Lamps

 

Both the twins have lamps in their freshman dorm rooms. The lights are the small clip-on type, because my kids are more likely to do homework while curled in bed than while sitting at a desk.

That part’s easy to explain.

Fully expounding upon the lamps, though, requires digging up a little history. To be precise, it requires sixty-four years of history – starting when my dad, Robert, was assigned a college roommate, Richard. 

Bob and Dick (of course they were Bob and Dick, this was 1960) got along well.  So well, in fact, that they became lifelong friends. Dick married Lucy; they were both professors, and raised their son in New York City. Bob married Janet, and raised my sister and me out in the suburbs, on Long Island. Sometimes our family would go into the city to join theirs for off-off-Broadway theater, bridge, complicated intellectual conversation, and raucous humor. Sometimes their family would come and visit us for inept backyard croquet, barbecues, complicated intellectual conversation, and ridiculous word games.

Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, this inherited friendship felt unconditional to me. I didn’t have to behave myself, avoid interrupting, or sit out games and conversations for which I was chronologically unqualified. Most grownups in my world were Mrs. This or Mr. That -- but Dick and Lucy were just Dick and Lucy. They were relatives who weren’t relatives.

Fast-forward (VHS or cassette) to 1990. I was a newly fledged college freshman.

In recent weeks, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this time in my life, because it’s where both my kids are now.  I’ll say nothing more about the qualities of my offspring, but speaking for myself… at the age of 18, I was awkward, book-smart, poorly equipped to be an adult, and anxious to make friends.

Those of us old enough to have grown kids tend to wax nostalgic about college, particularly regarding all the bonds we forged there.  And yes, college is a great place to meet like-minded nerds with whom to share esoteric hobbies, idealistic worldviews, bad pizza, or questionable taste in music. What we tend to forget, however, is that four years of our memories have been smoothed and compressed by time.  Almost everyone arrives on campus entirely friendless and alone.

What happens from there can be a matter of chance. There are no guarantees that the right people will cross your path immediately. It might take a while to meet someone who wants to commit the 300 quality hours that research¹ suggests is necessary to make a really close friend.

Bob and Dick met serendipitously, but not as freshmen. They weren’t even part of the same year. I don’t know why neither of them had joined a suite with guys they already knew; perhaps it was a matter of how housing assignments for upperclassmen were handled at the time. In hindsight, this seems trivial.  I know Dad had other friends at college.  Dick, in the more than 50 years I’ve known him, has always seemed to be surrounded by camaraderie.

As for me, I made friends throughout all four years at college, but I was notably and astonishingly lucky on the very first day. At an introductory picnic, I met a particularly delightful person who lived just one floor down from me. Our Freshman Week activities were organized by dorm, so I immediately had the opportunity to spend a plethora of time with this fabulous human, Steve.

Steve and I got along well.  So well, in fact, that we became lifelong friends. Steve married Manish, and they’re both professors; they live in Seattle. I married Jay, and although we live in Alaska, our kids have always known Steve and Manish via a lifetime of annual visits, silly word games, hikes, museums, cafes, messy craft projects, homemade Indian food, and complicated intellectual conversation. It’s always felt unconditional. They’re relatives who aren’t relatives.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Early in that first semester, a mid-sized package arrived for me in the mail.  Just how early in the semester this occurred is a detail I recently retraced by virtue of a tidy box of my own hand-written letters that I retrieved from my parents’ house. In my second-ever weekly missive home I mentioned receiving the gift, so I know it showed up a mere nine days into my college career.

Steve was with me when I unwrapped it. Of course he was.

The unveiling revealed a desk lamp. Specifically, it was a classy green banker’s lamp with a bright bulb.

Was this from my parents, Steve wondered? 

No, I said, explaining the return address. Maybe, I hypothesized, going to college was a milestone that merited this symbolic gift because Dick had been my dad’s friend ever since their own college days together.

I don’t recall Steve’s exact wording, but I do remember that he didn’t miss a beat. As we sat on the floor amidst the torn brown paper, he made a charming, hilarious, and ridiculously hypothetical promise.

Thirty-four years (plus or minus nine days) later, both the twins have lamps in their freshman dorm rooms.

¹Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278-1296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225

Only Connect

“Empathy:  the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also :  the capacity for this.”  –Merriam Webster Dictionary

The classroom was crowded with awkward adults and too-small chairs.  Crockpots burbled. The kids, still buzzing with adrenaline after performing the thrilling theatrical portion of the Third Grade Potlatch, were yanking on parental arms, clamoring in parental ears, and falling over each other in their haste to dig into the blatantly-not-Native-Alaskan lunch offerings.

