results.  During that time I became very introspective.  What was I waiting for?  I’d come to realize that my future was resting on the results of the MCAT exam.  If the test results were high I was going to be a doctor, if they were mediocre I wasn’t.  This didn’t feel right, something was wrong with this picture.  Shouldn’t I want it more?  My parent’s coached me to retake the exam but it was too soon.  It didn’t feel right, taking the test again, the challenge to regurgitate all of that knowledge - like throwing up a plate of spaghetti.  With the additional studying and my test anxiety, it was all way too much.

It was time to face the facts, maybe medicine wasn’t right for me.  Or, maybe it was my destiny and I was caught inside a raging river of confusion.  I didn’t know what to do and trying to analyze it wasn’t going to give me the answers I needed to be sure.   I felt like I was inside a hamster bubble racing down a hill.  I was running so fast to keep up, to keep from falling.  But there was no time to stop to check the street signs or look around at the houses or the trees.

My friend Mark was studying to enter the University of Minnesota Clinical Psychology program.  We talked for hours about becoming doctors.  I would become a psychiatrist and he was going to be a doctor of psychology.  Together we would revolutionize the industry and focus on people and eliminate the dependence on pharmaceuticals.  This dream was fading for me, but for him, he was at the crest of a great summit. .

I finished my coffee and I stepped across University Avenue towards Folwell Hall.  Little did I know there was a greater plan unfolding. It started when I ran into Nancy an ex girlfriend.  I almost didn’t recognize her for it had been three years since we stopped seeing each other.  We hadn’t spoken in all of that time.  We shared a short walk towards Northrup.  We didn’t have the smoothest breakup and seeing her allowed for closure.  She knew how important becoming a doctor was to me.  Speaking to her was a little like going back in time, to the Pete three years previous.

I knew that my day was already estranged because it was day 60, but now it started molting into another animal.  I walked past Northrup Hall and the great mall of the University of MN.  The guardians had shed most of their leaves, they had witnessed hundreds of thousand of students who shared in their shade.  They’d been there for Bob Dylan, the Viet Nam protests, the same giant’s that my parent’s sat under when they were just getting to know each other.  My Grandfather W. Parham, who lead the organic chemistry department, his legacy a bond as deep as the roots of these old protectors.  I pictured him smoking his corn pipe as I walked by Kholtoff Hall.

As I passed the library I bumped into Eric, he stood with his skateboard, looked no different than three years before.  Eric and I endured Physics together, the daily ritual for 30 weeks.  I had to laugh now at the second encounter, excited but apprehensive, something strange was happening.  We reminisced on the days we shared in physics, and how his track to become a physiologist was progressing.  I hadn’t seen him once, not even a glimpse or an echo.  He seemed happy and excited about where he was and what he was doing.  We departed, and he faded into the crowd of people.  I knew that he became a memory, someone I wouldn’t ever see again, just like Nancy.  It was okay, but strangely odd the universe was giving me the opportunity to say goodbye to people like pebbles in the same turgid river.

I finished my classes for the day and headed for home to my cat and my mailbox.  It all felt comical, I wanted to write it down, no one would believe me, the day I received my test scores.  I pulled the mail from the silver secured box in the lobby of the apartment complex.  There it was thin like a debit card pin number.  I sat down on the couch with my cat Nike procrastinating.  I held the thin envelope in my hand and even tried to see my score through the envelope without opening it.

The truth was I was more afraid that the score was going to be good.

October 26th 2014 - The Test

August 16^th arrived and with it the MCAT exam.  I was almost paralyzed with fear as I drove to the Saint Paul University Campus testing site.  It was a Saturday at 7:15am when I arrived.  The line was already out the door as I queued up.  The other student’s were chatting in line discussing their nervosa and the prospect of filling in the ‘do not accept’ at the back of the test.  The MCAT is an exam that you can take more than once but your scores have to be averaged each time you take it.  If it isn’t going well, you can opt to drop the test - eject.  It was comforting on one hand to know there was a failsafe, but at the same time absurdly delusional to think of going through this again.  

As I waited in line to be registered I noticed a trophy case with photos of students from years before.  They were mostly black and white photos, mostly men with their whole life in front of them.  They looked so old.  They were probably younger than me, they didn’t look like kids, nor did they look like I felt, staring at my own reflection in the glass.

The test was given on the same day to every student in the United States.  Twice a year you could take the test, the spring and the summer.  This was before testing centers, computer terminals like they have now as if it was a scene from Enders’ Game.  This was the day of analog, number 2 pencils and filling in the bubbles.

Registration was rather painless, the auditorium was filled to the maximum capacity, each of us sitting every other seat.  It was salient to realize the sheer number of students; the perverse amount of people competing with each other to be healers, researchers, or surgeons.  Every one of the kids was out for the same goal and only a limited number of spots to fill.  It was hard not to imagine every other student in all the other 50 states embarking on the same journey.

The test proctors read the instructions and handed out the test books.  After the last warning about the failsafe at the back of the book the six hours of testing begun.

It was brutal.  Honestly, I really figured the difficulty of the MCAT was fear mongering, but the test would actually be easier.  That was not the case; even today, as I write this 17 years after the fact I still remember the questions, the organic chemistry synthesis reactions, the calculus, lambda and wavelength physics, chemistry equations, valency, cell biology, and paragraphs of reading comprehension all in a very tight period of time.  They were difficult and it wasn’t about figuring out the correct answer, it was about doing it in time to finish the section, I was lucky to even read all of the questions.  They didn’t want sensitive, soft, emotional heroes, they were trying to create an army of programmable, high aptitude, genetically elite doctors that could be put under pressure and not crack.

When it came to the essay, I felt this was my greatest weakness, yet it was a relief from the barrage of final exam questions from the last four years of science.  My essay question was ‘privacy in the media, do you give out sources?  When is it okay to divulge your source’.  I kicked its ass - wished the rest of the test was philosophical, written or even oral in which we could around talking about everything we had stored up in our heads, then I might have impressed the shit out of the testing regime.

When the test completed they explained the results would be released on exactly the same day for everyone, everywhere 60 days from today.  I admit I hovered over that escape hatch, almost decided to ditch my test.  But in the end, I didn’t leap, I let my score stand.

