The Changing Room

Yesterday was graduation day in our university city, and the downtown streets were filled with young folk clad in robes and mortarboards, accompanied by various family and friends in their finest finery. Driving through that mass of specially-clad humanity made me think about uniforms.


I’ve never had much experience wearing an official uniform. Never on an athletic team -- in our pickup football games it was t-shirts, helmets of various color, and, if one were lucky, some sort of shoulder pads. I nearly had the privilege of wearing a military uniform, except for the intervention of one Richard Nixon. The Vietnam War draft was rolling along, in order of birthdates, and my month was coming up. I got my induction letter, and passed my physical, even though I presented them with a letter from my doctor telling them I had a heart murmur. “We didn’t hear it so you don’t have it,” said the draft doctor as he certified me healthy.


Then the aforementioned Tricky Dick decided the draft should be made more random and therefore fair -- he announced a moratorium on inductions pending installation of a lottery system. Then they did the drawings, my birthdate was 316 in a year in which they said they would go no further than 250. So I declared myself eligible, the year passed, and so did my risk of being drafted.


I suppose the closest I got to a uniform was my Cub Scout shirt and kerchief. I kind of liked that, made me feel official somehow, officially recognized and distinguished from the mass of third-grade anonymity.


I don’t think we have many “civilian” uniforms in our modern society. Two that I can think of are the vestments worn by most religious leaders, and the black (or sometimes gray) robes worn by judges. During my life I had the privilege of working with people who wore those uniforms. In both cases, I remember being in the changing room with both types, watching as they donned their designated apparel, chatting conversationally or business-like, and watching them transform from everyday people like me to society-sanctioned moral and religious leaders.


The church guy was our Lutheran minister, and I was both a friend a member of the church board. We sometimes hung out together and our kids were good friends. But the moment he donned the vestments a veil fell between us.


The judges I knew in a more official capacity, because I was judicial clerk for several of them . They said, and they meant, that the pomp of the courtroom was intended to respect the system and the role they played, not them.


A good example of that occurred one judicial day, when I clerked for a federal district court judge and we were involved in long jury trial. The plaintiff’s lawyer was an obnoxious jerk who tended to sneer at the judge or otherwise bait or direct subtle insults his way. Even turned his back once. The judge was a paragon of stone-faced solemnity. Then we took a brief recess.


I followed the judge back into the changing room as he removed the robe. He turned to me. “I should hold that son-of-a-bitch in contempt,” he said. But he didn’t. Instead, after an hour or so, when court was coming back into session, we stood in the changing room as he donned the black robe. The anger and irritation drained from his face, and he went back in as the same calm and imperturbable judge he’d always been.


I’ve always remembered that day and other changing rooms, how they served not only as places to change official attire, but also as points of transition from everyday folk to social symbols. I was privileged to see both humanity and the rising above. None of those people were saints, but all of them took their obligations seriously -- but not themselves.