Perception VS reality

Posted on July 29, 2013 by ronnieapteker

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine.

He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: ”Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Gee, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward … I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking: . . . so that means it was . . . let’s see. … February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means . . . lemme check the odometer . . . Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed — even before I sensed it — that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He’s afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It’s 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I feel. I’m just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They’ll probably say it’s only a 90-day warranty. That’s exactly what they’re gonna say, the rats.

And Elaine is thinking: maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I’ll give them a warranty. I’ll take their warranty and stick it right up their ….

“Roger,” Elaine says aloud. “What?” says Roger, startled.

“Please don’t torture yourself like this,” she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. “Maybe I should never have . . . I feel so . . .” (She breaks down, sobbing.)

“What?” says Roger.

“I’m such a fool,” Elaine sobs. “I mean, I know there’s no knight. I really know that. It’s silly. There’s no knight, and there’s no horse.”

“There’s no horse?” says Roger.

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Elaine says.

“No!” says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

“It’s just that . . . It’s that I . . . I need some time,” Elaine says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

“Yes,” he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

“Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?” she says.

“What way?” says Roger.

“That way about time,” says Elaine.

“Oh,” says Roger. “Yes.”

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

“Thank you, Roger,” she says.

“Thank you,” says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechs he never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it’s better if he doesn’t think about it. (This is also Roger’s policy regarding world hunger.)

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine’s, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: “Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?”

Top spin lobby

Posted on July 28, 2013 by ronnieapteker

A woman was at her hairdresser’s getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband.. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded:

“Rome? Why would anyone want to go there?

It’s crowded and dirty. You’re crazy to go to Rome.

So, how are you getting there?”

“We’re taking Continental,” was the reply. “We got a great rate!”

“Continental?” exclaimed the hairdresser.” That’s a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they’re always late. So, where are you staying in Rome ?”

“We’ll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome ‘s Tiber River called Teste.”

“Don’t go any further. I know that place. Everybody thinks its gonna be something special and exclusive, but it’s really a dump.”

“We’re going to go to see the Vatican and maybe get to see the Pope.”

“That’s rich,” laughed the hairdresser. You and a million other people trying to see him.

He’ll look the size of an ant.

Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You’re going to need it.”

A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.

“It was wonderful,” explained the woman, “not only were we on time in one of Continental’s brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot.

And the hotel was great! They’d just finished a $5 million remodeling job, and now it’s a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologized and gave us their owner’s suite at no extra charge!”

“Well,” muttered the hairdresser, “that’s all well and good, but I know you didn’t get to see the Pope.”

“Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I’d be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me.

Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand!

I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me.”

“Oh, really! What’d he say?”

He said: “Who the #^$% did your hair?”

George Bizos – Celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday

Posted on July 18, 2013 by ronnieapteker

Celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2013/07/18/celebrating-nelson-mandelas-95th-birthday

Former president Nelson Mandela. Picture: SUNDAY TIMES IT HAS been 65 years of a fulfilling friendship, but it was the things that Nelson Mandela and I could not do together that cemented our relationship far more than the things that we could. We met in 1948, ironically the year of the dawn of apartheid. We were reading law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where the unbearable logic of the National Party invaded our lives in the most unthinkable ways. Though we could occupy the same desk in the lecture theatre, we could not swim together in the pool. We could not sit next to one another at rugby matches.

Because of the colour of his skin, Mandela could not join the soccer team, and he was barred from entering the gym to work out in the boxing ring, his favourite sport of all. Of course, the inhumanity of apartheid put a halt to much more than jolling and sports, but as two young friends of different colour, we generally could not be seen together in the regular walkways of life.

When he began practising law in 1951 and I joined the bar three years later, we worked on numerous cases together, yet we could not enjoy a cup of tea or a meal with one another at any of the eateries in the vicinity of the courts. Not even a bench in a public park would tolerate the presence of a black man in the company of a white.

The other side of apartheid’s coin meant that a white person could not travel to the townships without seeking a permit, which was invariably declined. Hence, July 18, Mandela’s birthday, was a day of immense importance to him, his family and friends and it was one they celebrated with joyful abandon at his home in Vilakazi Street, though it was difficult, if not impossible, for me and many of his friends of paler skin to join him in Soweto during those early years.

It is not by choice but by circumstance that we are separated again for this birthday but, rather than dwell on his poor health, I want to recall our good times and the milestones we have shared in both our lifetimes.