By the time I was taking the exam I was deep into the internship with the BCA.  I had already registered for the fall term of my 5^th and final year of college.  I was ambivalent about being a doctor, but this is what the last four years were about, right?  Where was I?  Who was I?  I seriously didn’t know and couldn’t answer.  What I’d seen since the summer began had rocked my world.  

All I could do was go through the motions.  I was a kid with a plan that was handed to me, it was a roadmap and I was following it.  I went to the morgue and absorbed every bit I could from Senior Special Agent Kohout, Senior Special Agent Good, Doctor Susan Roe and the rest.  I was living day-by-day and trying to answer the ultimate question everyone was asking - what are you going to do?

The only thing I knew for sure was that didn’t know.

October 25th 2014 - Looking For My Voice

My Freshman year of college was a difficult transition from high school.  I lived in the dorms my Freshman year and made several friends, mostly acquaintances.  My grades suffered after the first two quarters.  I had expectations that college would be this amazing place where people come together like a think tank to solve the world’s problems.  I was hoping it was the collaborative environment of learning science and creative expression that high school was not.  It did have those qualities at times, but it was sparse, in the end it seemed to be an extension of high school but without the coral that parent’s provide, for better or for worse.  It was rather daunting being at a school with thousands and thousands of students.  My id number was 1659831, it was common to meet someone, connect with them and never see them again.  I felt like a number, tagged like a fish in the sea for a computer to track my actions.  I started the habit of routines: walking the same path to class; early in the morning getting coffee, same potion from the same Espresso 22; sitting in the same seat in the auditorium, hoping to see the same face near me in the hall full of 200-300 people.

I took risks, put myself out there, made myself vulnerable.  It worked some of the time, but mostly it faded.  I met people and they meant something, but it was fleeting.  I was looking for deeper connections, lasting relationships, people I could learn from and they could also learn from me in return.

Then it happened.  My friend from the dorm Ben introduced me to a group of guys that were in the process of leaving ATO - the fraternity.  They’d lived in the frat house but found a place of their own - The Ontario House.  Erik and Mike were the home plate on the baseball diamond.  They were open to people, anyone could stop by, join in on the festivities, the TV, the music, the debate.  But most importantly, it was the freedom to create and express myself, all of ourselves, it felt like a home away from home.

Often they would turn off the TV and we would do writing drills.  Poetry, prose, lyrics, stream of consciousness, it was great.  We would share and debate, less critique and more articulated validation.  These sessions would also lead to music - drumming, guitar, singing, there wasn’t anything that was out of bounds or off limits.

Then Ben gave me a harmonica, his traveling C blues harp.  I was shy at first, what did I know of keys, chords, rhythm, melody, or harmony?  All I could do was listen.  Robert entered the mix and he would play lots of music - mostly guitar, while the rest of us drummed a bongo, beat the table, or blew on the harmonica.

I was expanded by an open mike night every night at the Ontario House.  From writing, to music, to conversation and people, I felt right at home.  We read Walt Whitman, Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, and Edgar Allen Poe.  During this time, my grades improved.  My sense of humor and my outlook generally shifted.  I was happy and thriving.  As weeks passed I began to notice some things.  Mike was a natural writer and creative genius.  He shared with me once that his English Professor told him that a writer or poet needed to create 25 works from beginning to end, before considering something for submission.  “The process of creating and producing work changes a person,” Mike would say, and “this is the growth an artists needs to enter before taking his work seriously.”  Erik was a poet, he produced collections of his own poetry and shared them with us, Ben and Robert were talented musicians, and Ben especially had grace with the ladies - he could smooth talk his way through barbed wire.  Mike also wrote poems and prose that he put together, and he decided to make a literary zine.  Mike was the brains and we helped in any way that we could.  One of the best hacks that we did was to produce ‘Grume’ by sneaking into the Administrative Building on campus where the dean’s office was located.  This was a huge operation of lookouts and planning to pull of the heist.  To have the University supply the copy for our literary magazine seemed all too perfect.  We used their copy machine to print at least thirty or forty magazines.

One day it was just Mike and I at the Ontario House.  We were reading and quietly chilling when Mike could see something was on my mind.  He started talking and he something I won’t forget. 

“You have to find your voice Pete,” he could see I didn’t know what he was talking about.  “Everyone has something, everyone.  Maybe its not what you think it would be, being a doctor, or whatever.  But your voice is everything.  Once you get your voice, well…” he trailed off and never finished the sentence.

I thought for a while about what he said, never really forgot it.  I asked myself the question, what is my voice?  Later, Mike approached me and said, “your voice could be your conversation?”  He continued, “You are a great listener and maybe that’s your voice.”  I told him I like to listen to people’s stories, God knows I’d had enough therapy to know what it is like from just on the job training.

“People like to tell you their stories, and you open them up, you don’t judge them, maybe that is your voice.”  I still think about those words he shared and how meaningful it was for him to say them.

As I write this, today October 25^th 2014, I couldn’t tell you what my voice is, nor whether I have figured it out.  Maybe it isn’t something we ever really know.  But today, as I sit in my shoes, I wouldn’t be the man I am without those guys helping to pave the way for who I would become and what I would accomplish.  Thank you Ontario House and all that passed through those doors.    

October 24 2014 - The Autopsy

The following day after returning from Austin Minnesota I headed to the Ramsey County Morgue to assist in any possible way with the autopsy.  By the time I made it to the morgue, the body had already been processed, which means blood and fluids had been taken.  An autopsy begins with the gross examination, and if necessary will proceed to the microscopic.  After processing, Doctor McGee did a thorough examination of the exterior of the body noting all bruises, bullet holes, or abrasions.  He does this to ensure that the physical evidence on the body matches independently to the story that the detectives are feeding him for the most likely cause and manner of death.  The doctor must rule out all possibilities before determining the cause and manner of death.  

