Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

Is Joy-Annette like Lisa Edgington, only grown up?

I don’t know.

Joy-Annette has said good-bye, and I have written her my last letter of complaint and filed away the green office folder with her name on it, and yet she continues to affect me. I am not happy about this.

Today, for example, the Dallas Cowboys are playing against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and it is almost game time before I remember to pull on my authentic white Tony Romo Dallas Cowboys jersey. I like the white jersey better than the blue one, but whatever jersey the Dallas Cowboys are wearing on a given Sunday is the one I choose.

Tony Romo is still hurt by a broken pinkie finger, and I am dubious about the Dallas Cowboys’ chances without him, given what I have seen so far from his backup, Brad Johnson. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a good team. The Dallas Cowboys are supposed to be a good team, but I just don’t know if that’s true unless Tony Romo is playing.

A few hours later, I have an odd sensation: The Cowboys won 13–9, but I have no joy about it. The Cowboys have won 298 times in the regular season since the first game I remember, that 1974 Thanksgiving game in which Clint Longley rescued the team after Roger Staubach got hurt, and I’ve been happy every single time. Today, I’m glad they won, but I’m not happy. I’m not sad, the way I would be if the Dallas Cowboys had added to their 210 regular-season losses since Thanksgiving 1974, but I’m definitely not happy.

First, it was a terrible game. The Dallas Cowboys gained only 172 yards of offense, and I heard the announcer say that was the fewest yards Dallas had ever accumulated in a victory. Tony Romo accounts for way more than 172 yards a game all by himself.

Second, Brad Johnson, again, did not look good. To his credit, he did not throw any interceptions, but he also seemed unable to pass the ball very far down the field. As it will be at least a couple of more weeks before Tony Romo is back, I cannot be confident that the Dallas Cowboys will be able to win like this again without him.

It seems that the only reason the Dallas Cowboys won is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers apparently have just as many problems as the Cowboys do, and I also heard the announcer say this. Tampa Bay kept driving down deep into the Dallas Cowboys’ end of the field but came away with just three field goals. It’s hard to win that way, harder even than winning with only 172 yards of offense.

I skip lunch, putting me two meals behind my weekly plan. I find it difficult to care about this anymore.

Here’s what I don’t get about Joy-Annette: What did she expect when she wrote that first note to me yesterday? I don’t know. Dr. Buckley and I have talked about my tendency to get defensive when I am challenged by someone, especially my father, and as I go and dig out my first letter in response to her, I see that I was defensive. But isn’t defense what is called for when someone is making accusations against you? Further, I did not send a response to Joy-Annette, so she did not know that I had become defensive. Her increasingly erratic notes to me just got angrier, until she called me an “asshole” and a “looser.” That was an uncalled-for personal attack.

I will take this up with Dr. Buckley on Tuesday. I wish I didn’t have to wait.

That sensation that I felt after I woke up, I just remembered what it’s called: lethargy. I love the word “lethargy,” but I hate the feeling.

That’s not true. Hate is an intense, burning, blinding dislike. I think it is reckless to use words in an imprecise way, the way Joy-Annette uses them. I don’t hate lethargy. I just would prefer to not experience it.

I pull out my tattered copy of Roget’s Thesaurus . I’m curious if I might at least have the opportunity to expand my vocabulary in the wake of this regrettable interaction with Joy-Annette.

Under “lethargy,” I find the word “torpor.” I look up that word, and I see it described as “a deficiency in mental and physical alertness and activity,” and I realize that this definition is exactly what I feel today. Just above “torpor” is the word “torpidness,” which is the state of being in torpor.

I have two excellent new words and decide that I should be thankful for that, even if I am still flummoxed by Joy-Annette.

At 6:04 p.m., I hear a knock at the front door. A peep through the spyglass shows that it is Donna Middleton.

I open the door. “

Hi, Edward.”

“Hi, Donna.”

“Haven’t seen you outside much lately.”

“Yeah. It’s torpor.”

“What’s that?”

“A deficiency in mental and physical alertness and activity. I’m in a state of torpidness.”

“I’ve never heard it described in quite that way.”

“Yes.”

Donna Middleton looks down, then back up at me. “Listen, Edward, I just got off work and have to go pick Kyle up at my folks’ house, but I wanted to ask a favor.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember how I told you that Mike has a court appearance tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“I was wondering if you’d consider coming with me.”

“To court?”

“Yes.”

Before I can answer, she’s talking again. “Look, I really feel bad asking you, but I don’t know where else to go. I’d like to keep my parents away from it—they mean well, but there’s just too much hassle. They worry about Kyle and they worry about me, and I can’t deal with all those questions and judgments right now. But I also don’t want to go alone. So even though it’s asking a lot, and you’d be well within your rights to say no, I’m asking: Will you go to court with me?”

My mind flashes on the dream of Mike swinging a baseball bat at my head, but I beat back that thought. They won’t let Mike have a baseball bat in the courtroom. That would be against protocol.

“I’ll go. I used to work there.”

“At the courthouse?”

“Yes. In the clerk of court’s office.”

“That’s great. You’ll go?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you so much, Edward. I appreciate this more than I can say. The hearing is at nine thirty in the morning. Why don’t you come over around nine and we’ll go?”

“No, you come over here. I have to drive.”

Tonight’s episode of Dragnet , the sixth of the first season of color episodes, is called “The Bank Examiner Swindle,” and it’s one of my favorites.

In “The Bank Examiner Swindle,” which originally aired on February 23, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are called in to investigate a series of scams in which elderly people are approached by two men pretending to be bank examiners who say that they’re trying to catch thieving tellers. The fake examiners ask the old people to withdraw their money from the bank and give it to them, and they say that they will mark the bills, redeposit them, and then find out which tellers are lifting those bills. As you’ve probably surmised, the fake examiners don’t do that. They just take the money.

Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon end up running a ruse. Officer Bill Gannon poses as the son of an elderly woman who is targeted by the phony bank examiners, and he gives the men the money. Sergeant Joe Friday then busts in from the kitchen with a gun and puts them under arrest.

Sergeant Joe Friday always gets his man. He also would never be thrown off by the smooth talking of a con man. Not for the first time, I wish I were a lot more like Sergeant Joe Friday and a lot less like I really am.

After Dragnet , I prepare a new green office folder for my files.