Accountants and Undertakers

Yesterday, in my capacity as intrepid girl court reporter, faithful keeper of the record for depositions and hearings throughout the sovereign state of South Carolina and even sometimes in North Carolina and Georgia, I was obliged to stifle yawns through three hours of a board meeting. Of the three hours I reported approximately one hour; the other two hours I was obliged to sit, listening for my cue, trying not to fall asleep. It was a rainy morning. There was cake and coffee laid temptingly out on a nearby sideboard. I could see it and smell it and I was as welcome to it as anyone, but I could not have any. See, I never knew when they would get to the portion of the meeting's agenda that I was there to report. Did I hear somebody say why not? Because having devised said agenda and having gone to the trouble of printing and distributing same, and after calling the meeting to order and observing Item Number One (more on that later) they proceeded to pretend it didn't exist! You do not want to get me started on that! At any rate it just won't do for a reporter to have a mouthful of cake when it's time to pick up her mask and start whispering into it. Not good, as the pirate would say. Burn the food, the shade, the rum ... but do not spit cake crumbs at a board meeting. 'Twould be unseemly.

There is a great deal of waiting in court reporting and, sadly, very little cake. In such situations the most difficult part of my job is making childish impatience the doppëlganger for professional detachment. Sounds easy but believe me, it ain't! At least not for antsy me. It helps to steal looks at my Johnny Depp button which goes with me in my equipment case. Stealing looks at Johnny generally helps me get through the day no matter what I'm doing. Every day! So sue me! As far as I know it's still legal to get high on life ... not to mention the smoldering eyes and outrageous cheekbones of Johnny The Psychotically Handsome! If it becomes illegal in the US I shall be forced to go underground.

The button in question was made especially for me by a dear friend who is a fellow sufferer of late-stage JDOCD (for the uninitiated, that's Johnny Depp Obsessive Compulsive Disorder -- a most frightening and well-documented malady for which there is no known cure). It is the kind of button you're supposed to wear on your shirt so it has a pin in the back, which I stick into the soft side of the microphone case that doubles as a prop for my digital recorder. So this here is the eye candy I keep on hand for emergencies, non-emergencies, and everything in between while reporting:

Yeah. I know. Told you it was serious. Donations gratefully accepted.

The "they" of yesterday's bored ... oops ... sorry! ... board meeting were a group of South Carolina's finest certified public accountants. These particular accountants are charged with the duty of licensing all the other accountants in South Carolina and then making sure those droves of licensed accountants keep slogging away, doing what they're supposed to be doing. Such as, paying their annual licensing fees, getting all their continuing education credits according to the laws of our state, and preparing tax returns while not embezzling from their clients! Refraining from cooking the books, as it were. These are watchdog accountants. The accountants to whom all the other accountants are accountable.

Let me say this right here and now: my husband and I are both self-employed and, as such, we'd be lost without our accountant. He gets a loaf of my banana bread each and every Christmas! Plus which, one of my husband's best friends is an accountant. Johnny Depp once played an accountant (albeit in one of his less-compelling movie roles). The world needs accountants! No one knows it better than I. These accountants with whom I spent the morning yesterday are the nicest people in the world. I mean, where else but in South Carolina does the court reporter get a hug from at least two accountants when she shows up to cover their board meeting? Just regular lovebugs! So please do not interpret my remarks as derogatory to bean counters! There is a point to all of this. I promise. I am laying a foundation here. Read to the end and if you're disappointed, by all means feel free to keep it to yourself.

In the same building where the accountants had their board meeting yesterday, many other licensing boards were having meetings. I regularly report such meetings. There are boards for cosmetologists, dentists, veterinarians, plumbers ... you name it. One of the boards whose meetings I have covered several times in the past is the funeral directors' board. They do the exact same thing as the accountants, only they do it to and for ... you guessed it ... all of South Carolina's funeral directors! Or "undertakers" as I like to call them. Those who take 'em under. I also like the term "morticians" because it sounds so darkly dramatic, so Vincent-Pricey. And from what I understand and have been told, funerals are nothing if not pricey! I have instructed my family on how to avoid getting bilked by the funeral industry upon my unfortunate expiration, but that's a blog for another day.

The funeral directors' board meetings are seldom if ever boring, and for some reason I never hesitate to take cake and coffee to my desk before the meeting begins. In fact, the undertakers insist on it and sometimes actually bring it to me! I believe they have thought this through and know that clogging my veins with bad cholesterol can only benefit their industry, but I eat it anyway because it makes me happy! One board member, before the onset of every single meeting, plunks a loaf of white bread and a big jar of peanut butter onto the table, sending his name plate flying! He has been known to assemble and consume a PB sandwich even as poor would-be undertakers, spit-shined and dressed TO THE NIYUNS, Y'ALL, are begging for the right to embalm and inter South Carolina's recently deceased!

