"If they ever weigh you at school, tell me."

Last night Debbie and I had dinner (again) with Mattie and the kids. (R was somewhere else until later.) Older Brother, who is eight years old and in third grade, was telling about his day in school. In PE they did tests to see if they are healthy.

What kinds of tests? They had to repeat some kind of activity a certain number of iterations within a specified time. I was never clear if it was running back and forth between two spots, or something else. Anyway, he explained that eight-year-old boys were supposed to do it 19 times, and he did it 21 times. I figured that was the point of the story, so I congratulated him on being healthy.

But Mattie was concerned that he had specified 19 repetitions as the goal for eight-year-old boys. Surely he meant "students"? 

Older Brother replied with total seriousness that no, the goal for eight-year-old girls was lower. He didn't remember exactly what it was, but he did remember that even the goal for nine-year-old girls was only 18 repetitions—still lower than that for eight-year-old boys.

At this point, Mattie had to give a speech. She explained clearly that the standards for boys and girls "at that age" should be the same. She was so definite about it that even Older Brother, who had been so innocently proud of his achievement even against girls who were older than he was, said that yes of course he agreed that the standards should be the same for both.

But wait a minute. Doesn't Mattie "believe in science"? Isn't this whole household devoted to a secular, rationalistic, scientific approach to the world? Of course they are—so much so that it feels like Mattie and R think even Debbie's Buddhism and meditation practice are a little weird. (To be clear, I know better than ever to discuss polytheism with them!) 

The reason I ask is that of course everyone knows that boys are stronger than girls, and that this is true from an early age. See for example this report on "Sex Differences in Upper‐ and Lower‐Limb Muscle Strength in Children and Adolescents: A Meta‐Analysis," published on the website of the National Library of Medicine (a branch of the National Institute for Health), which states clearly that "Upper‐ and lower‐limb strength were 17% and 8% greater in boys than girls when 5–10 years old." Those percentages aren't huge, but then the difference in goals set by the school for boys versus girls wasn't huge either. Somehow it seems like the school is operating more in line with "the science" than Mattie.

A few minutes later, Mattie remarked that when she was a girl, she was terrible at Physical Education, and her poor performance in sports made her feel bad about herself. It would not be crazy for a person to wonder if her current attitudes are driven even more by a desire for revenge against the phenomenon of school athletics than by a desire to support her egalitarian ideology. But perhaps I'm reaching too far.

Then she announced, "If they ever weigh you at school, tell me."

Her boys had no idea what she was talking about. So Mattie explained that some folks are prejudiced against fat people, and that they weigh students in school in order to shame them. Her boys didn't understand what the word prejudice means, so Mattie had to explain that. She gave racism as an example, and then had to explain what racism is. (She got the definition wrong, by the way, because she defined it as "hatred of non-white people" rather than "hatred of others based on skin color.") And all of this was in service of the proposition that it would be an evil thing for the school to check the weights of the students.

Debbie suggested softly that if the school did such a thing, they might be responding to a state law and have no choice. Mattie said, "Well I can still complain."

But let's take time out here for signals. In the first place, Mattie's two boys are rail-thin. The likelihood that either will ever be humiliated by a school official for being fat is vanishingly small. In the second place, childhood obesity is a real problem for the children it affects. For officials to be concerned about it—if any of them ever really are—is not just a matter of blind prejudice, but one of sound medicine. And while it's not likely to be a problem for Mattie's children in particular, I'm not sure that it is best to prejudice the children in favor of fat acceptance before they are able to understand that there might be complexities to the issue.

Why, in fact, bring up any of these points at all, especially since she had to explain every single one? Why not just let her children be innocently proud that they passed their tests in school and are therefore judged "healthy"?       

      

"That's not funny!"

