Astrological!

What we don't know about the universe would easily eclipse what we do. It's not even a contest. The unknown is much more prevalent than the known. So, when I say that I do not believe in astrology, I probably mean that I don't understand how stars and planets being aligned on your day of birth would impact your personality. I was appropriately named "Thomas" as in the biblical precursor, "Doubting Thomas." So, when people say things like "typical Aries...you're such a Leo...I knew you were a Virgo..." and so on, I think, yeah, sure. A group called "Imperial Drag" has a great song called "Zodiac Sign" where the singer says, "I'm unoriginal, it's fine/I wanna know about your Zodiac Sign." Sorry, people, grouping people in these large swaths of personality traits based upon their birthdays seems too random. I believe in nature and nurture. We are born into our circumstances to those who bore us and we develop our personalities, our drives, our sense of humor, our proclivities and eventually find our way to whatever vocations, avocations, intellectual pursuits, kinks, etc from our lives hence. To this very point, my mother was prone to note that both her brother, a Vietnam Veteran and erstwhile ne'er do well, and Adolf Hitler, a notorious, evil, murderous dictator, were both born on April 20th. Their similarities? They both liked dogs.

My feeling is that astrology is like those clairvoyants that are so popular. They act like they are feeling some supernatural feelings and make wildly general pronouncements until they find someone who will willingly fit his or her circumstances into the mystic's espoused generalities rather than the other way around. "I'm feeling like there's someone who lost someone close to them with the initial of D...anyone lose someone with a D?" "David," a member yells, "my dad passed last year." "Did your dad have a nickname?" "Gosh yes," says the astonished wanna-believer, "it was Tinky." Most of us have had a nickname at one point or another. My dad was nicknamed "Buzz." "I'm getting the feeling of fishing gear, did he love fishing?" It could be golf, bowling, baseball, or any of a million other things and of course they'll get a hit. What older man doesn't like baseball or fishing?

Astrology is like that for me. The signs have these general characteristics that could fit anyone. Virgos are mature and driven, the superstars and the perfectionists, easily bored but with strong relationships, helpful, supportive and understanding. Well, ok, that defines just about all of my friends and at least half my family and I don't know a single Virgo. Nope, just a bunch of February, May, November and December birthdays in my family, Tauruses and Geminis. And, then, me, an Aries. Forgive me, then, if I'm skeptical.

Aries, it is said, strive to be number one. They are hard headed, bold, ambitious and dive headfirst into the most challenging situation. They are passionate, motivated and confident leaders with cheerful dispositions. After all, the sign of the Aries is the Ram, an animal that shows dominance by butting its unusually hard head into other rams to secure prominence or potentially repel predators. The head figures prominently in the traits that are supposedly of any person born March 21 to April 19. Puhlease! Point me to a famous Aries leader. Search engines bring up celebrities like Matthew Broderick, a decent enough fellow by most accounts, but does he embody those traits? Maybe he does. I know him mostly for being Ferris Buehler. Buehler, however, was the opposite of an Aries. Chaka Khan (Aries) was a trail blazer for percussionists, no doubt, but I would think someone like Prince (Gemini) or Michael Jordan (Aquarius) or LeBron James (Capricorn) would fit these traits. Maybe a great general like George Patton (Scorpio) or Dwight D. Eisenhower (Libra) should have fallen under Aries, but neither did. In fact, for my birthday, I've searched multiple times to try to find historical figures and celebrities that share my specific birthday. Thomas Hobbes is the most famous historical person born on my same birth date and he was born in 1588. Four hundred and 33 year ago! No offense Juicy J and Pharrell Williams, I'm sure they are terrific musicians and performers but shouldn't they have number one songs every year with traits of the Aries? Like, say, the Beatles? Yet not one of the Beatles is or was an Aries. George (Pisces), John (Libra), Paul (Gemini) and Ringo (Cancer).