When the doc proceeded to track the entry and exit wounds.  He had x-rays taken to assist with any remaining bullet or shrapnel still left in the body.  He then used a plastic transparent rod that looked like it was taken from venetian blinds.  He inserted the long rod and tracked the pathway the bullet travelled.  He would do this for every suspected bullet wound.  He matched every entrance and exit wound and indicated the suspected trajectory or angle of entry.  He then used this to determine if there were any remaining bullets still left in the body the x-rays didn’t detect.

He asked me to help him hold the victim’s arm in varying positions to try and determine the angles and also to find the proper entrance and exits.  After he was complete with the process, he proceeded to remove all of the organs and weigh them and inspect them for abnormalities.  He needed to determine the exact bullet or wound that caused the victim’s death.  Even with so many bullet wounds, he needed to determine as best as possible.  The Doctor determined the angles and confirmed from the crime scene evidence there was two shooters, and that the second shooter most likely had a revolver.  If you think about it, if the pathways were determined and the bullets were retrieved, one of the two shooters caused the man’s death.  How do they prosecute the other?  Also as murder?  The two shooters may not have known which actually killed the man, but the science can determine it.

Since the beginning of the summer of 1997, as part of my internship with the BCA, I’d been given an office in the Ramsey County Morgue.  It was located near the capital in downtown Saint Paul Minnesota.  I was teamed up with my mentor Senior Special Agent Joel Kohout and Assistant Medical Examiner Doctor Susan Roe.  I was to research cases of neonaticide, the murder of newborn infants by categorizing and collecting case files that fit a certain pattern to determine the possibility of a profile that could be generalized to predict behavior in the prosecution or prevention of these incidents.

When I wasn’t studying for the MCAT exam I was pulling records, reading autopsy reports and researching published articles on the topic.  They hoped by the end of the summer we may apply for a grant with the federal government to take the research to another level.  Over the course of a few years, many babies were being found in dumpsters, trash cans, toilets; it was all over the news.  In all of these cases, the law enforcement had little to no leads.  It was difficult to know what happened?  What was the intent of the mother?  Could the babies have been born as stillbirths?  If they weren’t, what happened and where was the mother?  In most of the cases in which the mother’s were found, they were usually very young and immature, they didn’t know they were pregnant nor that they were 36-40 weeks pregnant when they delivered.  They were young, lost, alone, and scared.

The autopsy of the babies would indicate often times that the newborns were born alive.  The science was weak and it was difficult to determine without a doubt, but that was the challenge and why it was so important to understand.  Where and who performs the autopsy is critical for the investigation of a crime.  I read so many case files during that summer and I learned something that seems obvious but it wasn’t.  The autopsy is basically treated as physical evidence for testimony in the court of law.  The coroner or medical examiner will determine the cause and manner of death and present the report to the court.  It doesn’t seem obvious, but in the court of law, if the lawyers are going to present a fact or piece of evidence related to the state of the victim, they would have to do so by bringing in the body to the courtroom.  Obviously that isn’t going to happen, so the autopsy is basically a replacement to the body.

There was a case that I helped with in which a man had been found after being dead for several days.  He was in a very bad shape.  It was more difficult to determine the cause of death because of the prolonged decomposition.

Agent Joel gave me the polaroids of the scene of the crime and asked me what I saw.  She had already told me it was a suspected suicide.  The man had a history of depression.  I looked at the pictures and there were no posters or photographs on the walls, the room was bare of furniture.  I commented on this and thought depression fit the description of the room.

Both of the ladies chastised me.  They said that an assumption like that is dangerous and limits the investigation.  The man could have just moved in, or maybe he was painting, or possibly he just didn’t like to put things up.  A lesson in assumptions.  Doc Roe took x-rays and found shotgun pellets in the man’s skull and it certainly looked conclusive that he died of his self inflicted gunshot wounds.

Then it hit her, she became so excited.  She found a small piece of skull that was dislodged in a way that wasn’t consistent with a shotgun wound.  She told Agent Kohout that the roommate or others needed to be interviewed as possible leads.  Sure enough, the roommate confessed later, he told Agent Kohout that he was fighting with the victim, he hit him over the head with a baseball bat.  The blow crushed the victim’s skull and he died.  He tried to cover it up with the shotgun and claim the man committed suicide.  It was amazing that this tiny bit of evidence, which could have easily been overlooked, made the difference.

I had the unique opportunity to work with so many amazing detectives, doctor’s, lab technicians, and good people from the beginning of the Austin case to its conclusion.  The two shooters were finally found, and prosecuted.  They did find one of them with a revolver just as Doctor McGee suspected. 

October 23rd 2014 - The Gristle of Life

Speaking of exams there is no bigger one than the MCAT.  Except for maybe the LSAT and in some cases the GRE.  The MCAT exam is the number one greatest factor for consideration for entrance to Medical School.  I was terrified.  It was so dramatic my fear that my desire to become a doctor was waxing because of this damn test.

The exam consisted of eight hours of small tests ranging from math, reading, life and physical sciences, and essay.  It was broken up into groups of organic chemistry, general chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics including calculus, reading comprehension and the fated essay.  To this day I wonder who the lucky bastard is that has to read the thousands of written essays as part of this exam?  I wouldn’t doubt by now if a computer scores it.  :)

I began studying for the MCAT about six months before the exam date of August 16^th.  I even took the Kaplan prep course to effectively learn how to take the test.  You know what I learned when taking the class?  Don’t get scared and don’t get frustrated, that’s what the prep taught me (great!).  The teacher told this story about coaching soccer for young kids.  On this team he had a retarded boy that struggled especially playing with very talented kids.  The day came for a really big game - the undefeated rivals.  He coached the boy to run as fast as he could and stay as close to the rival team’s best player.  He went as far as to have him stay within three feet of this super star player.  The superstar player on the the other team was completely incapacitated with frustration.  It was a great story, one I will remember more than the solvent used in a Grignard Reaction or Newton’s Gravitational Constant.

It was the summer of 97’ and as I studied for the MCAT I was also working my internship with the BCA (Bureau of Criminal Apprehension - see previous posts).  I studied and practiced while reading case files of serial killers, going on drug raids, visiting the morgue, assisting with autopsies and sitting in with Senior Special Agent Kohout as she consulted with local sheriff and deputies regarding possible sexual predators.