Some years ago, I learned about the satirical conspiracy theory "Birds Aren't Real!" (See also the "movement's" official website, here.) The whole thing was a joke created back in 2017 by a fellow named Peter McIndoe, who figured there are so many crazy conspiracy theories out there in the world that he wanted one of his very own. For a while he was very active on social media, in his self-assigned role as a "bird-truther"—spreading the word that all birds in the United States were replaced in the 1960's by surveillance drones in a massive collaboration between the Pentagon and the CIA. (See the Wikipedia article for more information about the history of this extended practical joke.)

Anyway, I thought this story was hilarious when I first heard it, and right away I ordered myself a hat like the one in the picture. A couple of years ago I lost it somewhere, and after a while I replaced it with a new one. I've had people ask me about it over the years, and I always explain. I thought everyone who knew me well had heard about it long ago.

But I was out to lunch with Debbie today, and she asked me very gingerly about my hat. I was a little surprised, because surely I had told her long ago ... hadn't I? Maybe not. So I summarized the story for her, and told her particularly about a TED talk that McIndoe gave. He explained the history of the Birds Aren't Real "movement," and then told a story about one day when he was out in public holding a sign and handing out literature. He said that people responded with raw hatred. One woman came up to him and shouted in his face, "You're what's wrong with this country!" (At that point Debbie said quietly, "I see where she's coming from," and then hastily amended her comment by adding, "Of course I don't support the hostility.") What McIndoe said in his talk was that—in that moment, as the woman yelled in his face—he felt his commitment to the movement double down inside him, even though he knew he had made the whole thing up!   

McIndoe's conclusion was that, when somebody expresses an opinion you disagree with, yelling at him is not likely to change his mind. Try compassion instead.

I thought Debbie would appreciate the story, especially as it ended with the kind of Aesopian moral one might expect from Thich Nhat Hanh: compassion is better than judgment, dualistic thinking is hurtful, I am inside you as you are inside me, we all inter-exist ... that sort of thing. She loves these moral messages when she hears them from Zen practitioners. Why wouldn't she love it in this context?

But she didn't. After a moment, she asked me when McIndoe started his "movement." 

I didn't remember. (I found the date above when I looked up the Wikipedia article, just before writing this post.) But I asked her in turn, does it matter?

She said, Well if he started it back in 2016 [I assume she meant "before Trump was elected President"], it might have been funny back then. But these days we have so many conspiracy theories and they are so dangerous, that I just can't see laughing at something like that any more.

Oops. My mistake, I guess.

Question: How many socially-conscious Unitarian Buddhists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Answer: That's not funny!

      

R looks angry

After leaving the weekend retreat, Debbie and I came back to her home. I'll be visiting here for a couple of days before flying back to my own home.

As you no doubt recall, Debbie shares this house with her daughter Mattie, her son-in-law R (Mattie's husband), and her two grandsons. Debbie has her own little apartment in one wing, and the other four occupy the rest. Debbie has said she wishes she had space for her fiber-arts hobbies, and in fact her loom is in a big room downstairs. But she doesn't like to go down there to use it, because she doesn't like to intrude on "the family's" space. In many ways she feels confined to the two-rooms-plus-kitchen-and-bath that are allocated as "hers."

Last night we had dinner with the rest of the family. The boys were silly, as little boys often are, but remarkably well-behaved. Mostly I assume that's training, though a little bit might be that their grandmother's Friend-from-out-of-state was visiting (that's me). Mattie was pleasant and cordial—that is, she still felt cold and reserved, but to me she always feels cold. I don't know if anyone else perceives her the same way, and there's nobody I can ask.

But as dinner progressed, I began to get the impression that R was angry. Not about anything specific, but more as a way of being in the world. To be clear, R is often quiet and reserved. So it's not that he was unusually quiet over dinner. Nor was he visibly out of humor: I even managed to make a couple of jokes that coaxed a chuckle out of him. But there seems to be a set to his jaw that I don't remember seeing before, and a firmness to the gaze. You could chalk this up to maturity: despite his two children, despite owning a house, R was a young man when I got to know him, or youngish. I would guess that today he's somewhere around forty: time enough for the softness of youth to wear off, and to be replaced by muscles built of responsibility. Maybe what I am seeing is no more than that.

