Doug, the Tax Man

Society is full of things that don’t make any sense to me. Dougie, my neighborhood friend down the street, used to have a black Pekingese dog. (This was the second of Dougie’s dogs. Dougie’s family had to get rid of their English sheep dog. The sheep dog could never overcome its instinct to chase down all the children in the neighborhood and herd them together. This proved a little too frightening to us children and our parents, so the sheep dog had to go. The Pekingese was much less threatening.) His dog loved him and liked to follow him to school. This was frowned on by school authorities, but the dog was persistent and didn’t understand it when Dougie told him to go home. Dougie was often called out of class to retrieve his dog from the campus environs and return him home. No one liked this solution because Dougie walked to school and lived about a mile away. It took him nearly all day to take his dog home, and Dougie missed out on some important teaching time. It was always puzzling why Dougie’s parents never seemed to be able to retrieve the dog, or keep him chained up in the first place. It was never puzzling that it took almost all day for Dougie to take him home and get back to school. Dougie’s dad was a principal at another elementary school in town and ought to have known better. In some families, entitlement starts at home. Go figure.

Dougie’s dog was well known on our little elementary school campus. One day this dog was spotted under a car parked along side the school, and Dougie was dutifully called out of class to retrieve his dog. Dougie marched over to the car and called to his dog to come out. The dog understood this command as well as the one to go home, so it was no surprise that Dougie had to lie down on the street to reach under the car to grab a tail. The skunk that belonged to the tail was very surprised and upset at the intrusion. In no uncertain terms were Dougie and the Yard Monitor made aware of the nature of this indiscretion -- as were the rest of us at school.

Dougie had to undergo the indignity of a scrub down with tomato juice and a milk bath. His clothes were ceremoniously burned. His black Pekinese which was finally, and safely, installed behind the gate at home, normally would have been eager to greet him, but would have nothing to do with Dougie. I’m sure he looked the same, but the scent was no longer familiar. In fact, few people would have anything to do with Dougie for a few days.

Dougie grew up to be Doug, the taxman. He found a career as a bureaucrat with the state, working at the Franchise Tax Board. This was a safe occupation for Doug. No dogs allowed, nor skunks for that matter. It’s an occupation that doesn’t make sense to me for Doug, but I am not him and did not live his life.

I always thought that Doug was smarter than I. Sure he may not have been able to count as far as I could when we were both five, but he always seem to have better answers when the teacher called on him…on those rare occasions when he was not walking his dog back home. We were in the same classes through Junior High, but not in the same social circles. Doug was more likeable than I was and he hung out with the popular crowd. That’s the way it goes. I don’t regret not being popular. It has never been a passion of mine.

I lost track of him in high school. Doug was a guy who was smart and inventive with his time, who was not necessarily inclined to follow the rules. That may be why I lost track. The popular kids which never included me in their number, no longer included Doug either. While it was easy not to notice me, it was pretty easy to notice the popular kids. Doug wasn’t there. He just dropped off my radar.

But employment with the state taxing authority has no appeal aside from the paycheck. I worked for the state for almost 2 years out of college and with this intimate knowledge I could not imagine hell without its lobby filled with state tax workers. Tax work is work where rules are everything. It could not be very satisfying, particularly for a guy who was smart and inventive with his time, who was not necessarily inclined to follow the rules.

When we were little, Dougie had a passion for football. He was always organizing the neighborhood for a game of front yard football. Four kids were enough for two teams. Six was better. If we could only muster five kids, Doug would quarterback both teams. He knew all the rules and taught us all how to play. He refereed the games too, making sure that penalties were imposed and fair. He quarterbacked his team and nearly always won. We all wanted to be on Dougie’s team.

In elementary school, when he was there, he would always organize the recess sports. He got somebody else to captain a team and we lined up and let the captains chose teams. The adults in our school lives weren’t nearly as concerned with our self esteem then, so they let us form our teams and play our own games. Yes, somebody was always chosen last. Ouch. One of the teams always lost. Ooh. We kept our own score. We had to count and keep track. Sometimes somebody felt cheated or disappointed in losing, but we went back to class and nobody seemed to harbor bad feelings. Tomorrow the captains would choose different teams. If your team lost too often, you didn’t get to be captain anymore. These were lessons for life played out on the playground. But there were other lessons to be learned.

Doug didn’t play football on the school team in high school. Doug didn’t hang out with the popular kids. Doug might not have even graduated high school for all I know, his passion for all things having long since dissipated. He was captain of nothing in high school. He did not participate in any clubs. Nobody wanted to be on his team. I never saw him. What had football become to him? Who was Doug anyway? I don’t really know, but I do know that now he is Doug, the taxman.

There is story for every life. I would love to be able to trace the beginnings of what makes people who they are, the ebbs and flows of their lives, the defining moments that brings them to the here and now. But that is not generally possible, and frankly, I am just not that interested. I am interested in those people who have left their impression on me for whatever reason that may have been. It is difficult to sort out their importance, or the weight of their contribution, but not their impact. We do not all have those succinctly defining moments that forge our lives, and indelibly ink them into the history books. No, life is much more obtuse than that. Doug was a leader and then he was not. There was a change and something caused it. I doubt if it was the skunk episode that initiated his slide into eventual ordinariness, but I regret that I’ll never know.