I Could Never Sell

Not for me, you’re thinking?

This blog is not for me.  I’m not in sales.  Oh no no, I could never sell.

Please don’t make that mistake.  Don’t do that to yourself and the people you care about.

I recently saw the Albert Brooks comedy Defending Your Life for the third time.  I was a much younger man the first and second time.  What a wild idea, I thought then.  Great idea for a movie.  Who else starts a movie from such a place?

What was that name, the guy played by Albert Brooks?  Daniel Miller.  I had to look it up.  No accident.  Daniel Miller has steered his life towards invisibility at every turn.

Oh no no, not me, I could never sell, Daniel Miller would say.

But Daniel Miller has just been killed, and if he wants to live again, he must sell two judges on that, in a kind of purgatory trial.

Now I am in the thick of a long custody contest to recover my daughter.  She was nine when we began, she’s ten now, and she could well be twelve before she crawls into my brown leather chair again, where in a former life she would crawl into my lap at the start of each day for years and years.  Welcome to the new day, I would say quietly, letting her wake slowly.  Welcome to the new day, she would say back, in a sleepy voice, opening her eyes a little to see the look on my face.  Then we would laugh.

We don’t laugh so much now.  I have seen her for a total of six hours in nine months.

Now the movie seems quite ordinary and familiar to me, not a wild fantasy.  Defending Your Life?  It’s a custody case.  If you want to live again, if you want your daughter to have her father and her childhood, if you want custody of your own life again, you must sell a judge and her chief clerk on the idea.

I remember looking for an auto insurance agent when I moved to a new city.  I picked from the phone book, not knowing anyone in that city, and not knowing the neighborhoods.  I had trouble finding the office.  As I found my way closer and closer, I saw that  I had picked a poor neighborhood.

If I wanted to drive, I had to sell this agent on the idea.  If I wanted to work or to date, if I wanted money or love, or a roof and food, I had to sell this agent on me as client.

In this sense, everything qualifies as selling;  every word exchanged between one person and another.

The insurance agent was nice enough, but due to some technicality my insurance with that company would now cost four times what it had cost before.  I walked out instead.  Thank you just the same.

I found another agent.  Same company, different neighborhood.  This time I looked for the wealthiest neighborhood, and there I got my insurance at one fourth the cost.

Why?

In both neighborhoods the agent made the same mistake, or took the same mental shortcut, and viewed me in much the same way she had viewed her previous one hundred clients.  That mental shortcut was as much a mistake in the good neighborhood as in the poor neighborhood.  But in the good neighborhood, the agent’s mistake favored me.  Her previous one hundred clients had been good risks and upstanding (upscale, that is) citizens.

But can I walk out on this Family Court judge and find another, in a nicer neighborhood?  We have three Family Court judges in this county, but just one waiting room, and as I look around that waiting room I have a sinking feeling.  If the overworked judge takes a mental shortcut, and views me in much the same way she views her previous one hundred clients, she can easily believe gross crimes and follies in me, and nothing I say will carry much weight one way or the other.

But there is hope!  The overworked judge has the good sense to send me off to an expert for evaluation, an expert who gives me the luxury of an unbroken ninety minutes.  Here is my chance to give my daughter a father and a future!

But I have trouble finding the office.  I drive unfamiliar neighborhoods looking for the building, then sad neighborhoods, then scary neighborhoods.  I have that sinking feeling again.  The building has no sign, no name, no building directory outside or inside.  In the nail salon and the tanning parlor I ask if they know where I might find this Dr So and So.  No, sorry.  Now I will be late.  My unbroken ninety minutes may be truncated to an hour or so.

But there is hope!  In the Western Union office (where checks are cashed for people who don’t have checking accounts, in case you don’t know) I ask the clerk, careful not to stare at the scar on his face or his twisted black teeth, and he mentions a back stair and an attorney’s office.  The back stairs are dark, but I find an attorney’s door, and find it unlocked.  No one is inside, but when I call out, I hear a voice from the back, and I have found Dr So and So!

Now is my chance, my daughter’s chance at a father and a future!  A psychiatrist does seven years of schooling.  Surely he knows behavioral economics, misleading mental shortcuts, common mistakes of judgment.  But as he welcomes me to my evolution (evaluation, he means, struggling with English) I wonder if he borrowed the coat too, along with the office.   The coat is too large, the office too small.  He does all the evolutions (evaluations) for Family Court in this county.  If he views me as he views his previous one hundred patients….

Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) loses his case and is marched onto a bus for the undead.  Across the parking lot the lovely young Meryl Streep has won her case in glorious fashion, and boards a bus bound elsewhere.   Unaccountably, she loves our Daniel Miller, loves him wildly.  But he and she are bound for different eternities, eternities apart….

Oh my girl, my Alice!  I will not turn away without you, ever!  But win or lose, your childhood is gone….