October 22, 2002:

Sketch: Judge David, Jr.

La Jollan, well-to-do parents. From childhood he plans his future like a military campaign: one objective leads organically to the next. The map is complete at an early age: which college, which law school, which wife, which judgeship. Over time the objectives fall one by one with merely token resistance.

One of his stepping stones is, remarkably enough, you. On the surface it's preposterous to think the two of you would ever meet, much less that you'd serve as a small but obligatory line item on his personal plan for world domination. The mystery is solved by reference to liberal politics in the '60s. Future judges require demonstrable community service. You being from the community...

Absence of a male role-model prompts her to turn to television for solutions. One day there's a community service ad for something called the "Big Brothers of America." Grown men who volunteer to spend time being grown men in the company of poor fatherless boys who without them would become criminals, or gay, or something. She lets her fingers do the walking.

He's a nice enough guy. With more money than you've ever heard of. Buys you good snorkeling gear, good model airplanes, a good b-b gun. For xmas one year it's the toy rifle: the sleek and sexy M-16 which can be wound-up to fire for minutes at a time. While the other kids' second-rate tommy guns prepare them for World War Two, you're ready to invade Vietnam.

Young man, late-20s, sips a margarita in the sun at a table on an island in the middle of Mission Bay, San Diego, California. Has that Bobby Kennedy haircut: long without being long, short without being short, tidy without being military, hip without being hippie. 1969 or thereabouts. Skinny boy, 11-ish, stoned on sugar, talks like a chipmunk, wonders why anyone would drink liquid with salt on the glass, like swallowing ocean water. As they leave, notices a quarter on the table. "Hey Dave, you forgot your quarter!" No, no, that's ok. That's the tip. The what? The tip. Dave has to explain what that's about. Skinny boy's never been anywhere where there were tips.

All things must pass. There comes a time when someone, who knows who, decides the relationship is no longer beneficial. It's not clear whose benefit is under consideration. David gets a new little brother for his resume, younger and poorer, with far darker skin. You're asked to forgo the hitherto life-or-death necessity of a male role-model. David chooses to send you off not with a goodbye, but with a symbolic rite of passage, leading to one of your strangest memories.

David's lawyerly manse, Rancho Santa Fe, California. 1970 or thereabouts. One-story Spanish style with fruit trees, and horses, and sports cars under an awning. The grownups are having a small cocktail party and, for some reason, you're invited.

Strange idea. The fifth wheel, as they say. Two couples: David and his nice wife, plus a twenty-something ex-sailor with a mustache and his lovely date with whom you immediately fall head-over-proverbials. She's as uncomfortable as you, partly because the two of you are wearing the same shirt, partly because her date, the sailor boy, is a loudmouth jerk from whom she can't wait to escape.

For a while the conversation centers on how to best beat a traffic stop for drunken driving. Sailor-boy is worried about losing his license. Seems like an opportunity to scam some free legal advice. David politely dodges these questions before deciding on the appropriate social-gathering kinda strategy. He tells the following joke, in exactly these words:

"Family of black folks livin' in the ghetto. There's a daughter, a mother, and a grandmother. Escaped convict breaks through the window. It's been a loooooonnnnnng time. First he infringes the daughter, then he infringes the mother. It's been so long, he even infringes the grandmother. When he's done, he takes the grandmother's glasses, puts them on his...infringer...and says, 'Look around big fellow, see if we done missed anybody.'"

Sailor boy howls. "'Infringer!'," he says. "I never heard it called that before!" Lovely date is looking for the door, wondering if there's someone else who might take her home. You would, but you're twelve.

You've never figured out what the point of that experience was. Perhaps to prove that liberals are real people, just like everybody else. Instead, it left you firm in these life-long insights: that "liberal" is a euphemism for rich and afraid; that meaningful social change will never come from reliance on people who choose to become judges; that male role-models are just as well avoided.