I dated someone many years ago who "charted" me. She showed me this elaborate circle with a bunch of symbols on it and said things I did not understand about being a double fire sign with a house in some constellation. I own a condo on Earth and have never been on fire in my life, so that threw me off. She mentioned that I have the qualities of an Aries that, essentially, are "off the charts" (no pun intended).

Is that it, though? Is it astrology or something else? A little background is in order: I am one of six kids, the three first boys were born each about a year apart. Being Irish, we were called "Irish Triplets." And, like triplets, we were all dressed alike until we were 13. Our big Christmas gifts each year were matching winter coats. We did not come from money. We were lower middle class. All six of us kids, my parents and one grandparent (9!) lived in a decent sized house. However, three boys lived in a 9x12 room for 18 years. My parents argued about two things constantly; money...or, more appropriately, the absence of it and sex...or, more appropriately, my dad's absence of it. We can all point to a special occasion regarding our conceptions. Maybe the conception date should be used to say more about the personality of the kids than the birth day. Birth date seems a little arbitrary. What if a problem causes you to be born early? Or late? Or your mother was induced? Or she had an emergency cesarian? The point is, the birth date is generally fluid. The conception date, that's fixed. My older brother was conceived on the honeymoon when my mom was 18. I was conceived on the Fourth of July because that was the only day my parents had off together. My younger brother was conceived on Labor Day for the same reason. My sister was conceived on New Year's Day. And so on.

Growing up, my father was a "spare the rod, spoil the child" man of the 1950s. Children should be seen and not heard was a constant refrain. He told us all how stupid we were daily. Hourly even. He was not good for a kid's ego. You tell an impressionable young person they're dumb, an idiot, without the sense the good lord gave them, etc., they'll start to believe it. I did not understand why he was so angry and yelling all the time growing up. But, he had 3 kids by the time he was 22. Four by 30, five by 38, six by 42. My mother seemed pregnant my whole upbringing. And, have you been around kids? They ask lots of questions. They get dirty. They break things. They are loud. He was angry all the time because he had no rest. He worked hard, went to school and came home to chaos. There was no zen in my dad's life. At the time, though, I related to disgraced comedian Bill Cosby's routine about growing up and being yelled at by his dad. His father pointed to a young Bill and said, "Jesus Christ, get off the swingset" and then to his brother, "and Goddamn it, you come in here." And, Bill started crying and said, "He's Jesus Christ and I'm Goddamn it." It was like that. Many a truth is spoken in jest.

When I went to junior high I wore these great plaid bellbottom pants that had to be "in" because Greg Brady (the cool Brady Bunch kid) wore them. I also had these burgundy moon shoes. It was 1977, the Disco Era. I thought the Fonz would think they're "cool." Instead, I was picked on mercilessly my first day. Kids having long memories for bullying others, my next three years were painful. Cool people that had been my friends dropped me like a hot potato. High school was like a caste system. Yet to redeem my initial fashoin faux pas by saving the life of a baby or lifting a Pontiac, I remained an untouchable. I had friends, don't get me wrong. They knew I was funny and smart. And, indeed, I ended up dating the prettiest girl in high school but that was solely because skinny guitarists with long hair (i.e. Eddie Van Halen) were just becoming popular around 1980. I had grown into myself a little bit but, since I had never remembered being "full" except on holidays, I was 6'2" tall and weighed 126 lbs. I had a 28 inch waist and a 36 inch inseam. I only wore Levi jeans in high school and mostly flannel shirts because I would not be caught dead in any more fashion errors. What most people who knew me knew about me was that I was athletic, an avid reader, loved comedy, lived for rock music, had long hair, was slightly rebelious and looked like a stick figure. I smoked cigarettes and pot, the former because my brother's girlfriends thought it was "cute" to watch me smoke and the latter because of peer pressure. What they would not have known and did not know was that I was near the top of the class academically. I ran cross country until smoking, drinking and chasing girls caused me to drop the good habits for the bad ones. Yet, my school work came first. I worked full time in my senior year in high school, was drunk three times a week, high far too often and managed to get straight As.