Except for one kid.  She was hunched in her small plastic chair, tears running down her face.

I whispered to my own child, “Why is that little girl crying?”  I’d already intuited the answer -- but I wanted my eight-year-old’s take on the situation. 

My daughter glanced over quickly. “Her dad was supposed to come,” she whispered.  Then she added, unbidden, “Her parents got divorced recently, and I think that makes it extra hard for her.”

I think that makes it extra hard for her.  

Empathy is a concept that seems at once remarkably simple, and yet at the same time fascinatingly complex. It bubbles, iridescent, in the shared laughter of lifelong friends.  It quakes with stage-fright within the young actor’s parents.  It aches at a stranger’s loss. In the wordless glance of lovers, it is the joy and the tremor and the sheer humanity of deep connection: he understands.  

How crucial is empathy, for a child?  For an adult?  For a society? To what degree is it an innate skill, and to what degree is it a learned one?  These questions aren’t new; they’ve been rattling my brain for years.  I’ve wrestled with them when I’ve struggled to connect and communicate with adults who are close to me.  I’ve also spent a lot of time attempting to be a Good Mommy (or at least a Passable Mommy) to two kids who seem to differ wildly in their empathetic responses.

At the age of two, it was already obvious.  One of my twins was quick to sense subtle changes in my mood or her sister’s, and to offer a hug or a pacifier (respectively, that is; my oral fixation isn’t THAT bad.). A friend who regularly babysat my kids -- along with her own -- mentioned that she’d fallen into the habit of using this twin as a helper.  Apparently my toddler was able to understand that her little playmate had trouble walking on our uneven path, and earnestly offered her hand. The other twin… not so much.  “Mine!” was a favorite word in her vocabulary.

Over the subsequent six years, both kids grew and changed.  Both gained social skills.  Both evidenced some degree of generosity and kindness.  But one twin still seemed to struggle much more than her sister did in anticipating, understanding, and responding to the emotions of those around her.  And sometimes I worried.

Now, I whispered back to my young potlatch date, “Well, then, we need to invite her to eat lunch with us.”

“Yes,” my empathetic kid agreed immediately – but not without a tiny tinge of regret. My undivided attention is a rare prize.  Indeed, she and her sister had been thrilled when Jay and I said we would both be able to come to this event.  Jay, I knew, was squashed into a tiny chair in the class across the hall, earnestly balancing a paper plate of dubious delicacies.  Moreover, Crying Child is by no means a close friend to either of my kids.  “Sometimes she just isn’t very nice,” my daughter confided later.  “She says mean things about what I bring in my lunch.”  What?  Third graders scoff at homemade whole-grain bread?  Apparently, Crying Girl is into “pink stuff and TV shows”, rather than leaping in mud puddles, playing FBI Spy, and writing stories about secret portals into outer space. 

At that moment, though, it only mattered that she was a child who needed a grownup.  “Hi there.  I’m Molly’s and Lizzy’s mom.”  Yup, that’s my name.

The little girl looked up at me, tentatively, hopefully.

“Would you like to eat with us?” I asked.

Like magic, the tears disappeared.

Shuffling through the lunch queue, I helped my daughter and Crying Child fill their plates with food. This other kid, as it turned out, was picky.  And loud. Also, she could talk the hind leg off a donkey, a mule, and probably an alpaca, too.  She told me about her pets.  She told me about her father’s diabetes.  She told me everything, in an endless, poorly-modulated soliloquy that precluded all communication with my own child.  Empathizing with this lonely little human was easy -- but being nice to her took more effort.

As I’ve wrangled with how to teach my children to Share, Play Fair, and Not Be Selfish Little Bastards, it has dawned on me that being an empathetic person is not at all the same thing as being a nice person.  I’ve also come to realize that empathy consists of at least three interrelated but distinct components.  Intellectually being able to figure out what others feel (I’ll call this “knowing”) is different from vicariously experiencing emotions (“feeling”). Neither of these is precisely the same as giving a damn (“caring”). 

Cerebral understanding of others’ emotions does not presuppose a loving nature.  Such knowledge can help one figure out the most effective way to be kind, but it can also, alas, help one figure out precisely the most effective way to lie, to cheat, and to be cruel.  Socially maladroit kids are not the ones who morph into the vicious vipers of junior high.  Dictators?  Cult figures?  People who persuade everyone to drink the KoolAid?  A lot of them are masters of knowing-without-caring.

