Miss Giardino

For Christmas I gave Son 2 a copy of Dorothy Bryant's novel Miss Giardino.  When he unwrapped it and looked quizzically at me, I told him it was one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors.

Well, last night he told me "I finished Miss Giardino, but I'm not sure I really got the main point it was trying to make."  And I found myself trying to think, … Is there a point that it is trying to make?  Does the book have a moral, like Aesop's fables?  Or an underlying message about good and evil, like The Power and the Glory?  Why do I even like it so much?

I had thought about this a little off and on since giving it to him, because I figured the question might come up, but I didn't really have an answer.  I tried to improvise one now.

So in the first place, I said, I liked the main character, Anna Giardino herself.  Son 2 mentioned that in some ways she resembles Wife (though not in others) and I strongly agreed.  I explained that I had first read the book shortly after I met Wife, and that for many years I had seen Wife through the lens of Anna Giardino.  "Of course maybe that just means I was looking through rose-colored glasses," I went on, and we both laughed.  But then I clarified that it's true that the young Anna Giardino and the young Wife really did have a lot in common: a fierce dedication to teaching, a deep belief that only the best is really good enough, and a difficult relationship with their fathers.  Wife's father even died of emphysema, much as Signor Giardino died of a lung ailment from his work in the mines.  The differences between them (Wife and Miss Giardino) became strikingly apparent only in greater age.  But I went on to add that while you can usually look backwards and see that the features of one's mature character were present even at the beginning (as I noted in an earlier post, "You Can Kind of Tell These Things"), you can't read them forward.  The difference is that while those features are present early on, so are many others, all jumbled up in an inchoate mess.  It is only in the act of growing older that we each of us make hundreds of decisions over the years which end in strengthening some features of our personalities and weakening others.  You can't tell ahead of time which ones will win out.

But this was a digression.  I also like the story.  I like that there are no real villains – well, except maybe Willie Ventura.  But the mugger who attacked Anna turns out to have done her a great service by it; and she – in turn – helped him just as much.  (I won't explain how, so as not to spoil it if you want to read it.)  Some of the characters are funny – I instanced Arno Steadman.  ("I thought he was just a self-centered ass," said Son 2.  "Yes, but he is so totally a self-centered ass that there is really something comical about him.")  Indeed, the near-absence of villains is something I see in a lot of Dorothy Bryant's fiction: the characters may do stupid or destructive things, but rarely because they are villains; more often it is just that they are trying to do the only thing they can understand but their understanding is limited.

I like her relation with Stephen Tatarin.  Son 2 asked, "You mean her kind-of lover-boy-ish sort of thing?"  And I tried to explain that at its best the teacher-student relationship really is intense and deeply personal … usually not erotic per se (though there is a kind of quasi-erotic energy about it – I didn't tell him that!) but powerful all the same.  I added that if he hasn't experienced that yet, he probably will some time before (say) he graduates from college.  At any rate, I hope so.

And I like the ending – that after so many things go so sourly in her life, Anna Giardino can pick herself up, turn away from the past (rather than being weighed down by it), and move forward bravely into an uncharted future.  Though I didn't say so, I sometimes see this phase of my own life in the light of that last chapter, as a new turning of my own.  And while I'm not willing to be as unencumbered as Anna, I keep her in mind as a model.

I saw an article somewhere that claimed the defining feature of this whole book is its anger – the anger that builds up in Anna over so many years, the anger that finally comes spilling out at the climax of the dramatic action.  I never saw the book in those terms.  Anger?  Yes, I suppose so, now that I think about it.  But it's as if I never thought about it before.  I wonder why not?  Am I simply blind to the anger?  Or is it because Anna's anger is so much like what I have experienced over so many years that I just never noticed it?  A fish reading Moby-Dick probably wouldn't think to comment on the sea, either.  Maybe that's it.  But if so, the redemption in the last chapter is just that much more hopeful.

Christmas with the boys

This year's custoday calendar called for me to pick up the boys from Wife's place the afternoon or evening of Christmas Eve and then drive to my parents' house three hours away for Christmas Day.  We hadn't specified the time very exactly, and I was running a little late (by my reckoning) in tidying up my apartment so that the boys could stay there the following week.  But that turned out to be no problem, as I got a series of texts from Son 1 – spaced out over a few hours – proposing progressively later and later pick-up times, and finally proposing that we spend the night of the 24th in my apartment (only an hour from Wife's place) and do the rest of the drive in the morning.

 

I appreciated the extra time to get my apartment tidied and vacuumed and mopped, but I have to admit that at the first of these texts a little corner of my mind felt hurt and sulky that the boys were clearly having more fun with Wife than they expected to have with me and so were trying to delay their departure as long as possible.  Another corner of my mind stepped in to play the adult and say "There there, it doesn't really matter which of you they like better. Just be the best Dad you know how to be and let things happen as they will. Hasn't all your meditation practice taught you not to cling to outcomes?"  Then the sulky corner of my mind sighed heavily and shut up … still sulking but knowing he was wrong. 

