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Just Another Jim

Just Another Essay



Taking the Gobbledy out of the Gook

Essay Posted November 20, 2007 by James E. Nelson

I went to the chiropractor Friday morning, only hours after the Oregon / Arizona football game. That was a big college game on two fronts. First the no. 2 Oregon Ducks got beat by unranked Arizona, throwing the national rankings into even greater disarray. Second, the Ducks' quarterback, Heisman Trophy front runner Dennis Dixon injured his knee and is out for the season. It was a slow day at the chiropractor's office, so after my adjustment, the chiropractor (who is also a high school football referee) invited one of the other chiropractors into the office and the three of us watched video of the injury on ESPN.com.

I suspect that it is only in a chiropractor's office that the football highlights ignore the touchdowns and circus catches and only focus on the injuries.

To me it looked like Dixon bent his knee a little bit the wrong way. In fact, it didn't look too bad to me. Been there. Done that. Got the knee brace. But when the two chiropractors saw it, they moaned and groaned. "It looks like it was his collateral mumbo jibula" (or something like that—I had no clue what they were talking about). They went back and watched it again. "Oh man, that had to stretch his jumbula torsiva . . ." (Again, fill in your own scientific sounding faux word—I had no clue what the doctor just said.) ". . . That will take months to heal." (That last sentence I understood.)

All this reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend the other day. Like a lot of American males, he likes eye candy in the morning and testosterone at night so he watches Becky Quick on CNBC's Squawk Box when he gets up and Jim Cramer's Mad Money when he gets home from work. Explaining his t.v. habits he said, "I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, but it sure is fun to watch."

I spent much of last week at some meetings where really smart guys did all the talking. Some of them, like Ms. Quick and Mr. Cramer, were fun to watch, such as an attorney from Panama who is competing to get on Dancing with the Stars. He tended to mix salsa dancing in with his lecture. If you could get past the utter weirdness of it, the dancing broke up the monotony of listening to an attorney speak for thirty minutes.

A California tax attorney managed to stretch his half hour into what felt like a whole afternoon. A banker working for one of the big Swiss banks (EFG Group) gave a presentation on how the bank purchases life insurance policies and turns them into something very similar to a collateralized debt obligation (CDO). CDOs are what got Goldman Sachs, Citibank, et. al. into trouble. Many years ago I read a paper at an annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation. The focus of that long ago meeting was on medical ethics. My paper was on hospital ethics from a pastoral perspective. I also heard papers read on the latest innovations in gene splicing (and their ethical implications). The lecture by the banker reminded me of the gene splicing lecture. It was fascinating—enthralling really—but it was a topic so complicated I couldn't quite wrap my head around it.

Enter Erica Nolan and Shannon Crouch. In a man's world (and all the speakers were men—it was a rather macho and aggressive affair) Erica and Shannon just seemed like a couple of nice girls. It would have been easy to assume that they were merely the administrative assistants who organized the event.

Erica and Shannon didn't use big words. They were able to speak in short, direct sentences. They had no need to prove how intelligent and educated they were through their use of highly technical terms embedded in an adverbial phrase modifying the verb which was functioning adjectivally in relation to the main sentence.

Everyone assumed that Mr. Chatsky and Mr. Owens were the smartest guys in the room. After all, no one could figure out what they were talking about. But I've got a hunch about that. Anyone can learn technical jargon, like the chiropractors watching Dennis Dixon's leg get blown out. Anyone can take a narrow slice of the universe of knowledge and become an expert in that little slice, like the commentators on CNBC. But I've got a hunch that the really smart people are the ones who can both understand the technical details of that tiny slice of the knowledge universe and how it relates to life in general.

That's what Erica and Shannon could do. Their niche was to understand what the lawyers' and bankers' specialty was while at the same time getting to know the people at the meeting (something the socially backward attorneys seemed completely incapable of). At the same time, they had no need of proving their own expertise; they were quite satisfied with who they were and what they had to offer. Because of that combination of knowledge and humility, they could go about matching the experts with people who needed their services.

I've had back and bone problems for years. My first chiropractor suspected the root of the problem was that I spent hours jumping out of school yard swings (sometimes swinging as high as the cross bar) in my cowboy boots that were a bit too narrow. As a result I've been under chiropractic care on and off for years and I've learned a lot of the lingo.

But I can't explain it to other people.

I can point to a certain point on my back and say, "This is where it hurts." When I get a particular pain I also know just what the problem is and can figure out what I did to create the problem. But I don't know chiropractor-speak, as I was so eloquently reminded the other day watching Dennis Dixon with two chiropractors.

I'm glad that there are really smart people in the world to figure hard stuff out. (Albert Einstein, the scientist, Karl Barth, the theologian, Fr. John Neuhaus, the social commentator, and Bill Belichick, the coach all come to mind.) But I'm especially glad there are people who can both figure out what they're saying and explain it to the rest of us, because more often than not, the really smart people are incapable of talking to the rest of us.

So my vote for "smartest person in the room" goes to Shannon and Erica. Thanks for taking the gobbledy out of the gook. If it weren't for people like you, the rest of us would go through life with very little clue.

And by the way, N&C International Wealth Consultants (that's Shannon and Erica's company) are expensive. But if you have need of highly customized financial planning solutions, they're the best I've ever met. You can find them at N&C International Wealth Consultants, 777 East Atlantic Ave., Suite C2-295, Delray Beach, FL 33483.

One more thing. This is an unpaid plug; it's more of an after thought. Erica and Shannon don't even know I'm writing this. But, after writing this essay it seemed unfair to not let you know how to contact them.