Writing Boots

I got a new wallet, and gave Scout my old one. Out of paper, she made herself a driver's license, a credit card, a bus pass and something with my name on it.

"So I'll always remember you," she said. "After you pass away."

(I told her that, in this household, we say "die." Why? "Because 'passed away' is for wimps.")

[The next morning, I told Scout I wanted to snooze a little while she ate breakfast. "Dad," she said, "in this house we don't say 'snooze.' We say, 'sleep.'"]

I've done only one purely evil thing in my life, and I did it with only a split second of thought.

During a round of golf at a fancy resort in Hilton Head, S.C., I missed a two-foot putt and, on my enraged way around the hole to tap in the come-backer, I spotted a tiny little red bug making his harmless way across the green.

I slammed my putter down on it, killing it. I was angry at a missed putt, so I killed something. I immediately went hot with shame and looked around to see if my playing partners saw what I did. The bug was so small, I don't think they did.

I'm still embarrassed to admit it.

But that's not how powerful people usually do harm, when they do.

One day several years ago—must have been awhile ago, because I was still smoking—I was hungover, and out of cigarettes.

I fumbled in my closet and found my cleanest dirty shorts. I stumbled down the stairs and ambled down the city sidewalk. It was a terribly bright summer morning, and I squinted and tried to herd random synapses into thoughts.

I took a step and felt a squish under my right foot, and a splatter on my left calf.

I looked down. I had stepped on a baby bird.

I had stepped on a fucking baby bird!

It was dead. There was nothing to do but continue to the gas station, calling myself names: You big stupid oaf. You reckless, addled monster. You drunken, clumsy giant.

"Yes, give me a pack of Marlboro Lights, please. And a book of matches."

For days and weeks, I told everyone that story, as a sort of serial confession. Everyone told me there was nothing I could have done. It was an accident. A baby bird on a sidewalk was going to die anyway. I probably even saved it an agonizing death.

That, to me, is how powerful people usually do their damage: by accident.

And how they get over it: quickly, and with the help of their powerful friends.

The point of these posts on power is that understanding power requires the same as understanding poverty—empathizing with it in every way we can.

One of the few things I wrote in college that I still stand behind is a line I wrote in a short story: "All people feel the same things. We just don't feel them at the same time."

People work for powerful people, vote for powerful people, reap the rewards and suffer the consequences of decisions powerful people make.

So understanding powerful people is a prerequisite for living wisely.

And the best way to understand powerful people is to understand how we deal with power, when we have it; and to admit that we do not always deal with it well.

The Murrays got a puppy. I'd like to introduce him, and then we'll talk about him.

Cute little fellow.

Yeah, yeah. Within the first week:

I had spent $1,000 on the dog and on Bullshit Sprays, Piss Pads, Special Baggies, Gourmet Food and Other Stuff That Dog Owners Didn't Need Until PetSmart Told Them They Needed®.

I had felt the warm ooze of Charlie's shit between my bare toes.

I had mopped up Charlie's piss maybe a dozen times.

Only a dozen, because I'd taken Charlie down the three flights of stairs probably 60 times.

I had bellowed "no" several hundred times.

I had lain awake for hours waiting for Charlie to stop barking from his cage. I can tell you that he barks at the rate of 62 times per minute.

Sleep deprived, I had gotten into an e-mail argument with Scout's Aunt Susy, who feels strongly that I should refer to the cage as a "kennel," because "cage sounds like the zoo." How does gulag grab you?

I had risen seven mornings before sunup to take Charlie out.

I had had a conversation about "buyer's remorse" with my wife. Tyranically but sincerely, I told her the thought, however natural, is simply unacceptable.

I had missed five workouts, unable to leave Charlie at the house to go running, unwilling to drag him down the sidewalk as I jogged. (Finally, I got over it, and now drag him down the sidewalk.)

My wife told me I need to be "strategic" about when I wrestle with him, "So he knows when it's OK to bite." I told her I didn't know what "strategic" meant in this context. She said, "Like, maybe just don't wrestle with him at all."

I had told Scout she mustn't run from Charlie when he nips at her. She continues to run from Charlie every time he nips at her. "I'm scared!"

(Oh, and don't think I don't know you're finding fault with my leadership already; I use the word "I" too much, and "we" too little. Well I'm running a three-ring circus here, and I don't have time to play tiddlywinks with everybody's ego.)

I have my strategies—for potty training, and less urgent forms of obedience—and I'm sticking to them, and demanding that everyone in the household sticks to them. But do I know they're going to work? No, and so I furtively check the websites of pet "experts" to see if they've got any other strategies that might work better.

I think I know how a CEO feels.

Helpless, put-upon, a little scared … and sorry for himself.

And with absolutely no moral justification.

And if you think I'm some kind of ogre, you can go to hell. Or tune in tomorrow for the second part of "Speaking truth to power: talking to myself," and find out what an ogre really is.