Let me pull over here and park for a mo. The cake (and other snacks) they bring to these undertaker board meetings is DIVINE. No prim Krogeresque marble pound cake, the slices sedately dominoed on a melamine plate next to a bowl of red delicious apples that nobody touches. We are talking REAL CAKE, Y'ALL ... from a dedicated local bakery ... towering confections of rich, moist cake slathered in buttercream, gaudily decorated with DayGlo-orange frosting carrots and what-not. Incredible! By the time the meeting is over, by the looks of that cake one would think it had been laced with gunpowder. It looks just like a bomb exploded in the center of it. Everyone in the room has cake breath and crumbs on their front. I have noticed that the undertakers sport very forgiving ties ... busy-print ties that can take you from a hedonistic board meeting to a solemn funeral without giving away your secret. I suspect they use those pointy-edged handkerchiefs to expunge the cake evidence from their lips right before they put on the funeral face they keep in one of the pockets of their dark suits. I do not mean to imply that funeral directors feign mournfulness! Please do not draw that conclusion.

One of the undertakers brings a great big box of whatever luscious South Carolina produce happens to be available at the time ... once it was peaches still warm from the sun, so ripe and juicy, their aroma filling the stuffy conference room, I could barely think straight. I went home with enough peaches to make five cobblers. Which I would have done if I didn't go around for the next week with peach juice dripping from my chin and peach strings stuck in my teeth. Plus which, I'm too lazy to make peach cobbler! The fact that I make banana bread at Christmas (from a mix ... shhhh) is newsworthy! But that too is a blog for another day.

Now, let me ask you something. Of the two groups ... i.e. those who take care of South Carolinians' money and those who bury South Carolinians' dead, which group do you think would be the happiest? I mean, the conventional wisdom is that money makes you happy and dying makes you sad. Right? Am I right? WRONG! It has been my -- albeit thankfully limited -- experience that the undertakers are as deliciously irreverent as the accountants are lugubriously serious. To look at the two groups, one would think money is a cause for heartburn and dying is cause for rejoicing. Could it be there is some truth in that? Could it be that, while the accountants' sole purpose is the safeguarding of money, the undertakers' sole duty is the safeguarding not of death, but of life? I think we're onto something.

I told you we would get back to Item Number One on the accountant board's agenda, right after calling the meeting to order. Turns out those items are the same for both boards, only the two groups phrase it differently. The accountants call it a "moment of silence." We all struggle to our feet, put chin to sternum, and go silent for a moment. Then someone says "Amen," presumably for the benefit of those who actually had time to eke out a silent prayer in, like, three seconds. Then we do the pledge of allegiance during which, I am glad to report, we still say the magic words "under God." Now, the undertakers ... they call Item Number One prayer and they actually pray. We all bow our heads and someone lifts their voice to heaven, asking God to bless the meeting. I really like that part. Then we all fall on our cake again as the wannabe morticians file in to plead whatever case they've come there to plead.

I saw a bumpersticker the other day that I liked, so (ironically) even though I was operating an automobile at the time (duh) I risked my life to grub around in my suitcase-sized purse for the once-blank book I constantly scribble in. Luckily the sentiment on my fellow motorist's bumper was short and to the point ... eight words, to be exact. It read: "The meaning of life is to live it." I like that. Proving once again that life trumps death every time, even when you have risked life and limb to drive on South Carolina roads, a singularly death-defying activity. Evel Knievel was a wimp in comparison.

I won't elaborate on this next except to say, if you haven't already, you should see the movie "Last Holiday" starring Queen Latifah. It's not a rare cinematic gem but it is very cute and touching, and contains an important lesson. I love the part where Queen's character, Georgia, says tearfully: "I shoulda ate that ..." Res ipsa loquitur ... the thing speaks for itself.

For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed wandering through cemeteries. The older the better. I'll drive an hour to spend two in an old cemetery. I always try to get someone to go with me. My mom and my husband and children all like cemeteries too. They don't make me feel morbid at all (the cemeteries that is ... not the relatives). Quite the contrary! I find that in the older cemeteries, people went to the trouble to mark their loved ones' graves with beautiful, long, meaningful sentiments engraved in stone. More than just their name and the dates they were born and died. That doesn't tell the story at all! In these old graveyards you get huge slabs of print, partially eroded by time, but singing with life. A year or so ago I copied some I found in a cemetery in historic Camden, South Carolina. Among my favorites was this paean to the short life ... not the untimely death ... of a fifteen-year-old boy I would like to have known:

Sacred to the memory of Jos. K. Alexander who was born 8th May 1838 and came to his death by the accidental discharge of his gun while sporting on Saturday the 4th of Feb, 1854. This stone is erected by his sorrowing schoolmates in tribute to his sterling worth. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and among his last words were "Jesus is precious to my soul."

Amen.

So until the day the accountants and the undertakers share a great big gooey cake, and until the day Johnny plays a funeral director (I'd pay double to see that), I will just keep on cleaning the cake crumbs out of my reporter mask. And celebrating life, and loving the One Who gives it.

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." ~ I Corinthians 15:55-57

~ I Corinthians 15:55-57