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When in Doubt

October 08, 2005

Yesterday's blog must have festered in my brain overnight because when I got dressed this morning I reached for the bright yellow T-shirt near the bottom of the pile, the one that says, in fuzzy red letters, WHEN IN DOUBT TURN LEFT.

This shirt has a history. While hiking and hitchhiking around Britain and Ireland 30 years ago, I came up with two guidelines for when I was up on the downs or down in the dales and wasn't sure where the next youth hostel was. "When in doubt, turn left" was one; the other was "The road to civilization always leads downhill." These axioms have served me well ever since; I was still quoting them liberally when I worked in the training office of the American Red Cross in the late 1970s. In the spring of 1979, to celebrate my promotion to editor in the Office of Publications (which was shortly, in a reorganization, renamed Publications Services, whereupon I dubbed it OOPS, for Office of Publications Services, and made my cubicle a sign to match), a training-office colleague, Thom Higgins, gave me three T-shirts: a green one whose "0" he turned into a women's symbol; an orange one with EDITOR emblazoned in big white letters; and WHEN IN DOUBT TURN LEFT.

Thom, a Vietnam vet and one of the nicest guys I've ever known in my life, died of AIDS in 1988. He's high on the list of people I deeply regret that I'll never be able to give my first novel to.

Rhodry and I just got back from our morning stroll around the neighborhood. The equal-sign station wagon is back in my neighbor's driveway; my neighbor's sedan, however, is nowhere in sight, so I doubt this is about a hot romance. I waved or said hi to several neighbors who were either walking, or driving, or puttering in front of their houses, and all the while I was excruciatingly conscious of my shirt.

Especially when waving to the nice lady in the SUV who lives in the house that always has a U.S. flag flying from the porch, and where there was usually a yellow ribbon on the oak tree in the front yard before the tree was removed a year or so ago.

I worked out a plausible response, neither belligerent nor apologetic, for the first person who makes a comment: "Well, for the last couple of decades it seems that the popular course when in doubt is to turn right or get born again. Maybe it's time for an alternative?"

Later: Around noon I headed off to do errands and eventually go to the barn and get a ride in before the rain started. It had been spitting off and on since early morning, and Weather Underground says it's supposed to rain till, or maybe through, Thursday. So I traipse into the post office with a package to mail, and as soon as I get to the counter the clerk says, "I love your shirt." While he weighed my parcel (a hardcopy of The Mud of the Place that I'm sending to a friend who really was my English teacher senior year of high school), we talked about how unbelievable it was that we were actually feeling some nostalgia for Nixon. I walked out of the p.o. exhilarated -- trashing the Bush administration on federal property! No one looked askance at my shirt all day, and I did get a good ride in.

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