But Dr. Buckley explains that it’s more than that. As my relationship with my father deteriorated, culminating with the “Garth Brooks incident,” my relationship with the fictitious Sergeant Joe Friday intensified. I began to see in him something virtuous, a quality I no longer saw in my father. That’s what Dr. Buckley says.
“Sergeant Friday perhaps became your father figure,” Dr. Buckley says.
That seems strange to me.
“But Sergeant Joe Friday never married,” I say. “He didn’t have any children.”
“He’s also not real,” Dr. Buckley says. “That’s why he’s a symbol. He’s not the real thing. Your father was.”
“Are you saying I spend too much time with Dragnet?” It seems impossible to me that anyone could, but if Dr. Buckley says so, I might have to consider it. Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman.
“No, not at all,” she says. “Believe me, there are far worse ways you could spend a half hour a day. Watch Dragnet all you like. But you have a father. Maybe you could just let Sergeant Joe Friday catch the bad guys. That’s his job.”
Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman.
Finally, we talk about Donna Middleton. I tell Dr. Buckley about the memorandum of understanding that my father made me sign, about how I pushed Donna away when she tried to talk to me about my father’s death, about the episode out on my front lawn Sunday when I yelled at Donna and Kyle.
“You’ve not told her about the document you signed?” Dr. Buckley asks.
“No.”
“Can you understand, then, how she might be confused about your actions toward her?”
“Yes.”
I then tell Dr. Buckley that my mother fixed it with Jay L. Lamb where the memorandum of understanding is no longer in force and that my mother is proud of me for having a friend.
“But I don’t know what to think,” I say. “I saw Donna getting into her car this morning, and I’m pretty sure she saw me, too. I waved at her, but she just stood there for a few seconds, then got in the car and drove away.”
“You’re not sending her a very clear signal, Edward. First, you’re her friend and you go to court with her. Then you’re not her friend and you push her away. Then you yell at her little boy. Then you wave at her. What do you expect her to think?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want you to consider something. Your friend’s feelings are probably hurt, and given what she has been through in her life, she may be asking herself whether she can trust you.”
“She can.”
“Yes, but you can’t be the one who convinces her of that now, not after all of this. I think you need to give her some space. I think you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that she won’t be your friend. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes,” I say. I am sad. “I don’t want to, but if Donna Middleton doesn’t want to be my friend, I will accept that.”
“Good. We’ll talk about this more.”
“It’s been quite a week for you, Edward,” Dr. Buckley says. “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. Go back to the things I’ve always done. Find a new project.”
“Anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I’m going to be frank with you here.”
Dr. Buckley has said this a few times in the years that I have been talking with her. What she has to say usually stings, but later, I find out she was right.
“OK.”
“I don’t know what you’re waiting on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Edward, do you know how long life lasts?”
“It depends.”
“Yes, but let’s just say you live a nice long life by conventional standards. Do you know how long that lasts?”
“I don’t know. I read somewhere once that men live about seventy-two years.”
“That’s about right. Put another way, a full, long life is about 650,000 hours. What do you think when you hear that number?”
“Can I borrow a calculator?”
Dr. Buckley stands up and goes to her desk, and then she brings a pocket calculator back to me.
I check her math: 24 hours a day x 365 days a year x 72 years = 630,270.
“It’s 630,270 hours,” I say.
“So even fewer than 650,000.”
I punch up the numbers again, just to double-check my math. Of course, there will be some leap years in there, so it’s not exactly 630,270 hours, but it’s close enough. It’s hard to know how many leap years there are unless you know the first year, and I don’t. This is a hypothetical situation.
“How long did your father live?” she asks.
I punch up the rough numbers: 24 x 365 x 64 = 560,640.
I tell her the answer.
“And how long have you lived already?”
That’s easy. I know that, as of today, I am thirty-nine years and 300 days old.
I punch up the numbers: 24 x 365 x 39 = 341,640 + (24 x 300) = 348,840.
Holy shit!
I tell Dr. Buckley the answer.
“So I ask you again: What are you waiting for?”
Tonight’s episode of Dragnet, which I start at just after seven—7:04—is the fifteenth episode of the first season, and it’s called “The Big Gun.” It’s one of my favorites.
In this episode, which originally aired on April 27, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate the senseless shooting of a beautiful young Japanese woman. They find out that her husband had been killed in Vietnam several months earlier and that she has a young daughter, Miko, who apparently is somewhere in Japanese Town with her grandmother.
The shooting gets to Sergeant Joe Friday in a personal way, something that doesn’t happen often. Maybe he’s angry at all of the gun violence in Los Angeles. Maybe he’s shocked that anyone could murder such a pretty, petite woman. Sergeant Joe Friday just wants the facts, but he’s also human.
Eventually, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon zero in on a creepy man named Ben Roy Yoder, who lives with his highly religious aunt. When the police come to serve a search warrant at her house, the aunt castigates them, saying that they would go rooting around in a holy temple.
And Sergeant Joe Friday says that he would if he thought he would find a murder gun there. That’s very logical.
I’m watching Dragnet almost three hours early and might even watch another episode, if I feel like it. I’m also munching on thin-crust pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut. I didn’t go to the grocery store today. I decided I didn’t have to. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow. Or maybe not.
I’ll do whatever I feel like doing. You live only once.
Tonight’s letter continues a recent theme. It’s not a complaint.
I have written letters of complaint to Dr. Buckley before, especially early in our working together, when what she said to me didn’t make much sense and before my dosage of fluoxetine balanced out and calmed me down a little bit. There were times that I wrote very angry letters to Dr. Buckley—seventeen such times, it turns out, as I retrieve the file with her name.
I am glad she never saw them. I wouldn’t want Dr. Buckley’s feelings to be hurt.
Dr. Buckley:
I want to thank you for my session today. I think it is one of the best ones we have ever had. You helped me to see things much more clearly where my father and Donna Middleton are concerned. You are a very wise and logical woman.
I understand what you said about Donna, and I will give her the space she needs. I do hope you’re wrong, though. I would be very sad if Donna Middleton were no longer my friend.