600 Hours of Edward

frank with you here.”
    Dr. Buckley has said this a few times in the years that I have been talking with her. What she has to say usually stings, but later, I find out she was right.
    “OK.”
    “I don’t know what you’re waiting on.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Edward, do you know how long life lasts?”
    “It depends.”
    “Yes, but let’s just say you live a nice long life by conventional standards. Do you know how long that lasts?”
    “I don’t know. I read somewhere once that men live about seventy-two years.”
    “That’s about right. Put another way, a full, long life is about 650,000 hours. What do you think when you hear that number?”
    “Can I borrow a calculator?”
    Dr. Buckley stands up and goes to her desk, and then she brings a pocket calculator back to me.
    I check her math: 24 hours a day x 365 days a year x 72 years = 630,270.
    “It’s 630,270 hours,” I say.
    “So even fewer than 650,000.”
    I punch up the numbers again, just to double-check my math. Of course, there will be some leap years in there, so it’s not exactly 630,270 hours, but it’s close enough. It’s hard to know how manyleap years there are unless you know the first year, and I don’t. This is a hypothetical situation.
    “How long did your father live?” she asks.
    I punch up the rough numbers: 24 x 365 x 64 = 560,640.
    I tell her the answer.
    “And how long have you lived already?”
    That’s easy. I know that, as of today, I am thirty-nine years and 300 days old.
    I punch up the numbers: 24 x 365 x 39 = 341,640 + (24 x 300) = 348,840.
    Holy shit!
    I tell Dr. Buckley the answer.
    “So I ask you again: What are you waiting for?”
    – • –
    Tonight’s episode of
Dragnet
, which I start at just after seven—7:04—is the fifteenth episode of the first season, and it’s called “The Big Gun.” It’s one of my favorites.
    In this episode, which originally aired on April 27, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate the senseless shooting of a beautiful young Japanese woman. They find out that her husband had been killed in Vietnam several months earlier and that she has a young daughter, Miko, who apparently is somewhere in Japanese Town with her grandmother.
    The shooting gets to Sergeant Joe Friday in a personal way, something that doesn’t happen often. Maybe he’s angry at all of the gun violence in Los Angeles. Maybe he’s shocked that anyone could murder such a pretty, petite woman. Sergeant Joe Friday just wants the facts, but he’s also human.
    Eventually, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon zero in on a creepy man named Ben Roy Yoder, who lives with his highly religious aunt. When the police come to serve a search warrant at her house, the aunt castigates them, saying that they would go rooting around in a holy temple.
    And Sergeant Joe Friday says that he would if he thought he would find a murder gun there. That’s very logical.
    I’m watching
Dragnet
almost three hours early and might even watch another episode, if I feel like it. I’m also munching on thin-crust pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut. I didn’t go to the grocery store today. I decided I didn’t have to. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow. Or maybe not.
    I’ll do whatever I feel like doing. You live only once.
    – • –
    Tonight’s letter continues a recent theme. It’s not a complaint.
    I have written letters of complaint to Dr. Buckley before, especially early in our working together, when what she said to me didn’t make much sense and before my dosage of fluoxetine balanced out and calmed me down a little bit. There were times that I wrote very angry letters to Dr. Buckley—seventeen such times, it turns out, as I retrieve the file with her name.
    I am glad she never saw them. I wouldn’t want Dr. Buckley’s feelings to be hurt.
    Dr. Buckley:
    I want to thank you for my session today. I think it is one of the best ones we have ever had. You helped me to see things much more clearly where my father and DonnaMiddleton are concerned. You are a very wise and logical woman.
    I understand what you said about Donna, and I will give her the space she needs. I do hope you’re wrong, though. I would be very sad if Donna Middleton were no longer my friend.
    I am looking forward to talking again next week. Thank you for all you have done to help me.
    I am, your patient,
    Edward Stanton

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5
    I have been thinking that perhaps I do have some rituals that aren’t worth the time