Colin Barrett: Blog

The "ring-ring-a-lingle" quote is from the song "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" in the musical Kismet, by the way. As for Celia's potty practices, that's a rough paraphrase of a verse written by Jonathan Swift, he of "Gulliver's Travels" fame.
Lest someone think I'm making outrageous sport of religion with my presentation of the preacher who refuses to marry Linda and Hugo because they're living together, this actually occurred to a young couple I knew, including the directive that they separate for six months before he'd consider performing the ceremony. I've been known to say of doctors whom I've found especially inept that "somebody had to finish last in medical school," but this was the first time I ever had the same thought about a seminary. Think about it, though. The same truth applies to lawyers, plumbers and every other discipline that requires specialized education; once beyond the confines of the school, every graduate has equal standing regardless of his or her ranking in the graduating class-a somewhat scary prospect.

I pretty much stay away from religious areas in my writing, for the same reason that kids are taught that it's not a proper dinner-party topic of conversation. Everybody has their own views on the subject, and they're often pretty strongly held views.
One thing I've never quite understood is why often it isn't enough for people to hold to their own religious beliefs, they more or less require others around them to subscribe to the same doctrines. I've no clue why it matters to John over there whether Mary on his right believes in God and/or prays to that God in a particular way or venue, except that perhaps John isn't so sure of his convictions and needs Mary's reaffirmation to help erase his lingering doubts, but be that as it may no other subject is so quick to provoke argument, and often vicious argument if not more, than are even seemingly minute differences in religious
tenets. I can certainly sympathize with the difficulty that an outsider like Hugo might have in trying to sort through this kind of complexity. So I felt like I had to at least touch upon this area in passing to give my story more grounding in quasi-reality. If it makes you uncomfortable, rest assured, there's very little more.

It's true that lie-detector test results aren't admissible in court anywhere in the U.S.
That's not because the tests have been proven to be unreliable. Performed by those expert in the discipline, they're mostly accurate. The thing is that "mostly" doesn't cut it for a judicial system that demans absolutes to the extent it's humanly possible to get there. As Linda pointed out several chapters ago, there are documented cases of lie detectors generating false results. The equipment relies on measuring autonomic physical responses generated by people who are knowingly lying for purposes of deception, which won't of course necessarily be so of someone who tells a falsehood.
Nevertheless, behind the legal scenes, attorneys will sometimes place great reliance on such tests in developing courtroom strategies, if the test results are available. And Hugo's findings occupy the same position on the spectrum, with the added advantage that the rigors of lie-detector testing aren't involved. That's why Irving sees him as such an invaluable asset, as his first forays demonstrate. Even a partial success is enough to alter the course of a case, as is seen.

These are again largely transitional chapters, in which little new is introduced.
About Hugo's comments on his mode of learning: I've used my own mental process here. So much education today is didactic, teachers (and professors) presenting the material in a manner and sequence that are quite rigid, and insisting that the student take it in that way. I don't doubt that their way makes some sort of sense, and works acceptably for many students. For me, though, it's confining and limits understanding to what others before have already assimilated. I always resisted the rigors of formal education when I was a kid, and have grown no fonder of the process as I've aged. Just give me a good text and somebody I can ask questions of as they occur to me, and then please get out of my way and let me learn in the fashion that works best for me. I think an awful lot of young people would benefit from such a laissez-faire approach. Not everyone's mind is patterned the same, and the one-size-fits-all approach of our educational system necessarily won't accommodate some and may even serve to stultify their minds instead of broadening them. I don't pretend to have all the answers here, but I rather vigorously object to an educational system that does purport to have them and suppresses the hell out of any real dissent.
Anyone who's done much moving in their lives will agree with Hugo's and Linda's reluctance to entrust their treasures to the hands of professional movers. Some of those are of course better than others, but even the most careful and diligent among them won't be motivated to take as good care of your personal prizes as you are yourself. I've done an awful lot of moving throughout my life, and it's a tack I learned quite young to take where possible. One of my horror stories about movers came when I moved some years back from the Washington, DC area to a home I shared with my late (third) wife in rural Georgia. The movers delivered our stuff pretty well, but also threw in someone else's expensive bedroom dresser and mirror. I phoned them several times to get them to come back and pick it up, but our new home was enough out of the way that they kept putting us off and finally said they weren't coming at all. Apparently the inconvenience of having to get a truck to our out-of-the-way location was more than the cost of paying the claim I'm sure the dresser's owner filed with them was worth. Which is why I'd really hate to give a mover something I truly loved and couldn't readily replace.

I don't really have much to add to today's chapters.
The numbers ought to give you an idea that this was written quite a few years ago. I've left them alone, because there's no point to making adjustments to accommodate today's economics when tomorrow will bring yet more changes that invalidate what's so right now. So just take my word for it, Linda got herself and Hugo a pretty good deal.
You know, there's a lot of truth in Hugo's comments about what he misses from his past life. I know when I've been in far less unfamiliar circumstances, I, too, have found myself nostalgic for even some of the less pleasant aspects of my prior life, simply because they had the advantage of long familiarity. I left my first marriage because it had become quite an unhappy one, yet for months afterwards, and even longer, I could look back and find things that I very much missed in that time, and when after about three months of separation, my soon-to-be ex decided to stop speaking to me at all, I found myself nearly as much oppressed by the silence as I had been by the perpetual bickering that had sadly come to flavor any conversations we had. Familiarity, I've found, breeds security far more than it does contempt.