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put
it?”
    “My wife wants me
here,” I answered.   “Tom Spicer wants me
here.   I’m having nightmares, so I’m not
sleeping right, so I’m keeping my wife awake and showing my ass at work.   I’ve told opposing counsel in at least two
different cases to eat shit—not figuratively, I actually told them to eat shit
and then I hung up on them—and I said the same thing to a client last week. And
you don’t tell clients to eat shit.   You
say you disagree with their assessment, you can say you’re sorry they feel that
way, but you don’t tell them to go eat shit.   Especially when you charge what Carwood, Allison charges.   Fortunately for me, my client reported me to
Tom Spicer.   She could have reported me
to the Bar.”
    “So why do you
think the double Hero of the Month experience nightmares and personality issues
over an action the rest of the world views as praiseworthy?”
    I thought for a
moment.
    “Stage fright,” I
said.
    “Stage fright?”
    “Stage fright,” I
said again.   “Tomorrow night, I’m going
to be talking about this with somebody else.   On the radio.”    

 
      3.

 
    Ages before the
shooting, I learned that I suffered from Toothpaste Syndrome.   I discovered this over the summer between
sixth and seventh grades, when Bobby and I enrolled in an aikido class through
the parks and recreation department in Catawba County.   The teacher, a short, powerfully-built
retired Marine named Henry Burton—we called him “Sensei”—taught me about it my
first day in the class.
    “Toothpaste
Syndrome occurs when the shit hits the fan and you forget everything you’ve
been taught,” Sensei said.   “The squeeze
comes on and all your knowledge, all your training, squirts right out the top
of your head.   Like a tube of
toothpaste.”
    I remember
standing there in slack jawed shock.   Not
just because an authority figure had said a word like “shit,” but because while
Toothpaste Syndrome had afflicted me my entire life, only then did I learn that
there existed a name for it.   And what a
perfect name!   What a clever, humorous
yet stunningly accurate way to
describe what had happened in every crisis situation I had ever
experienced!   Or at least what I thought
of then as a crisis situation.   Throughout my life I had suffered from a noticeable inability to rise to
the occasion.   Fights and snarky remarks
from fellow students, white trash or black trash bumping into me at the mall
and glaring at me with disrespect instead of apologizing—my brain always
responded to an adrenaline dump by shutting down.   I could pull my hand off a hot stove but I
couldn’t launch a smart comeback, lacking as I did the quick wit that came so
easily to everyone else.   My zingers
typically arrived hours later, on the bus or in bed or in the shower, when the
instant danger had subsided and I’d had time to think.   I always knew what to do, what to say, hours
later.   When the heat came on, though, I
forgot my lines.
    And now Sensei
gave me a name for it: Toothpaste
Syndrome .   I suffered from a syndrome , not a personality defect.   Not a character defect.   A syndrome.   Which, according to Sensei, I could control
with ki breathing.   This consisted of deep, controlled breaths
where you filled your lungs to capacity and released the air in a slow
exhalation that left your body relaxed and energized.   Concentrate on the air, he said.   Focus on air, focus on breath, and as the
body relaxes so does the mind.   The
toothpaste remains in the tube.
    Sitting before the
microphone on a soundstage twenty-two years later, I tried to engage in ki breathing.   As soon as I stepped into the room and saw
the lights and microphones and headphones and the coffee cups and the
computers, I suddenly understood that in a matter of minutes a powerful
transmitter would broadcast my every stutter, stumble and mistake to thousands
of listeners.   Not just in Alamance County, but as