Conversely, it’s entirely possible to have a loving nature (that is, be deeply caring) without readily experiencing the emotions of others, or even being particularly adept at knowing what they are. The love emanating from such a person can sometimes be ill-timed, oddly expressed, or hard to interpret – and thus, sadly, hard to reciprocate -- but it is no less real.

Caring about others is undoubtedly a crucial trait – a society-building trait -- but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t occasionally feel like a burden.  I’d also argue that feeling – wallowing in the external miasma of joy or angst -- isn’t entirely positive. On the plus side, a child who senses the wash of emotions around her may find it easier to make friends and to be the sort of loving and caring soul that every parent wants to see their kid become.  On the other hand, she is also more likely to pick up on every ounce of negativity and every cue of subtle disapproval.  She is more likely to internalize even the tiniest social rules and taboos – including the insidious, nasty, undermining ones that drip through every corner of our culture.  You don’t fit in.  Girls can’t do that. You should be prettier. The socially myopic, on the other hand, may find it easier to be cool with being totally uncool.

At the potlatch, it didn’t take a huge amount of empathy for me to guess that what Crying Child wanted was simply someone to play parent to her right now.  When she helped herself to seven cookies for dessert, I gently told her that she might not feel very good at recess if she ate that many.  She seemed pleased by my interference.  “How about if I put back four?” she asked.  When I told her that this idea showed good judgment, she glowed with pride and rushed to replace the goodies.

As my kids have gotten older, I’ve realized a few things.  First, my less-empathetic two-year-old was actually… pretty normal.  Toddlers are mostly narcissists.  Second, the acquisition of empathy, like pretty much every other talent in the human repertoire, depends neither on pure nature nor on pure nurture, but a blend of both.  Third, even those with an innate talent for empathy may have a lot to learn.

I’ve also had time to think a bit about the possible ramifications of worrying too little – or too much -- about what other people think.  My less empathetic kid sometimes still seems a little me-focused, but she also delights me with her individualism.  Guess which eight-year-old girl would prefer to never, ever bathe; thinks her farts are super-funny; and collects knives?  “I like being awkward”, she told me recently.  She also remarked, as if reporting a delightful discovery, “Sometimes I feel like everybody else’s universe is completely different from mine.”  I kind of love her for that.  But I do try to remind her, gently, to always consider the feelings of others.  Amazing as it may seem, there are actually people who simply do not appreciate the merits of small, grimy, farting, knife-wielding little girls.

I’ve noticed that the more-empathetic kid sometimes buries her own desires, in order to avoid conflict or try to meet the needs of others.  This pipsqueak of a person falls all over herself to make me happy.  I kind of love her for that – it’s hard not to.  But there is always going to be more pain in the world than she – or anyone -- can handle.   As an adult, she may have days, as many of us do, when she just can’t bear to read the New York Times headlines – and that’s okay. I try to teach her that sometimes, it’s good to be different, to be yourself, to make demands.  Sometimes, pissing off other people may actually be the right thing to do – even if your voice shakes.  Sometimes, it’s okay to step out of the shoes of others, and back into your own.  

At home that evening, when I was thanking my potlatch-date for sharing me with her hapless classmate, her twin chimed in unexpectedly.  “That happened in my class, too,” she said.  She named one little boy who had sat alone, crying. Two or three years ago, I thought, this twin would not have noticed – or cared. “But Ben and Sarah’s parents took care of him, and then he was all right.” 

“Yeah,” her sister agreed.  “That’s how it was for us, too.  Everything was all right.”

Those two little crying children, they were all right. 

And my two children?  They were all right, too.

Survey says...

Well, gosh.  That was fast. 

I posted a bunch of just-for-fun survey questions on Facebook last night, and said I’d start sharing results when I got at least 25 responses,.  I guess that means… now.  However, I’ll update this post as needed, so please do keep on responding to the first two sets of questions, which are here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J7GDBWB
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WBH5C8X

This is not in any way a scientific survey.  The results below pretty much prove that my friends and acquaintances are a delightfully skewed bunch (who are too busy peeing in the ocean to be bothered to watch the Superbowl). 

These questions may seem a bit random or unimportant. (Silas Marner?  Crème brûlée?) That’s okay -- this is just for fun. Besides, I hope to do this again, if it proves popular, and I don’t want to hit all the Really Big Questions in the first batch.

All your answers are completely anonymous – to me, too. Anyone can participate, so go ahead and share, if you feel like it.  Also, feel free to suggest questions for future episodes.

Okay, a summary of responses from the first set:

You people really don’t give a crap about American football, do you?  I mean, 16% of you aren’t even American, and only 8% are actually going to watch the Superbowl.  Another fifth or so are showing up just for the chips.  I can’t argue with that.  

