Pick any card in the family law deck. If the drafters know enough about the game and the umpires are competent, players can be pretty sure beforehand how any play will be called. If the drafters wrote rules with two left feet, if the umpire is easily distracted, doesn’t know the game well or is bribed we’re already in trouble.

First, one step fits all. It is quick and although some grumble, it is more satisfying to get on with the game.

A player who takes the game too seriously pushes on the brakes by insisting theirs is the exception to the rule. The clock stops. O.K., some umpire--whatever the reason--goes along and imposes exception number one. Every decision is now a two step process. The public relations office assures the fans the game will be more competitive and exciting. Now another 15% who wouldn’t otherwise bother to interrupt the game on a call do. Play lurches and skids like worn-out railway axles.

The uniformity ideal shatters. The illusion that the game is a momentarily suspension of delightful disbelief shatters. Now the rule is greased for hard work. The exceptions coming tumbling in, a second, formal hearings go to 30%, every decision requires three steps, and a third, to 40%, half the game time halted just to analyze each problem as it arises. The umpires have to go home with the players.

Nobody knows anything in advance. Everyone is operating big rigs blind. The umpires now make the rules up as they go along although they keep that a dark secret. From who? The fans abandon the game, the players no longer play. Exquisite punishments, treachery and outlandish damages become highly regarded skills. A players’ friendly game turns ugly, into an umpires’ sticky wicket.

The great fugue begins to unravel whatever harmony is left and everything in its wake goes with it. Whether it starts as comedy or tragedy, it ends as chaos. Nitpickers take up the entire game. Talmudic scholars displace umpires. The game of life is a job, a grind.

What began to protect the serene chorale entangles it now in a fugue. Each part singing against the others. That’s not bad you think to yourself. No, not at first. It’s a new game acceptable on its own terms. But the frenzied momentum feeds on itself. Each new form of the game evolves further afield until its is unrecognizable. Just before the collapse, the soloists aren’t listening to each other anymore. It’s every ham for a moment in the spotlight. As in the final moments of the brilliant failure of Beethoven’s Ninth, each soloist and chorus part shouts to be heard. The playground is locked; work is now impossible, too. The daft universe returns to chaos.

Watch the snake coil up until it swallows its own tail. Puff, no snake.

Andrew Carlan

You can e-mail your comments to Andrew at acarlan@optonline.net.

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Copyright © 2001 Andrew E. Carlan
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission