This Name Appears On the Pass List

I found out I was an attorney while sitting outside of the Al Tahoe Laundromat.  It’s not exactly how you’d dream it up, but we didn’t mind.  It was over.  Thank God, it was all over.

Starting at 5 o’clock last night I was convinced that I had failed.   After several months of waiting, and now just sixty minutes until I had my bar exam results, I had become a shivering shack of bones.  It didn’t matter that when I had walked out of the Ontario Convention Test Center on that clear evening in February that I had felt ecstatic and assured that I had passed.  It didn’t matter that I had twice the legal knowledge and test-taking skills this time around.  It didn’t matter that I had just made a large glass of wine evaporate in an instant.  None of that mattered.  I had never been so nervous in my life. 

The caffeine probably didn’t help.  After giving up caffeine a year and a half ago, I demonstrated the sound reasoning of a hopeful lawyer and picked up a latte at noon from Starbucks on our way up to Tahoe yesterday.  The caffeine high felt like grabbing a drink with an old friend who is funny and smart and makes you feel really funny and smart, but then after an hour and a half you remember why you don’t hang out with him anymore: his annoying roommate always shows up and makes you feel uncomfortable and jittery. 

I had felt nothing but confidence since walking out of the test center in February.  I hadn’t lost a night’s sleep over it.  May 17^th was marked on my calendar purely as a day to look forward to, not dread.  And I woke up yesterday feeling well rested and excited.  I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve, with the gift opening to take place at 6pm.  But once we began our ascent up the hill to South Lake, we lost our radio signal and, in turn, I lost my comforting pacifier of distraction and instead stared blankly at the winding road ahead of me, plowing forward.  It was 4 o’clock and my stomach was in knots.  Two hours.

We arrived at Tracy’s parent’s cabin around five.  Immediately, I ran to the television where I tried desperately to track down the Giants pre-game discussion.  Anything!  Give me anything to distract myself!  Yes, you’re right.  We need a big start tonight from Bumgardner.  We can’t continue to rely on our offense to come from behind and HOLY SHIT 30 MINUTES!

The Giants jumped out to an early lead and for a moment I was lost in the game.  Then it was 6 o’clock and I was no longer lost in the game but instead had vanished to the bathroom.  A few moments later, I returned to the living room where Tracy and my iPad were sitting with anticipation.  Let’s do this.  But I don’t want to!

With trembling hands I typed in the California bar website and waited… and waited… and continued to wait.  Refresh.  Nothing.  Refresh.  The main page came up, but two more pages were left to navigate.  I clicked on the “future lawyers” tab and the page continued to stall.  Refresh.  Nothing.  My network signal was too weak.  After twenty minutes of agony, I demanded that we go to the one place in town with free Wi-Fi.  “Are you sure, Doug?” “Yes, T.  I just want to get this over with.  I don’t care where we do it.”   I was out of breath.

Tracy started my truck and I hopped in the passenger seat, clutching to my lifeless iPad.  We took the back road and navigated through poorly designed parking lots.  “Where is this place?  Did we already pass it?” I asked nervously.  “No, it’s just another block.” “Okay.”  I tried to take a deep breath. 

“See, here.  It’s right there, across the street.  I’ll just park here.  See if you can get the Wi-Fi.” I opened up my iPad and there it was, with four precious bars gleaming: Al Tahoe Laundromat Wi-Fi Access.  A few clicks later, I was staring face-to-face with my fate.  Ten numbers and a click of a button and I would know.  But I don’t want to know.  But you have to know!  It all seemed so cruel.  After several months—years, if you include law school—of studying and the months of waiting after the exam, we have to find out this way?  Green words or red words.  Thumbs up or thumbs down.  No human face to tell you “congratulations” or “we’re sorry.”  Seeing red words the first time traumatized me.  Even just opening a letter saying such words would seem like a cuddly blanket in comparison.  But entering my ten numbers and rolling the dice seemed so cold.

I soon learned, however, how warm and swaddling seeing green can feel.  Everything just washed over me.  The failure was erased.  The hours of lecture and endless practice problems; the long nights and lack of weekends; the feeling that no matter how many hours I studied, that I couldn’t do enough because there was just so much to know.  That’s all gone, in an instant.  I never have to do that again.  Ever.  The joy is almost too overwhelming to appropriately feel right now, let alone describe. 

However, the one feeling that I do feel like I can speak of right now is one of connectedness. In what can be characterized as such an individual pursuit—passing the bar exam—what has struck me since finding out I passed the exam is how that’s really not true at all.  I know it is a cliché in moments like this to thank everyone who has helped you along the way.  But cliché’s become cliché’s because they are true.

The stress wasn’t just mine and mine alone.  My wife felt my stress and lived it with me.  She kept me balanced and made it possible for me to myopically pursue this goal—all I had to do was the dishes.  My family and friends lived my stress.  They all encouraged me to re-test and supported me throughout the process, some even financially. 

My parents lived my stress.  Not only did they experience me taking that test once while staying in their home, but twice.  I think I slept better than my dad did during those exams.  And because it took me 30 minutes past 6 o’clock to let anyone know that I had passed, at 6:25 my parents assumed I didn’t pass and were tearfully hugging in the kitchen.  The second I sent out the good news to friends and family, my phone exploded. 

