Thursday, June 12, 2008

FEELING OUR PAIN

FEELING OUR PAIN 

It's 11 pm and I am still at the office, pounding out a brief for a client. I have a job so I am not in a recession. But people don't pay as quickly, and some not at all, so I am in one afterall. 

The face of the American recession circa 2008 is not fear. 

It is doubt. 

This is bad for American rhetoric, not to mention American politics. FDR didn't win our hearts and minds all those years ago by proclaiming "We have nothing to fear but doubt itself." He went right for the recessionary jugular, then manifest -- naked, unbridled, stinging and crushing fear. 

Life may have been simpler then. My grandmother's reaction to the challenges of the Depression was to buy a 10 pound sack of potatoes and feed her family on it for two weeks. Her children -- my mother and aunt -- have recounted the story ever since. The way they tell it, it was . . .like . . . fun. Potato pancakes, mashed potatoes, french fried potatoes (this was before the war in Iraq and "freedom fries"), potato soup, baked potatoes, boiled potatoes. Never mind tales from ancient relatives recounting the Irish potato famine of the 19th century with brogues we youngsters could not understand. In our house, there was no potato famine. It was the '30s and potatoes were fun. 

My grandfather's reaction to the Depression was to get another job. He worked from 8 in the morning to 11 at night at least five days a week. Unlucky relatives who could not get one job, let alone two, slept on the living room floor, on mattresses rolled out each night especially for the occasion. I have never done that, at least not while I was sober, and I do not know anyone in the family these days who would willingly do it either. But then, that too was . . . fun. Again, the story telling experts -- mom and the aunt -- recount how there was always a contest among the kids to see who would get the living room mattress with the cousins. The unlucky losers had to go to sleep in . . .gasp(!). . . a bed. 

So here I am am, back at the computer, fashioning my own contest with economic challenge. Is it 10 pounds of potatoes? Or two jobs? Or mattresses on the living room floor? No. I am reduced to dunning clients, for the twentieth time. The calls have become rather boring. Every month I send a bill. Every month they do not pay it. Every month I call to remind them that the bill has been sent but not paid. Everyone is perfectly polite. No one says anything obvious, like "I haven't paid in six months cause I can't. Why don't you stop wasting the stamp?" I am polite too. Though a lawyer, I do not threaten to sue (that would be a very expensive stamp). I do not proclaim the great work we have done, or the utter unfairness of having an Ivy league pedigree in the face of the pedestrian challenge of collection. I do not even point out that at law school (Yale Law School, mind you), there was no course on collecting bills, or even on sending them. Yale was into the big issues (as we stared at pictures of Presidents and Supreme Court justices and various and sundry other legal notables). Collecting bills wasn't one of them. (Wags think that if the issue wasn't about the Constitution, law wasn't taught at the Yale Law School, but that subject is for another day.) 

Most of those to whom I speak are waiting for something big to happen. Like an easing up of the credit crunch. So they can borrow more money to pay the bills created with the money they previously borrowed. 

I am waiting for something big too. Something I'll be able to share with my grandchildren. Something gripping. Or memorable. Or funny. 

Like the 10 pound sack of potatoes. 

Or the living room mattress. 

But it's not there. It's just 11:30 pm now. 

Tomorrow I'll make another call.