Because I was paying for it and could, I did college in 3 years, law school in 2 1/2, graduated with honors from both and passed the bar exam the first time. I was not about to waste money. I missed one class in college because I was actually sick. I would not miss something that I was paying to attend. I became an attorney at 23, clerked for an Appellate Court judge, became a trial attorney for the Department of Defense by 24 and started right away trying multi-million dollar contract cases against these vigorous attorneys for Lockheed Martin, GM, General Dynamics, and other large Defense Contractors. At the same time, I operated a private practice of law and ultimately won a case before Ohio Supreme Court and had one complex private practice case settle for half a million dollars. I rarely lost a case in my career. I could not tell you about a single case I won, though, but I could give you every minute detail on every case I lost. One time, I had lost a case before a certain judge who I ended up seeing about a decade later near an elevator bank in her building while trying another case before her colleague. She said to me, "You're Thom Tyler, right?" I was like, "Judge, you see probably 100 attorneys or more a year, it's been a decade, how do you remember me?" And, she said, "Oh, boy, your case, it was just such a close call...I remember how tough that one was to decide." I said, "Well judge, if you'd have ruled the right way, you wouldn't have even thought about it again." This judge, known for her sober, stern, judicious demeanor, threw her head back and laughed.

Twenty-six years of being a pretty decent trial attorney, trying cases against Washington DC Beltway attorneys, and I would not be defeated. No one outworked me. Somehow, seven years ago, I got selected to be a Federal Administrative Law Judge. Ultimately, this was my life's dream. My 12 year old self had wanted to be a lawyer and then judge. It all happened through synchronicity. One night, in 2012, working late, a friend hundreds of miles away, also on the work computer, used our internal chat system and asked me if I'd applied to the ALJ website. I hadn't and said that I would do it Monday. A few minutes later, she replied that the application period would end that evening at 12 midnight. Through hiccups and computer glitches, through sheer determination and luck, I submitted this extensive package by 11:58PM. Then, for two years, there was no word. In 2014, I had turned in my old government computer on April 4 at 3:30PM, giving up the email address I'd held for 10 years to take a different attorney position with the DoD. Fifteen minutes later, on 3:45PM, an email was sent to my old, now defunct email address asking if I'd be interested in being an Administrative Law Judge. Obviously, I did not answer that email because it was lost in the ether of the dead email addresses. I never knew I was being considered. Weeks later, on or around April 24, 2014, my cell phone rang as I was trying a case in the same courtroom in Falls Church, VA where I had lost my first case in 1996. The person on the other end said she had sent me an email and was I interested in the job. Of course, I was. They pursued me. Why? Because I always had to be first, I had to win, I was hard-headed, I butted my head against the hardest rams and won. I did so without being mean, or aggressive, just using solid arguments, respect and even good humor. Indeed, two of my most worthy foes ultimately recommended me for the ALJ position. But, I believe I received the position because of my answer to how I would handle an evidence issue in court. I said to the panel mixed with judges and lawyers that I would go one way or the other, or, possibly, Solomon-like, "split the baby." Then I leaned in and said, a little quietly, "no actual babies would be hurt by any of my rulings."

So, what is it? Have I not identified exactly the traits of an Aries such that my defense has actually fallen to the evidence? No. I've provided sufficient evidence that instead, being told you're nothing by an overbearing father, being laughed at by cruel school children, never being picked first for a sport team, being told you'll never amount to anything, having brothers in solid competition for every event, being poor and saying to yourself virtually every day, "someday, I will be wealthy and respected" has made me who I am. It is hard for me to believe that the day of my birth had anything at all to do with where I was, or, more relevantly, where I am now. In fact, I refuse to give being an "Aries" any credit. To suggest some arrangement of stars and planets gave me this drive, this ambition, this refusal to lose, is to reduce or nullify the impact of too many people; my siblings, my teachers, my friends, my parents, my partners, my son. Then again, isn't this exactly what an Aries would say?