Needless to say my mind wandered from the prize and my desire to be a doctor continued to wane.  As part of the Kaplan program we were given the opportunity to take practice exams to simulate the experience.  On this particular Saturday I was sitting in the test center at 7:30am.  Everyone at the BCA took turns on call for the crime scene task force.  The BCA could be called to anywhere in the State of MN depending upon the nature of the crime.

About 35 minutes into the practice test the beeper went off and on the face it gave the address of Austin MN which is basically on the border of MN and Iowa at least 2 hours away.  I stared at the beeper and it also read the nature of the crime, ‘homicide’.  I looked at the practice test and the proctor in the front of the room, again at the beeper and then back to the clock at the front ticking down for this particular part of the test.  It took a matter of 30 seconds to turn the test over, grab my stuff and walk up to the Kaplan proctor and tell him, “sorry, I got to go.”  The look on his face was priceless, it was kind of like I was walking out of detention - he didn’t know hot to respond.  I handed him the test and walked out.  I got into my Cherry Red Ford Explorer and drove for two hours to the crime scene.

My wife and I in present time talk about things we have to do, things we want to do and all of the things in between.  As parents, the lines get blurred as a person becomes entrenched in child rearing, there is a tendency to lose one’s self.  We both ask each other, “what are you excited about?”  Or, “are you excited to do what you are about to do?” And if we hesitate or don’t absolutely know, then the answer is no.  When the answer is yes, it can be just as exciting witnessing their passion and excitement about something.  I was driving to Austin MN, the Spam capital of the world, with no idea what to expect, other than a dead body; and I was invited to help solve a crime- I was the most excited I’ve ever been in my entire life.

When I arrived at the city hall in Austin they checked my ID and gave me the address to the site.  There weren’t instructions nor a how-to manual for how to be on a crime scene.  There was just me and my winging it.  When I showed up at the scene of the crime it wasn’t like any TV show or book I’ve read.  I parked along a row of cars just outside the yellow police line.  I got out and walked under the yellow tape as if I belonged.  A police officer from Austin met me in the driveway.  I pulled out my BCA id and the police officer pulled out his flashlight.  He laughed at himself as he realized it was the middle of the morning and didn’t need his flashlight to read my id.

“I’m so used to checking id’s since 2am I just got used to it,” he motioned to the police issue mag light in his hand.  He walked me up to the house which was a normal looking home tucked into a block of other houses.  There was a separated garage and a good size back yard with a willow tree in the middle.  He stopped me near the back door to go and fetch the lead detective.

A tall thin tanned 40-something man came out.

“So, I hear you are Doctor Ophoven’s kid.  Pretty awesome lady,” I smiled and nodded.

“Okay, listen up.  We’ll put you to work, listen and pay attention.  This is a crime scene, get some gloves and do what we tell you, okay?”

“Yes sir,” what else could I say.  I entered the back door and immediately was struck by the smell.  Even though the murder had occurred less than twelve hours previous, the smell of drying blood was overwhelming.  On the floor of the kitchen was a young man in his boxer shorts dead on the floor.  There were several bullet holes in him and blood pooled all around him and had seeped toward the back door where I stood.  Yellow evidence markers were positioned all over the kitchen; shell casings, bullet holes in the walls, drug paraphernalia on the table.  The blood was thick and drying and it gave off a sweet odor like brown sugar mixed with a hint of damp leather.  They all stared at me as I couldn’t take my eyes off of the dead man.  I looked up into their eyes and I could see a desire for something, the intimacy of looking into the eyes of a dead man for the first time, an innocence they could never get back.  After a moment they introduced themselves.

The story was that the victim was a marijuana dealer.  He hadn’t been paid by one of his lackey’s and had spread the word that if he didn’t get paid he was going to have to do something drastic.  The lackey apparently took it upon himself to get to him first.  That was it, the story as it stood, youth without youth.  What the crime scene team had to do was determine the weapon or more importantly weapons - was there two shooters?  The ballistics team was called in to track every bullet fired and pull it from the wall or the floor wherever it went.  They had recovered shell casings but couldn’t determine how many shots were fired.

The crime scene team and ballistics went to work.  They started stringing colorful twine around the kitchen to track the trajectory of each bullet and where they may have ricocheted.  I went out the back door to get out of their way and help out any other way possible - and frankly getting some fresh air seemed like a good idea.  As I walked down the back stairs I noticed a flash in the grass.  I looked closer and there was a shell casing inside a footprint.  As the sun went overhead it was easier to see that which would have gone missing at 3 o’clock in the morning.

I yelled out, “shell casing.”  The team came out and confirmed what I’d found.  One of the detectives jokingly stated, “and the intern found it,” they all shrugged their shoulders, but deep down an orchestra was playing.

We worked for several more hours; I watched as they handled the crowds and the slow work of picking up the pieces.  Eventually I was dismissed and drove home, but was asked to join the Ramsey County Medical Examiner for the autopsy the following morning.

Sometimes opportunities present themselves and they aren’t obvious.  Other times, the opportunities are powerful.  This was one of those days that not only gave me the chance to elevate what I was doing and the choices of my life I was making, but also a great opportunity for perspective outside the confines of practice tests.  I had to choose whether to finish the test or drive to the crime scene - I made a choice.  The crime scene wasn’t practice, this was the gristle of life.

October 22nd 2014 - Tests Suck

I am a terrible test taker.  Huge anxiety.  I freeze up.  I read the sentence and it’s like trying to listen to someone while a train whistle is blowing.  It just doesn’t get in.  I’ve been phobic of tests since 5^th grade.  We took placement tests to see what we knew and they would stick us in a class and that was it, my destiny of learning was established in a half hour.

Don’t even try and tell me that the teachers of advanced classes are the same as remedial ones, I’ve been in both and trust me when I say the remedial teachers should stick to coaching baseball.

In 10^th grade I took advanced placement American History.  Our teacher was an ex-college professor, I’m pretty sure he was a doctor of history.  He treated us as college kids - what a relief it was.  We had infrequent exams and basically a giant text book he taught from and we learned.  There wasn’t any worksheets, study guides, no coloring books or fill-in-the-blanks.  The exams were bluebook essays - you knew the answer or you didn’t.

