Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [13]
As the father of a special-needs child, I am acutely aware of the struggle between my duty as a prosecutor and my duty as a human being. I watched the man’s elderly parents wait anxiously for his appearance and his own embarrassment as he glanced back at them, while his lawyer described the reasons why a mental health assessment was appropriate. At the conclusion of his bail hearing, the man was sent for a thirty-day assessment. Unfortunately, there were no spaces immediately available at the mental health facility, so he was to be sent to a jail to await transfer. Remembering Franklin (and thinking particularly of Justice), I alerted the jail to the accused’s special needs and requested they segregate him for his own protection. Hardly a home run for virtue, as I was simply following my responsibility as a prosecutor, but it was at least a baby step down the road to moral perfection.
And the early victories for virtue continued. Not only was I working on the virtues but I was passing on the wisdom. One of my coworkers confided about a seething resentment (okay, maybe “seething” is strong, but I know she would say that she had every right to seethe) over the actions of a mutual acquaintance. It wasn’t a new topic, so I came somewhat prepared. Remembering Franklin, and thinking particularly of Tranquillity (though in the moment I got it confused with Justice), I told her that life is a long road, and we are all drivers. If we choose to look at what has happened in the past, it is like looking in the rearview mirror; do it too often and you risk going off the road. Look ahead, I suggested, not back.
My colleague, a very bright professional woman with more than twenty years of experience in her field, shot me a look like she might a brazen child and then said, “That’s not bad. I guess you’re right.”
Wooo hoooo! This Franklin thing was a breeze. Could it all be this easy? I am reminded here of the opening words of Book the First in A Series of Unfortunate Events: “If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.”
One might think that being so occupied with Justice and Tranquillity would make the no-snacking/Temperance credo a breeze. One would be wrong.
All day long, despite the distractions, I had the fidgety, nervous twitches of someone in the grips of the DTs. I craved sugar . . . or salt . . . or starch. Maybe I didn’t crave any of those things. Maybe I just craved snacking itself. Like a smoker dangling a wooden cigarette out of his mouth, maybe I’d be satisfied with some snack surrogate. I remember reading once that if you ate slowly, you could trick your body into believing it was full. Maybe I could do the same with snacks. Perhaps I could try to fool whatever compels me to snack by chewing on a straw or something. Of course, chewing on plastic can’t be much better for me than overeating, but there is no censure against plastic consumption anywhere in Ben’s autobiography. I decided it was worth a try.
The straws didn’t work. I just had a bunch of chewed plastic in my wastebasket.
As I contemplated my straw failure and the merits of a snack in the midst of the day, I began to negotiate with myself. What could one little snack hurt? I reasoned. I can have just one. I can stop at any time.
What was I saying?
I’d gone from a generally happy, if slightly chubby and morally imperfect, person to a self-delusional food addict on Day 1 of my program. On a positive note, I was gaining a better understanding of the plight of the addicts in custody over the weekend.
If the workday had been daunting, the evening presented a distraction from my food struggles and an opportunity