When Mandela and nine other members of the then outlawed African National Congress (ANC) were tried in the early 1960s for attempting to overthrow the apartheid regime, I was one of their defending advocates. I recall the April morning of 1964, when Mandela was due to deliver his now infamous speech in the dock and we read over what he had penned. He had wanted to say that he was prepared to die for a free and democratic SA. “Don’t you think you will be accused of martyrdom?” I asked him. “And won’t there be some people who might consider your words a challenge? You ought to remove those words.”

“I’ve said it too often from public platforms and I’m not prepared to remove it now,” he insisted.

“What about a compromise,” I suggested after a short discussion. “What about, ‘But if needs be, My Lord, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die’.”

Two months later, he was handed a life sentence and, as harsh as that was, in our hearts it felt like a victory as we had feared he would have been sentenced to death. (But typically, he always found a way to cast light on those dark years and I recall, years later, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Price and asked me to travel with him to collect it and introduced me to the King of Norway. “This is George Bizos, my lawyer,” he said. “I don’t know why I brought him with me. He sent me to prison for 27 years.”) When he was imprisoned on Robben Island, Mandela nominated me as the lawyer who would visit him and I had to apply for permission to travel to that barren stretch of land off the Cape and had to present pressing reasons to take me there, to convey or relay some critical information. To her credit, his then wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, was very inventive. She would say: “I can’t decide what school the children should go to. Or what subjects they must study. As their father, you must decide.” And I would be dispatched to hear what Mandela would have to say on the subject, but use our time to discuss our core business: freedom.

After his release in 1990, his path to the presidency of SA lay ahead of him and he left no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was the man truly capable of bridging the abyss that defined SA. The one-time life prisoner excelled as head of the state and he worked his Madiba magic in countless ways.

Sadly, his personal life was marred by various tribulations. In 1991, he asked me to defend Madikizela-Mandela in the kidnapping trial, despite the fact that their marriage had crumbled by then. Five years later, he asked me to accompany him to court as he endured their very public divorce. Happier moments were to follow, though, and a year or so later I recall a rather bashful 80-something Mandela telling me about Graca Machel and the chapter in his life that had just opened. They were living together by then and he was more content that I had seen him in a long time.

But Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu thought their cohabitation was unbecoming of an icon and called on his friend to marry, and so they wed in a quiet ceremony in 1998. High on Machel’s agenda was the unity of the various Mandela families and, in the years that followed, she forged a peace between the children and grandchildren from his first marriage to Evelyn Mase and his second marriage to Madikizela-Mandela. I recall many happy birthday celebrations that followed, when Mandela would take his rightful place at the head of the table, surrounded by the family he had always wanted to nourish, but which life had prevented him from doing.

If he were in better health, I imagine he would be heavily disappointed by the family disputes that are playing out for the world to see. He did not expect any privilege for himself and I know he would appeal to them now to follow his example.

The matter of his final resting place is also beyond dispute and is a decision he made a long, long time ago. I was reminded of that fact in January this year, not long after he was released from hospital, when I went to visit him at his Houghton home. As soon as I entered the living room, he called out to the staff: “Get me my boots.”

“What do you want your boots for, Tata?” one of them asked. “George is here. He will take me to Qunu,” he answered. It was clear that he wanted to go home.

Qunu is a place that is very near and dear to Madiba’s heart. It is where he has enjoyed his retirement, where his contemporaries knocked on his door uninvited and unannounced, something he greatly enjoyed.

It is also there, in the kraal, where he chose his final resting place, in consultation with Machel, something he has talked about many times and always in practical tones.

Mandela doesn’t fear death. He once said that when he eventually departs, he will look for the nearest ANC branch in heaven and join it. And he has often said — in jest — that when he dies, he will be in the good company of Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Albert Luthuli and Oliver Tambo.

I last saw him at his Houghton home a week or so before he was admitted to hospital last month and we strolled down memory lane, as we often do.

But he asked some questions that saddened me. “When did you last see Oliver (Tambo)?” he wanted to know. “How’s Walter (Sisulu)?” I could not lie to him and so I reminded him that they had passed on many years ago.

I recall a blank expression sweeping over his face for a moment or so, before the conversation got back on track.

As I was saying goodbye, he turned to me and said: “George, make sure that you don’t leave your jacket behind.” As it turned out, I had left it in the car. But Mandela’s words touched me. He was being thoughtful and wanted me to shield myself from the winter chill that had crept into this part of the world.

Today, on his 95th birthday, I also wish for him a shield to protect him as he finds his way back to good health. I have said to him on many birthday occasions in the past, here’s to your 100th birthday. “You are optimistic,” he would laugh in response.

I sincerely hope not, my friend.

• Bizos is a senior advocate at the Legal Resources Centre.