It is true that he has had disappointments already in life. He and Mattie were graduate students together, but she finished her Ph.D. while he did not finish his. She therefore has a teaching post, while he is working in business. They picked the town they live in based on Mattie's teaching assignment. Even his house—for which he is on the deed—is shared with his mother-in-law, and it was her inheritance that bought it. I don't know whether R keeps score, but he may feel disgruntled about the turns his life has taken.

Nor am I convinced that he is fully happy with his domestic life. It's just little glimpses that I've noticed in moments over the years, and I could be reading them all wrong. Heaven knows my own difficult life with Wife could have predisposed me to see troubles where there are none. But I feel like I might also be able to see trouble where it is well-hidden, because I certainly tried my best to hide my own troubles back in the day.

I know that Debbie wishes Mattie and R were more easy-going with the boys. It would be easy to attribute the same point of view to R, and to assume that Mattie is the only martinet in the family, but that accusation feels false to me. I think the strict parenting is as much his as hers, and may be one direction that he channels his anger at the world. So I have no guesses at what lies behind his anger. Strictly speaking, my whole diagnosis may be false, especially as it is based on no more than glimpses.

But R looks angry to me.

          

How silent is "silent"?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm visiting Debbie and we are attending a UU-Buddhist silent retreat for the third year in a row. The instructions when we arrived emphasized that this is a silent retreat, and that attendees should take that part of it seriously: also, to be absolutely clear, there is to be no talking in the meditation room, nor in a room off the dining hall (wfor those wanting to eat in silence).

So of course most attendees seem to be talking with each other most of the time. Not, to be sure, during the posted meditation sits. And there seems to be a minimum of talking in the two rooms where it was explicitly forbidden. ("Minimum" is not the same as "none" in this context.) But in general the injunction to silence seems to be carried somewhat ... gently ... by most of the participants.

There's a part of me that wants to criticize them for this, but mostly I don't bother. It's not like I'm some advanced arhat who came here expecting to commune with the World-Soul, and who would have been able to do so if only it weren't for the ongoing conversations! I've got enough internal conversations going on in my own mind to match any of the others. And even if everyone is really committed to silence, it takes longer than a day to settle down. This retreat stretches across a weekend, no longer. So one shouldn't expect wonders.

My cough has been unpredictable. I can go hours at a time without coughing once at all; then suddenly it will strike and people ask, "Are you OK?" (Yes, I think I'm OK.) 

Mostly I have stayed out of long conversations, which is good because when I get in them I get muddled. 

I have been sleeping close to ten hours a night, and still seem to want an afternoon nap.

And last night in the middle of the night I woke up having to pee, and realized I had already leaked all over my pajamas. Mortifying. I told Debbie I'd need to borrow her washing machine when we got back to her home, and she pointed out that the retreat center has machines of its own. So right now I'm waiting for my pajamas to dry. As I say, mortifying.

No profound insights, I guess. But it is a good and pleasant place to be.  

"Because I'm just fed up" part 2

Last month I wondered if Debbie might be loosening her grip on her progressive politics. No such luck.

I'm visiting her for a few days ... we are going to the UU-Buddhist Silent Retreat we also attended last year and the year before. Last night she mentioned again that she was going to re-register as an Independent, so I asked her why she deleted her Act Blue account.

Turns out she's just sick of getting fund-raising spam clogging her email and phone, so she thinks deleting that account might help stem the tide. Also it seems like she thinks it is better (from the perspective of Plum Village Buddhism) to be politically non-aligned, even if she still votes the same way as before.

I don't know if these moves will help keep the spam out of her Inbox, but I certainly agree with being politically non-aligned ... even if she isn't really non-aligned. But I suppose I shouldn't make predictions about the future. Sometimes big things grow from little beginnings.

