Osler's Razor

A few years ago, I got a box in the mail from one of my friends, Joy.  She lived in Dallas at the time, and worked for a big firm there.  She had been my student at Baylor, and a wonderful one.  Later, when I started to work on same-sex marriage issues, she told me the truth about what it had been like to be gay at Baylor Law.

When she was my student, she came into my office one day and said, "Osler, your shoes have got to go!" She absolutely hated the boat shoes I had worn most of the time I was teaching.  Next came a flurry of emails full of links to shoes I should buy, ranging from odd to beautiful.

So… I shouldn't have been surprised when I opened the box and found a pair of amazing shoes.  I put them on immediately.

Since then, I have worn them to the White House four times.  I have worn them to give lectures at Harvard, Stanford, NYU, and UCLA.  They have run for planes in a dozen cities.  They came with me to Italy, where I wore them every day. They held me up as I gave sermons in Minnesota, Virginia, Wisconsin,  and Alaska.  They were there when I gave good lectures, and some bad ones, too.  They have appeared on CNN, ESPN, Al Jazeera, the BBC, National Geographic and MSNBC.  I wore them on the Appalachian Trail, and on the streets of New York.  I am wearing them now.

And every time, they remind me of what it means to have a friend, who sometimes knows exactly what you need.