People You Have Known

The Smartest Person I Have Ever Known #1 (there's two actually)

Alan H. perhaps wasn't the smartest but he's the one who taught me the most. He represented me in a civil case decades ago. In my late 20's, he pushed me to make mile long strides in my knowledge and maturity. It was the maturing process that secured me the largest boost, albeit it was a rotten, painful process all along the way. When I came out the other end, when the dust had settled, I managed to think back on all that had happened and then realized I was no longer that fresh and green person I was. I had been forged, annealed and galvanized. That involvement taught me a lot about people and life. In short, my skin was thickened. I still manage to maintain my general “giving people a chance,” but I had learned universal precautions too. CDC doctors will try to help you, but they'll first be sewn up tight in environmental suits, as you are lying there crawling with Ebola viruses.

Alan made me grow up. Here's how he managed to do that. When you hire an attorney, they always hold a constant suspicion of their client or their client's story, no matter what. After a career's worth of being lied to and perhaps losing money or being made to look like a fool, a good lawyer will always view their client with some skepticism. It's needed in order to keep their practice alive. A lawyer suspects everyone, though they barely pull off that “I'm in your corner” stance to make you think you're not alone. Alan managed to do the work to help me to win my case, with all four Aces, but he never once trusted me. My radar surely did pick up on that. That, was what forced me to be independent.

Add to that, a lawyer also has his own needs, that of secretaries and an office to nourish with money. So, I was forced to learn to keep my own guard up when Alan quoted me various price scenarios. Each, of course, was expensive. I had hired a firm that was incestuous with the Rhode Island Senate, so you had better be ready to pay for it.

What Alan forced me to do was to stand on my own. I became an adult. I was quite aware of how he acted and it obligated me to defend my turf as well. I couldn't wait to be befriended nor could I rely on that in my particular situation. It was a business arrangement and did I learn that...quick. I needed my case to be won, entirely. It was MY case, not his, and it was I that had to be in the spotlight in that courtroom persuading others of my story. The only person who would profit or lose from any decision was me. He advised, period. Alan would be paid in either direction, win or lose.

He never said it but he pretty well intimated it. “You're own your own, kid.”

Parents are forever telling their growing kids, “Do it yourself.” They are forever pushing their kids, inch by inch, to the edge of the nest to where one day, they must fly on their own. Alan, the tough bastard he was, shoved me, in a few months, to that precipice and then finally kicked me over.

I flew.

The Happiest Person I Knew.

There have been many, but I'm talking about that long lasting sunniness, not about that ever fleeting joy that can come and go. It's not about someone who can laugh all the time either, it's about someone who is a pleasure to be around. These people are natural springs of contentment. I'll use her real name, Tammy DaPonte.

I've seen her angry, pissed off, tired and depressed at times. But for her, it was never lasting. She had, underneath it all, this long lasting, unshakeable positive outlook. At times it could border on a childlike happiness but good for her, as most of us have long since lost that.

I'm not sure how she managed to stay upbeat. How can someone be normally “up” most of the day? She certainly had her rough spots in her life. I knew of them. But her experience of them didn't sour her. That was it, she never soured. Tammy was a forever opened carton of milk that never went bad in the refrigerator. (Sorry for the odd analogy!)

I once said this to a friend who forever worked by my side that Tammy “won” at life, even though hers was cut way too short. Tammy, who suffered along with the rest of us with daily irritations and the occasional torpedo that slams into each of our lives, managed to to right her kayak and float once more...with her eyes on the next best thing and paddled toward it. That's a gift.

I forget who said it but they say by forty, you inherit the face you wore all your life. There are some faces that are lined, craggy and forever irate. Tammy had those wide, toothy smiles all the time, right up to her end. She inherited smile lines on her face by her late 40's.

Did I learn anything from her? I never did learn her trick. Well, it's not a singular piece of knowledge to learn I guess. I think for her, she had a lifetime of liking most people and wanting to be around them and that may have been it. I can say that I found her a pleasure to be around. Maybe that's all I could “learn” from her and that may have been enough.