When Tracy passed the July exam and I didn’t, I said it felt like half of me had passed and half of her didn’t. 

This time it feels like we all passed. 

Dreaming in Blue and Maize

Today, I turn twenty-seven.  Throughout these twenty-seven years, sports have been an essential part of me, as necessary as a limb.  Memories of sports constantly flood my thoughts.  Even though I haven't competed since high school, often I dream I'm on the mound (either throwing gas or getting blown out).  More often though, I dream that I have one more year of eligibility left for my high school football team.  In this dream, I'm always faster, stronger and smarter, and always just a few minutes before the game starts, I wake up.  But each time I wake up, the initial excitement of the dream and eventual disappointment upon realizing it was a dream is always the same, "That was really fun, but yea, there's no way coach would let me play after missing practice for the last ten years."

So today is my birthday and all I can think about is sports.  Not sports in general, but basketball in particular.  College basketball.  But shouldn't I be reflecting on more important things?  My gratitude for my life?  For my family and friends?  For my wife?  Yes, that's probably true. But this birthday is different.  Here's why.

Like most people, my memories from childhood have mostly blended together to paint a general narrative of my upbringing.  The details get hazy in most places, with the exception of a few distinctly memorable moments. Those memories that we are able to recall shine like a lighthouse because they were either traumatic or ecstatic.

For me, twenty years ago today (give or take) is one of those moments.  I was seven years old and hopelessly addicted to basketball.  My team was playing in the NCAA Championship game against North Carolina.  My hero was Michigan's star power forward Chris Webber.  His number 4 was then and remains my favorite number (dougskelton4@gmail.com).  I can't remember anything about the first 39 minutes of the game.  But I'll never forget rolling on the carpet in heartache after Webber called a (sixth) timeout that they didn't have, resulting in a technical foul that effectively ended their season.  I'll never forget Webber's teammate, Jalen Rose, yelling at him after his colossal mistake.  Feeling his pain, I felt compelled to write Webber a letter.  The letter I wrote and mailed to him that night are still as clear as day.

I told him that I was sorry about what happened and that it wasn't right for Jalen to yell at him like that.  We all make mistakes.  I told him that he was my favorite player and that they would win it all next year.  Keep your chin up.  I told him that the drawing below was created specially for him.  I drew an artistic portrait of him  in colored crayon being awesome on the basketball court.  (I wish I still had it.  No doubt it'd be worth a ton today.)

I can't remember anything after that except for, what must have been two weeks later, my dad coming into my room with a crisp envelope.  It's for you, Doug.  It's for me?  I grabbed the envelope and examined it.  It was addressed to me and it had the blue and maize "M" in the corner!  Wow.  I ripped it open.  I wish I could remember now what exactly the letter said, but my memory of the letter is that Chris Webber personally thanked me for my letter and signed it.  Signed it!

A few days later I was asked by my second-grade teacher to read his letter in front of the school during a school gathering.  I was so proud.  I was no longer sad.  I knew Michigan would be back in the Championship the next year.  This was the second year in a row that they had made it to the finals and lost.  Webber and the rest of the starting five were only sophomores.  They would win it next year.

But then my hero never came back.  Webber left Michigan for the pros after that season, becoming the number 1 draft pick, and later engulfing Michigan in a bizarre financial scandal.  (See ESPN's excellent 30-for-30 documentary on "The Fab Five.")  Since then Michigan never made it back to the Finals.  I stopped following Michigan basketball altogether, instead shifting my interest and allegiance to Michigan football.  A few years later, I gave up basketball altogether and focused on other sports, such as football, baseball and golf.  I didn't look back...until a few weeks ago.

Two and a half weeks ago, I decided on a whim to enter a friend's March Madness pool.  What the hell, I thought.  It'll make it interesting at least, even though I hadn't watched a second of college basketball all season.  So I spent five minutes filling out my bracket and paid twenty dollars to enter the pool.  This was the first pool I'd ever entered for money, so I had no real strategy.

But when I started filling out my bracket I couldn't bring myself to chose against Michigan.  So I didn't.    Not once.  And after I sent in my bracket and looked at the other brackets in the pool, I felt kind of embarrassed.  I was the only person out of 83 people to choose Michigan to win it all.  I shared a lot of the same picks as everyone else, but Michigan is where I differed.  No one else even had Michigan going to the Championship game, let alone winning it.  I kissed my twenty bucks away, I figured.

If you're reading this, or simply just breathing and occupying space, then you probably already know that Michigan is in the Finals tonight against Louisville.  That fact alone is surprising to most.  The fact that I am in first place in this 83-person pool and will win it all if Michigan wins is more surprising.

But what's most surprising to me is how by randomly entering a pool and by choosing by my childhood team, I have experienced emotions that haven't been tapped into in twenty years.  I want to go shoot hoops.  I want to go set up a screen on that guy walking his dog.  I want to be Trey Burke.  Or Mitch McGary.  I will deeply feel their pain if they lose.  I will write them a letter with a drawing on it if one of them screws up badly.

In other words, I'm twenty years older but I feel like I'm seven all over again.

But if this is all just a dream, please don't wake me.