I would read and reread, highlight and take notes on my notes of any highlighted notes.  Before the exam we would cram and I had a photographic memory of the page number, the captions, the photos, the American history was in my head.  Then came test day, I would read the question and then reread it, and my anxiety was like a diffuser filtering away a whole hemisphere of my brain.  I went to the teacher and asked him for advice and he told me that maybe my brain wasn’t developed enough yet.  Now, I really liked this guy and respected him, but maybe a little sugar coating might have been prudent.

This was my curse, my lot in life.  Not good at tests.  My ACT tests scores were atrocious, my SAT scores were nominal.  I took one of those SAT ‘make your score better’ courses and my SAT scores actually dropped by 20 points.  When it came to college I knew I was going to be handicapped.  Maybe I am dyslexic or something?  This was the thought that went through my mind.  I studied and studied hard but also felt that even if I studied hard it may not matter.  I resigned that the scores and the grades became second for me.  I just delved into what I was learning and took the focus away from trying to ace the tests, but rather to just learn cool shit that I could somehow apply to the world.

Things changed for me in my sophomore year of college at the University of Minnesota.  I was enrolled in physics, which based upon my experience with physics in high school was going to be a challenge.  My favorite thing about the class was the text, the history and how the scientist’s invented the theories.  Of course, the exam never really asked the political strife Isaac Newton underwent and his conflicts with the Queen of England; nor how he was obsessed with being the first to create the philosophers stone, and how he was using science in the name of God and how this alienated himself from the rest of his community.

Nope, they didn’t ask us anything about that.  And to this day most of us know that Force = Mass times Acceleration, but I doubt that many people know that Newton inadvertently invented calculus while experimenting with optics and light.

But, I had to get grades.  So, I worked up a different strategy.  It wasn’t really cheating but it wasn’t exactly blindly reading the textbook and hope my brain doesn’t decide to freeze up like my Bronco II on the ice and snow on a thin road in Newport MN, I needed a work around.

I began to study the professor.  What kind of guy is he?  Does he like sports?  Is he passionate about the material or teaching?  Where did he come from?  The idea was to read and study the material but through the eyes of him?  I needed to get to know the professor enough to predict the questions he was going to ask on the exam.  Was he going to be sneaky?  Was he going to test us on the text, or on the lecture, or a mix?  I learned this from watching Captain Kirk and how he mastered the Kobayashi Maru.

The physics class had five tests per quarter 10 questions each exam.  Our grade was curved on a total of 50 points.  After the second test I deduced the professor was better at physics than people, he loved science it was his thing.  He was a good teacher, not into it as he could have been.  He liked testing on lecture material, even more weight on class and blackboard notes than the text.  It became clear to me that if I analyzed the total number of people in the auditorium and counted all who participated by showing up I could accurately predict how good or bad the curve would be.  This caught on to the people who sat around me, Peter and Eric, and Bridget and Sally, all wanted to know what the numbers were the day before the test.  There were 287 enrolled students in the class and between tests about 210-260 that would attend class daily.  That is a big discrepancy and the less that would show up on average to class the better the curve.  The numbers spoke for themselves.

As the weeks passed the test scores would come in and sure enough they didn’t lie.  Certain segments of physics were more difficult - I also began to see the professor wanting higher scores.  It got to the point that I picked up the professor’s tells; These were obvious statements, examples, clean clear chalk entries and he would box some of them in.

During the latter part of the second quarter the tests got earlier.  Something changed and this effected my curve analysis.  I discussed it with my group and informed them that he was shifting; maybe, it was pressure from outside influences, or the fact that most of the students were pre-med and they complained about how a poor grade would effect their chance at getting into medical school.  Whatever the case, the numbers still were accurate, if you went to class you were going to do better.

Everything changed in the third quarter.  We were assigned a new professor, all the tells were off, my social engineering had to go back to the drawing board.  I continued with the experiment and the curve actually started to favor the text slightly more than the lecture.  If you read the text, and mastered the book you would do better than if you favored the lecture.  That was a bummer, because I’d gotten good at learning from the man and not the book.

The take-away for me was huge though.  My test anxiety still existed but I learned that learning, education, teaching, studying, it’s all a dynamic process.  Don’t throw in the towel if you are like me - hard work pays off regardless of grades, certifications, or the process of learning is difficult, it can be hard no matter when or how the actual knowledge will apply some day, cause it will if you believe it will.

October 21st 2014 - The Incident With the Clock

“All things being equal or parsimonious, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.”  This is Occam’s razor - the famous 13^th century logician who I love quoting mainly because I like the word parsimonious.  It comes to mind in this anecdote regarding an event that occurred before a final exam during my fourth year of college at the University of Minnesota.  I was studying to be a doctor, the MCAT exam was less than a year away - August 16^th to be exact.  I was finishing my classes of my 4^th year with a plan to extend into a fifth but mainly because I wasn’t prepared to apply for Medical Schools and spend my summer finishing classes.  In the first couple of years of college my grades suffered and I spent the next 2 trying to bring up my GPA.  It is so much easier to erode a grade point average than to improve one.

On this particular evening I was cramming for a final exam the Introduction to Personality.  I was doing well in the course and had the material pretty well mastered but nonetheless I was reviewing my quarter of lecture notes and I’d of course made myself flash cards, because I am a flash cards type of guy.  I started to doze off in my bed studying and knew I needed to get rest for the 8am final which was early enough to sleep through.  I put my notebook down next to my bed, turned off the lights in my apartment and set my alarm for 6:30am.

After a couple of hours of sleep I awoke startled, it sounded like someone was in my apartment.  All of the hairs stood up on my neck.  My light was on in my room, which I specifically turned off before bed.  The clock read 3:30am as I stepped out of the bed, and my lecture notebook was not where I left it.  I ran into the living room ready for anything completely freaked out.  I called out, “hello,” and I went to the door which was unlocked to the outside hall.  I had locked the door, turned off the lights and gone to bed, I was sure of it.  Someone had been in my apartment.  Every light was turned on, and my cat sat on the back of his chair and my notebook was resting on the kitchen table.  That was when I had to sit down.  None of it made any sense.

