A Day In My Life

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

As I was getting dressed this morning, my wife excitedly came up the stairs. We have to do the birthday song and I’m running late for work! Yes, readers I plumb forgot. For years in our family, we have serenaded every family member first thing in the birthday morning. Rain or shine, be one in Palo Alto or San Diego or New Haven, one receives a tone-deaf rendition of Happy Birthday.

And I forgot this morning.

I scrambled to my cell phone. I reached out to my Bright and Morning Star in New Haven. “Hi, it’s Dad. It’s ——-’s birthday.” Click! Before I could say more, my lover of Taylor Swift and co-ed frat life was on the case. Within minutes, we were all on a family conference call spanning the continent.

Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear ——. Happy Birthday to you! Tradition trumped classes and getting to work on time. A marvelous tradition that binds us all together over the generations.

The birthday boy was annoyed. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and was expecting my birthday call. What’s up with that? Mom covered for me and I covered for me with a lame excuse. We wanted to keep you waiting in suspense!

A day in my life.

=========

The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was ousted today. Never before has this happened in American history. We have passed through a dimension in time and yet life on the streets continued as normal. Something changed in the body politic today. I had this eerie feeling and I felt alone in my anxiety. What did it feel like to live through the 1850s when a sense of foreboding was in the air?

=========

I met a law professor for coffee. Actually, I had a can of spite and two fancy scoops of gelato ice cream, not one but two scoops. The professor and I got along well and saw the world in the same way. He bemoaned the increasing Soviet mentality in American culture and consciousness. The professor knew of what he perceived, having spent time in West Berlin before the Berlin Wall fell. I offered my thought that generational cycles would save us from conformity and dogma. He countered that institutions might be destroyed before the 2050s and beyound. Thirty (30) years was a long time to wait for the return of sanity.

I then asked where are the Plastic People of the Universe? He didn’t recognize the group which surprised me as he was otherwise a fair expert on Eastern Europe and communism. I explained that the Plastic People of the Universe was a rock group in Prague in the 1970s under the communist regime. They just wanted the freedom to play their music. The dogmatists and manipulators of slogan words were threatened by the humanity of free music. They came after the Plastic People of the Universe and prosecuted the musicians. The good people of Prague had held their tongues for decades but the clamp down on the Plastic People of the Universe who lived to play music was a step too much for the Czech people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plastic_People_of_the_Universe Motivated by the arrest of the members of the rock band, dissidents penned Charter 77, a clarion call against the manipulations of dogma and slogan words. See The Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel (1978) https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/01/the-power-of-the-powerless.pdf

My law professor acquaintance understood. Together, we launched into the power of music to bring down Woke ideology by examining the music under Stalin and Hitler. A great afternoon back and forth.

He bemoaned the craziness of transgenderism for young kids in first and second grade. In his opinion, young kids this age should not be placed on puberty blockers and surgical manipulation. I said it astounded me how simple words like “affirm” and “inclusion” shut down thinking. I suggested we were living through the closing of the cognitive window.

As an example, I recalled how, several years ago, I had delivered a routine presentation before a group of law students. The students were lifeless with no spark in their eyes. To be fair, the material was dry. Before I concluded my remarks, one student asked me for my thoughts on race. I answered based on my life experience as truthfully as I could. You should have seen the transformation in the students. They became alive. Their eyes sparkled. It was as if they had never heard someone talk about race free from dogma and slogan words. I felt like Rip Van Winkle from the 1970s. The experience left me feeling sad for students who never hear slogan-free words about race in law schools.

Thanks a lot Professors Kimberle Crenshaw, Richard Delgado and Derrick Bell!

My law professor companion nodded in sad agreement. He remembers a better time when understanding and truth were valued over dogma and slogan words. So do I.

=========

I arrived at the UVA Happy Hour and made small talk with alumni. We were conversing and sipping New Zealand lager at Harland Brewing South Park. A most pleasant establishment which I recommend. I was introduced to a young woman, maybe the Class of 2020. Mind you, there are many layers of experience between the Class of 1983 and the Class of 2020.

Would we be able to find common ground and have a great conversation?

We had a delightful conversation. Although I am an introvert, I have learned from years of investigations and witness preps how to engage total strangers. I sought out commonalities, a skill lacking in diversity training. Go figure.

I learned within two or three questions that her ex-husband attended the law school at UVA. That common thread opened up a universe of questions and stories. I regaled my table mate with impossible tales from Harvard Law School —how I was a small-town kid who walked among giants like Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe and Derrick Bell (who wrote my recommendation to be a law professor) and Judge A. Leon Higginbotham (who also wrote my recommendation to be a law professor). I talked about the strange feeling of knowing classmates who would become crazy famous in adult life — D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, First Lady Michelle Robinson (Obama), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. I talked about unhappiness in the legal profession, how first-year law students were accustomed to being at the top of their college class. The reality was half of the best and brightest would be in the bottom half of their law class. I knew fellow classmates who entered Harvard Law School full of expectation and left the law school beaten down hulks of their former selves.

My table mate leaned into my honesty. She said her ex was an unhappy lawyer too. She did not know others felt the same way. I leaned into my table mate and said, yes, it is our profession’s open secret.

Within twenty minutes, we were swapping open stories about the legal profession. And we both felt less alone in this crazy world of lawyers and status.

Less alone.

=========

My wife and I paid the birthday boy a visit tonight. Yes, he is a grown man recovering from knee surgery. And yes, he enjoyed the presence of his Mom and Dad on his special day. We ate pepperoni pizza and shared lemon cake.

This weekend, we visit New Haven and our Bright and Morning Star. And then it is off to Palo Alto for another round of family.

The Plastic People of the Universe