Or not.

       

Me and groups

Over the last couple of days, I've been thinking about how I relate to groups or organizations.

There's a story I tell myself that makes the answer sound easy: I'm a consummate outsider. I suffer from social anxiety. I'm shy, or an introvert. These are all stories I have told myself for years.

Of course this story is partly true, or I would never have concocted it in the first place. But it is not the whole truth. A number of recent experiences have made this clear to me.

Case One

Two nights ago (Thursday), I joined an online meeting of the leadership for the local Region of the professional society that I belong to. There are plenty of reasons I needn't have bothered. In the first place, I'm not even working any more. I joined the professional society two or three years before my local office closed. As you recall, I never found another job after that. I've been volunteering with this society as a way to keep busy, more than anything else. 

Also, I'm only in leadership in the most tenuous way. I was Chair of the local section for four-and-a-half years. (There's a rule in the society that limits you to two years, but, well, stuff happened.) But I was able to resign my Chair-ship at the end of last year. Fawn, whom I recruited to join our leadership committee as Program Chair, took over as the new Chair on January 1 of this year. I accepted a minimal role in the leadership committee because Fawn asked me to be available, to give her advice. And that minimal role means that I am invited to the monthly meeting of all the Regional leadership, because they want to make sure that there is at least one representative from each section. In case the Chair can't make it, someone else should still be there to report.

Fawn has made it to these meetings very reliably, all year. But still I show up whenever I don't have a conflict.

That's the first interesting question: Why do I bother?

The second interesting point—and this is what started me ruminating on the subject—is how other people in the meeting treat me. Of course they are used to seeing me. I showed up for these meetings for four-and-a-half years as Chair of my local section. My attendance at these meetings has now overlapped with the tenure of three different Regional Directors. I also notice that—despite the term limits—there are a few names that I keep seeing, year after year. I guess they must have rotated into new roles or job titles (as have I). But they keep representing their sections in these meetings. It's interesting.

But the moment that struck me, in the meeting two evenings ago, was when one of the long-time representatives (used to be Chair of his section, I think now he is Treasurer) started joking with me in a very obvious way, the way two old veterans might kid each other over long shared experience. Of course in the moment I responded by rocking back in my chair and laughing—we were on Zoom, after all, and I had my camera on so people could see my reaction. But in the back of my mind I wondered: If I am genuinely shy and introverted, how did I get into this position? I keep trying to avoid having to do hard work for this society, so how did I become a veteran that this man feels comfortable joking with?

That started me mulling. Then the next afternoon I acquired more data.

And now a summer cough?

I shouldn't be so shocked. Although I tried to reassure friends and family this winter (see here and here) that my cough was just a winter phenomenon (based on last year's experience, for example here and here), in reality I've written in this venue about the damned thing showing up in other seasons too. (See for example here, or here, or here.)

But it's always annoying. And here we are again. I wish I knew what causes it.

I made a note on my calendar back on July 26, "started to notice a cough the last couple of days." Shortly after that it took off. A week ago on September 10, I noted "seems like less coughing the last couple days." And today I jotted down "cough much better but not gone." Hmm. From July 26 till next Sunday (the day after tomorrow) is eight weeks. Does that mean anything? Or is it all just random?

In reality I don't think it's quite random, though neither would I go to the other extreme and call it controllable. But there do appear to be correlations. 

• If I eat a handful of salted peanuts, I cough immediately.
• If the air gets damp, I cough more frequently, though this is a probabilistic relationship. (Some day I'll test the correlation by moving to the Atacama Desert.)
• If I start talking excitedly, I cough.
• If I listen to a piece of music that makes me emotional, I cough.

I don't understand the connection with salted peanuts. But in general, it seems like I cough when I engage with being fully awake and alive. If I just sit motionless, browsing Twitter and letting my mind rot, I can go for extended periods without coughing.

Should I just sit and do nothing, and rot into my chair? Well, maybe.