After a few minutes I laid back down in my bed.  I checked the clock and the alarm.  It wasn’t set for 6:30am, it wasn’t turned on at all.  There seemed to be two likely competing explanations.  The first was that I’d fallen asleep and dreamt that I set my alarm, maybe even I created the studying inside my dream - which is pretty awesome if you think about it.  Thankfully I woke up to lock the door, set my alarm and go to sleep.  It was just so strange because it would have to have been the clearest and most vivid dream to have done all of those actions only to wake to have them undone.  I remember practicing the flash cards, turning off the lights, setting my alarm, even having an internal dialogue with myself about what time to set the alarm so that I gave myself ample time to get to the test.

The second and more likely explanation is that I was trying to send myself a message from the future.  I know this sounds odd but hear me out.  We all make choices in our lives, go left or right at the intersection, eat here or there, every choice takes us along a path to our destination.  I was studying personality, prepping for medical school entrance exams.  My final was at 8am, easily could have been missed; all of these events culminating on this one evening - maybe this one evening, or the following morning was a singular point in the space time continuum.  It is possible I came back in time to prevent some devastating maybe even catastrophic disaster from happening to our civilization.  My exam, my apartment, my cat all the simplest and mundane of nights could have had the gravest of consequences.  Granted, there is a load of hubris in that thought but still, you never know.  My future self couldn’t just show himself that would be crazy and obvious, and certainly couldn’t have tried to manipulate events such as change my exam score or something dramatic like blow up a building, my car, or steal all of my pants so I couldn’t take the test.  But what he could do was enter my apartment, turn on all the lights, change my alarm clock and move my notebook and then leave making a loud sound as the door shut on the way out.  All of these actions could be masked as a sleepy student.  The sound clearly woke me up so that my destiny changed and possibly the disaster was averted.

I know the previous example seems more probable in an Occam’s Razor sort of way, but the second explanation feels more right to me - I felt someone had been in my apartment.  The only thing I can’t explain was whether I was supposed to miss the exam or take the exam to avert the history that needs to be changed.  I guess time will tell.  I will keep you posted.

October 20th 2014 - Magic Part 2

As much as I would enjoy taking the credit for proving the existence of magic - it isn’t really my concern.  I have little issue with people who do not think magic exists, refuse to play with magic, or need to discount it for their own self preservation.  I know it exists and figuring out its nuance and learning to balance it within normal society is my goal.  As mentioned in my previous post I put deja vu into the category of magic because there isn’t any external measurable quantities or factors that can help describe deja vu, but the fact that it is regularly accepted as an experience by all makes it a phenomenon.

The experience of deja vu always felt like a memory to me.  A feeling like I was remembering a dream I had experienced.  When I was younger it felt much more disorienting and less so as I’ve gotten older (more on that later).  As a youth I wanted to believe it was a dream and that I was reliving my dreamworld in reality.  It also astonished, frustrated, flabbergasted, and mystified me that something so powerful was unexplainable.  I didn’t intend to set out to define it or figure it out but I was always intrigued.  It got to the point that when it happened I would stop what I was doing and just listen to my intuition and try and decipher the secret it was trying to whisper.

It was 1994 my second year of college at the University of Minnesota.  I lived alone in Dinktyown, the small collegeville on the Northeast side of the Mississippi River.  I lived on positively 4^th Street which 30 years before was also home to Bob Dylan when it was just 4^th Street.  The positively came later when Bob became Bob.  It was a beautiful spacious apartment for just me and my cat Nike.  As larger spaces tend to acquire more thins, the apartment required the domesticated upkeep that was lower on my to-do list.  On this one particular evening I was cleaning while listening to Thelonious Monk.  As I was putting games away and stacking books my eyes caught the game MindTrap that was stashed under the coffee table.  I reached for it and the deja vu started and I just sat down and relished in the actual feeling, the buzz of it was like my skin was a harmonic chord of music.  The deja vu subsided and I went back to my cleaning.

About six months later I was sitting in the same room with my friend Nate relaxing and watching National Geographic.  The phone rang and it was this girl I had met a couple of weeks previous.  She was going to stop by with a group of her friends.  I yelled to Nate that we needed to rally and clean the whole apartment, girls were coming over!  I started shoving things into the closet when my eyes met the same MindTrap game.  The deja vu happened again and I felt like for a moment I was looking through my eyes and listening through the ears of myself but at a different time, and because of the game I had a frame of reference.

That’s when it occurred to me.  Deja vu feels like we are experiencing our dreams; but actually, what if it is us experiencing ourselves at a different time in our lives.  It makes sense, because the moments collide with our consciousness and for a second or two or longer we are experiencing the same moment in two different periods of our lives.  The idea of feeling like we have done the moment before is true, we have.  The feeling is also unusual because we are still us but we are hanging out with a younger or older set of eyes, ears, smells, feelings, sadness, excitement.  We change everyday but we don’t really notice the changes because our frame of reference changes daily as well.  But if we get the opportunity to feel the essence of our youth or aged self from the perspective of years apart it would feel weird, yet familiar at the same time - like deja vu.

There are two windows, the first window is when we experience a deja vu episode for the first time and the other side of the window is sometime in the future.  I believe now, that the longer the distance between the two windows the stronger and more intense the experience.  The youthful first windows are by far the more intense as we are experiencing the older, wiser, more experienced selves and likewise the second window is less intense (hence why we feel it less when we are older or less intensely) since we have been there before, and it’s like putting on an old worn-in catcher’s mitt.   The first window is less comfortable which is like the stiffness of fresh leather seeking the oil of experience.  Regardless, for a moment in time, two selves of the same person are sharing in a single consciousness moment with a little of both sides seeping through to the other.

I know it sounds crazy or stoney but try it on.  It’s magic, there is no way to prove it right or wrong, but if it was the true, then that is pretty darn cool.

October 19th 2014 - Magic Part 1

The first time I experienced magic was when I was about six years old.  This was back in Mendota Heights Minnesota a suburb of Saint Paul.  We lived on the corner of Decorah Lane in a one story rambler type house.  This was a few years before my parents were divorced.  I was trying to entertain myself as my parents would frequently enforce.  I decided to practice my dribbling in the driveway.  The year was around 1980, unchaperoned play in the neighborhood was encouraged rather than the current model of super vigilant supervision.  We didn’t have a basketball hoop yet, and dribbling a basketball without the glory of making hoops was like fishing in an empty stream.