I also can’t argue with all the ocean-peeing going on.  All of us.  We’re like blood brothers, except, like, with pee.  In the ocean.  Well, except for that one poor willing-but-land-locked person.  Whoever you are, I kind of want to take you to a beach and leap into the surf with you, just so you feel included.

Everyone likes dessert.  Lots of it. Not one naysayer.  Mmm, mmm.  I guess I’m surprised to see that the winner (by a hair) was apple pie.  I mean, come on, 16% of you aren’t even American!  Who likes cheesecake and pie better than FUDGE BROWNIES?  Um, you do, I guess.  Okay. Be that way.

Gender.  Interesting.  About a third of you have never even casually considered wanting to be the opposite sex.  But among the other 2/3, there’s a huge skew toward women wanting (casually or more seriously) to be male -- 50% of total responses.  Only 11% of responses were from males who ever thought it might be nice to be female.  I could charge off on a tangent here about the relative value placed on each gender by societal... but, no, no.  I won't.  No one of either gender seriously considered (or effected) a sex change.

How do you like work?  Well, you're pretty happy, and that makes me happy.  Since you like pie so much, here’s a chart for you:

 

Religion.  Okay, here’s proof that my friends are a radically atypical bunch.  A whopping one seventh of my friends are part of an organized religion.  The rest of us… not so much. 

Friendship.  Okay, maybe I belabored this, with four whole questions, none of which was particularly fun or titillating, but I was truly interested.  Do we have enough close relationships in our lives?  A lot has been written lately on the subject.  And, survey says…  many of us do, but the majority do not.  Two thirds of us have only one or two people in our “inner circle” (people key to our existence, whom we see pretty much every day), and an additional 12% have no one in this group.  When it comes to close friends (people you can talk with in an open and relaxed manner, and whom your spend time with, communicate with and/or think about at least once a week), the bulk of respondents had fewer than three (28%) or 3-5 (52%). 

Okay, so we’re not super close to large numbers of other people, but maybe we don’t want to be?    Well, yes and no.  Here are the responses showing whether folks would like to have more people in their inner circle and more close friends, respectively.

So… maybe some (most) of us need to get off Facebook and go have lunch with a buddy?  Or hold a hug-fest?  Or, um, something. . .

Thanks for playing, everyone.  I’ll leave it at that, for now.  More updates coming shortly.

Okay, here’s the scoop on Part II :

You’re supremely intellectual and well read, you dwell far above the physical plane, and you… well, you kind of get around…

Seriously, I was fascinated by these results. 

It was no surprise that most of us prefer a President or Prime Minister or whatever to be intelligent -- with honesty second and kindness third -- and that we don’t give a damn whether he or she is funny, strong, or good looking.  Likewise, I wasn’t surprised to find that most of us are looking for friends who are fun, honest, kind, and intelligent (in that order, but all very close) with fitness and hotness not even on the radar.   

But I was a bit startled to see how we ranked ourselves.  A third of us placed “intelligent” first, and another third put it second; it topped the list overall.  Beauty, meanwhile, was not only dead last, but was ranked either last or second-to-last by 93% of responders.  Perhaps even more startlingly, only 7% of responders placed “physical strength, skill, or endurance” anywhere in the top half of the list – despite the fact that 11% of the group bikes “obsessively” and another 21% bikes “a lot”.  Nonetheless, by our own report, we’re a bunch of ugly, unfit (but relatively kind, open, and funny) nerds. 

And then there’s the question of what we’re looking for in a partner.  It isn’t looks or fitness.  I mean, it REALLY isn’t.  Almost ninety percent of responders placed beauty either last or second-to-last.  Same with physical strength, skill, or endurance.  It seems we’re looking for openness, honesty, and communication first; intelligence and kindness tied for second; and sense of humor and spirit of fun fourth. 

And how well do our actual partners match those ideal?  Well… mostly – except for the 21% who said, “somewhat” and the 7% who said, “Um... huh.  Funny thing, that.”  

Moving on to books -- we read a lot.  Five of the ten books listed topped 60% readership.  “Catcher in the Rye” and “1984” were the most read, and “I, Claudius” and “Silas Marner” were the least read.  But “I, Claudius” was also the most popular, percentage-wise, with 4 out of 5 of us enjoying it.  “Moby Dick” was least popular, with a 40% approval rating. 

Books read

Books enjoyed

 Finally, we get to the sex questions.  Here, have some more graphs:

Number of partners

To be honest, I was slightly surprised by the range of responses, and kind of pleased by the fact that three quarters of the group are happy with what they’ve got right now.  I won’t editorialize any further on this.