Across the street lived two young men who owned a basketball hoop.  As I practiced my dribbling the hoop called to me, I wanted to sneak over and just shoot a couple of hoops, what could the harm be?  Nobody was home, the driveway was empty and the hoop wasn’t doing anyone any favors left alone.

The history of these neighbors was not friendly.  They had many late night parties and were known to stay up late into the evening drinking and being loud.  My brother and I both considered using their hoop on previous occasions but agreed it wasn’t a safe place.  We had that feeling of warning one gets similar to dark alleys, crossing busy highways, or drinking from pond water.

I finally was fed up with boring dribbling and decided I would risk it.  I crossed the street and began practicing my lay ups.  Being so young it was difficult to make baskets.  My granny style was really my only hope for success.  Wishing my brother was around to enjoy it with me, I continued by practicing a solo game of ‘horse’. 

I continued throwing the ball up into the air and then it happened.  It wasn’t particularly windy on this day and when I threw the ball up it literally stopped in mid-air without hitting the rim and the ball flew back over my head down the driveway.  It was as if an invisible blocker reached their hand up and slammed the ball in the other direction.  All the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  I just stared up at the hoop trying to make sense of the nonsense.  I looked at it blankly and a knowing just came over me - it was time to leave, I wasn’t welcome anymore.  I chased after the ball rolling down the street.  After I retrieved it I walked back up my driveway and just before I got to the house the two men pulled up.  I’d already thought the experience was strange but when they got out of their pickup truck and went inside I knew that I was saved from some unknown or uncomfortable predicament.  I didn’t tell anyone about it because I was rather in disbelief that it had actually happened, but it did happen and I would never forget it.

The next time magic revealed itself to me was a few years later.  I loved playing baseball - shortstop was my position.  It was a windy summer afternoon, certainly too windy for a random solo little white butterfly to be flying through.  It was the nondescript kind of butterfly I would more likely see in a field of wildflowers.  It was the strangest thing seeing this butterfly land in the short grass. As much as I was trying to focus on the game I had a certainty, a knowing that the next hit was going to land exactly where the butterfly landed.  Sure enough, the batter hit the ball hard in my direction the ball bounced exactly where the butterfly had landed.

The idea of magic to me exists not in the vein of voodoo, or sorcery in the Merlin sense.  For me, magic is an intense trust in one’s internal intuition.  Magic is only magic because it comes from within rather than from without.  Cultures and society teach us to only trust what we can see and understand.  One’s intuition is not taught nor defined very well, and it cannot be described by any of the five senses.  Science and technology cannot explain it, nor religion which struggles with the tangible.  So, I guess magic lives in its own place, still being debated, denounced, argued and vilified.  

Magic and deja vu go together.  Both are feelings we receive from inside ourselves, subjectively described as memories, dreams, coincidence, serendipity, synchronicity, or the all too easy and one of my favorites -  the chemistry in our brains miss-firing.  All of these examples are true but none sing the song of certainty, belief, or a deep knowing that can explain these phenomena.

October 18th 2014 - Ira Part 8 - The Final Chapter

The last few days in Siberia were like Sunday on Labor Day weekend anticipating the end of summer and the return to school.  We’d become surrogate Russians and we were missing these people in a heavy way.  Unlike missing our parents, who we’d needed a break from; and likewise them us, the Russians, we were most likely never going to see again.  I’d started to close down and put on a happy face, but inside, I didn’t want to go back.  I wanted to fall in love and live happily ever after in Russia.

I started handing out the remaining gifts I’d brought.  Food - Ramen Noodles, Kraft Mac-n-chees, cigarettes, clothes, cassette tapes, and money.  I gave it all away, they needed it I didn’t.  I made goodbyes with Ira’s secret friends; losing a couple of huge hands of poker so they didn’t have to take handouts.  There were a few final large blowout parties with the exchange program so that we could celebrate and say our goodbyes.  I took several walks around the neighborhood memorializing the school, the park, and the towering oak tree outside Ira’s apartment (in which Ira’s father scraped bark from the tree to help cure me of a really bad case of diarrhea - a story I’ve neglected to divulge in detail - you can thank me later).  Aleosha was sad when I was packing, he kept me company even though my Russian and his English were so poor, but we giggled together nonetheless.  I will never forget his curious big eyes.  Ira’s mother and father sent me with gifts, tea, and helped me pack the samovar for my Dad back home.  But when it came time for Ira - it was hard for me to say goodbye.  I learned so much about being American from the Russians, but from Ira, I learned diligence, perseverance, stubborness and balancing hard work with a sense of humor.  

We met at the bus stop where it all started more than a month before.  It was very early in the morning, still dark when we hugged our last hugs and loaded up into the bus.  The trip to Novosibirsk was silent except for the occasional sound of muted whimpering.  We flew back to Moscow for a short stay before our final flight back to the Twin Cities.  We visited the Bolshoi with black market tickets.  We watched as our teacher negotiated the price with two shady looking mobster type fellas.  The Bolshoi was beautiful and at the same time our gas tanks were empty and we all knew it.  It was hard to stay enthusiastic and enrolled, most of us were still back in the middle of Asia wondering what our families were doing.

The following day we visited Arbat Street to make final purchases of gifts before our return trip.  The street that never sleeps was very different on the return trip, our novel eyes were seasoned with Russian culture, the wondrous artifacts en route had become touristy and Americanized fodder.  I was able to walk along Arbat Street and experience how much we had changed in the four weeks - what we’d become.

The flight back was much shorter than on our way, isn’t it always?  We’d all grown up a little and a little less innocent.  I was 17 when I stepped from the airplane into the care of a surrogate family.  I was still 17  when I embraced my family back home, but the 17 I was before we left would never be the same as the eyes that walked down the terminal on return.  The threshold had been crossed, the journey was over; But, with any change, it is really about the new beginnings.

I had a difficult time acclimating to culture in the states.  My life back home in America, I continued to compare it to my short stay in Siberia.  It brought tears of joy and remembrance but also grief.  It took an American boy from Saint Paul to travel to Siberia and return to realize what it means to be American.  Maybe leaving is what it takes to appreciate what we have?  Must it?  I am so grateful to my school, my family and the Russians to give me the opportunity, the possibility to learn a little more of myself.

I was truly changed, and not just the 25 pounds I’d lost on the trip, the world had become smaller but in many ways it grew too.  It’s hard to describe the incongruity of feelings, I was aware of a vastness of space and culture and this made me feel so tiny, but I also felt part of something greater.  As I write this I realize in the past two weeks I’ve shared many stories about my trip to Russia, I’ve left out many details but the truth is I haven’t shared these, nor spoken about them in 23 years, and in truth I’d kept a lot of this inside.

I graduated high school and went on to college at the University of Minnesota.  I took a few Russian classes but never pursued the language.  To this day, I still have Russian dreams in which I am back in Siberia and in the dreams I am speaking fluent Russian and understanding everyone at the same time.

A few years after I moved to Seattle I received a call from one of the other American Student’s on the exchange.  She called to tell me the unfortunate news that Ira had been killed in an automobile accident.  I was devastated to hear the news.  I hadn’t heard from Ira or her family since a little after we returned from the trip.

Ira was a sister and a good friend.  She will always be in my heart and I am grateful for knowing her even for the brief time that we shared together.  She taught me so much about myself and encouraged me to grow into the man and father I’ve become.  She taught me so much about friendship and how to be Russian but also what it means to be human.

I miss you Ira.

Love Pete.

October 17th 2014 - The One-Third Rule

When I was fifteen my mom asked me if I wanted to see a therapist.  At first I was taken aback, “was there something wrong with me?” But after my first appointment I realized there wasn’t anything wrong with me, but rather everybody else in the world had the problems (not really - but kind of).

Actually, it is where I learned how to be heard.  My therapist was non-judgmental, a safe haven to be inquisitive, and simply to talk and listen with a person that had years of experience compared to my greenhorn 15 years.  I turned 40 about a month ago and now I realize that 15 is like the flirting before foreplay stage of life; or the cocktail hour of your life, or something closer to the valet parking stage of life (the hors d’oeuvres, appetizers, oysters, salad, soup, antipasti, main course, dessert, aperitif, coffee, left overs, more cocktails, and then more leftovers, and then more coffee, and then water stages can be broken down similarly - I am currently 40, married with two children - which puts me somewhere in the antipasti stage). 

I learned a lot through therapy: about divorce, relationships, addictions, family, roles, shame, guilt, feelings, communication, money, desire, ambition, anger, resentment, buddhism, marijuana, personality disorders, narcissism, music, grace, patience, listening, compassion, forgiveness, among other things.  I continued going to therapy every week for about 10 years.  I began to look forward to these sessions, never really sure what we were going to talk about.  The night before my session, I would sit and condense my emotional well being and decide the heavy burdens I was carrying with me.  By the time the session was over we’d crossed so far away from what it started and mysteriously the root of the object of my concern was a resistant cover-up to the true inquiry.  That’s what a good therapist can do, hold space for what I want to talk about and then transform and investigate the conversation usually by means of hydraulic fracturing to the true origins.

One day he introduced me to the one-third rule.  It’s pretty amazing how applicable it is to everything, and I mean everything.

The one-third rules states the following:

No matter who you are, where you come from, the color skin you have, the language you speak, or the age, weight, hairless or hairy, angry or sojourn, type-a or type-b personality, cantankerous, accepting, racist, despicable, creative, blasphemous or drunk.  All characteristics, rich or poor, there will always be one-third of the people in this world that love you for you.  Whether changing or stagnant, humble or stoic - they will love you for you.  Alternatively, one-third will not care.  Even if you give them one million dollars, pay for their kids college, steal their car, or marry their daughter, no matter they will not care, and there is nothing you can do about it- one-third will just not give a shit.  It’s a fact.  Finally, and I think you are getting the rule, will hate, hate, hate, despise, deplore, abhor, or even condemn all that you stand for, represent, create, and persuade.  One-third will just not like you.

Most of us in the world, speaking on behalf of all human beings, generalizing and categorizing us, focus our efforts on the one-third that will not give us the time of day no matter if we promised rainbows and sunshine.  We exert all of this energy to appeal and gratify a group that is uncompromisingly unconditionally uninterested.

Sometimes these people are our parents, teachers, supervisors and our elected politicians.  It is unfortunate to be in a relationship, even born into family, in which the lower tier of our one-third are breathing the same air and sharing the same space.  But there is nothing we can do about it, so get over it.

But all that being true, our lives can change and our intentions with it.  We can spend all of our energy on the top one-third.  Those truly willing and excited for our contribution; those that love and relish in what we are, no matter how we look and feel.

This is the meaning of the one-third rule.  And it applies to more than just relationships, but our creative efforts as well.  Artists can focus on the audience that seek out their work and ignore the critics and the audiences that do not care, will not care, or will denounce the effort regardless of its genius.

The one-third rule goes right along with another sentiment or mantra or whatever you want to call it, “your opinion of me is none of my fucking business.”  I like this line and repeat it especially when I get caught up in the drama of others.  I know it is silly and naive to think that what others think of us doesn’t matter.  We are human beings, living in society of people connected by a culture of fitting in.  The one-third rule applies when the stress of life becomes so burdensome with worry of others and their opinions especially to those that don’t love us and never will.  It seems fruitless and recalcitrant to focus on such efforts, when it won’t change anything.

There is a wonderful book called the Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander which is loaded with great ideas and groundbreaking and creative and original ideas for teaching and being with others.  One statement it makes is to always remember rule number six.  Rule number six states, “don’t take yourself too seriously.”

My many years of therapy taught me to focus on every little piece of me and how I am in the world.  But after so many sessions of putting my cards on the table it became easier to step back and realize how comical I am and how worked up I was over the most mundane, banal and really insignificant things.

My current version of therapy is as follows:  remember the one-third rule and don’t forget rule number six.  

Thank you Terry.