 

However, as the text messages kept coming and the pick-up was delayed later and later, I began to formulate another theory.  Wife was never terribly good at planning her time, nor at knowing how long it takes to do things.  So I began to think it more and more likely that she had decided to schedule Christmas Dinner for the 24th (instead of putting it safely on the 23rd, when there would be no pick-up looming at the end of the day), and that she was cooking something which was proving to take longer than she expected.  At that, the Sulky Child in my mind perked up, because it meant that the delay was caused by Wife's being careless or irrational or difficult and so I could hope to look better by comparison.  My Patient Adult voice, in contrast, sighed softly and thought how tough it must be to be her, how much suffering she must be inadvertently causing herself this way, and how too bad it is for the boys to have to deal with it all.  But if that's what is, then so it is.

 

When I finally collected the boys, somewhere around 8:00pm, Sulky Child could rejoice that all his fond hopes had been granted.  Son 1 texted me that I shouldn't even come into the house or knock on the door, because Wife was in such a towering rage over … nothing that he could identify.  So I parked out front and texted Son 1 that I had arrived.  He and Son 2 came out a minute later carrying their luggage.  Wife followed them to hug them goodbye, and we left.  And all the way back to my apartment the boys kept saying:

 

"My God, Mom was just flipping out."

 

"Everything was wrong: the dinner didn't come out right, we were 'ungrateful' and 'spent all our time on the computer', you [Hosea] were the Antichrist ... and like that."

 

"I told her 'Relax, it'll be fine even if we don't serve the turkey on a silver platter like your mother used to do,' but she got so upset she had to go in her bedroom and scream for a while."

 

"You know how she gets around the holidays."

 

"Plus she was wigging out because it's the 'first year' that we're not going to be 'home for Christmas' … which means that we're not going to be in her house exactly on December 25. And she can't just say 'OK so we'll celebrate Christmas on another day' because Christmas is 'really' on the 25th and if we're not with her that day then that's the end of the world."

 

"I am so glad we're going to be spending the next week with you. I mean, your apartment doesn't have Internet and there's nothing to do there, but at least you're rational."

 

"Dad, do you understand Mom?"

 

"Or is that a dumb question – is that why you're separated?"

 

"I think she really still can't deal with being divorced, even though it's been over a year."

 

I gave them some of my ideas about what could be going on in her head.  When Son 1 talked about how hard he had worked to calm her down, and how he is so much better at calming her than Son 2 is, I added, "Well I used to be the world's expert on how to calm your Mom, but by now I am probably out of practice."  In the past I'd always tried not to criticize her in front of them, but it was clear that I wasn't saying anything they hadn't already seen for themselves; so as long as I kept it reasonably objective – "I think that she sees this thing in that way, and therefore she reacts like so" – I figured I was on solid ground.  We all agreed that she makes her own life miserable by the things she believes and the way she sees things.  And when we got back to my apartment, Son 1 stepped inside saying, "I've missed this place!"  It flattered my egotism and warmed my heart.

 

The rest is briefly told.  Christmas morning we drove the two hours to my parents' house.  My brother and his girlfriend joined us there.  We all opened presents and ate a lot; then stayed the night there and ate some more the next day.  By the afternoon of Boxing Day, Son 1 wanted to leave and go back to my apartment.  He said this was because he wanted to see his friends in Beautiful City, but I'm starting to think otherwise because now that we have been back a couple days [I'm writing this on the 28th] he hasn't called anyone yet.  Son 2 kind of wanted to stay with my parents for another day because he had brought homework to do over Christmas Break and when we went back to my place he'd have to start working on it.  But when I proposed that I drive Son 1 back and Son 2 come the next day on the train, he said right away he'd rather come with us directly.  So we left there maybe 28 hours after we arrived, about the same time that my brother and his girlfriend left. 

 

And since then we have been hanging out in my apartment in Beautiful City, not doing much.  We all got haircuts yesterday and I went to my volunteer work in the evening.  I think today we are going out to a movie.  Tomorrow, Son 2 has a doctor's appointment.  There are things to do.  But I think it is going to be a very low-key week.  And that's a good thing.

 

Anybody have plans for New Year's Eve?  Let us know and maybe we'll crash your party ….

 

 

Making room

Less than a week ago, after visiting the Downtown Sangha, I wrote here about wanting more friends.  Tonight I visited the UU Sangha, and during our dharma discussion one of the members talked about her neighbor – a lady who is clearly very lonely but who makes no room in her life into which any new friends could possibly wedge themselves.  She's always very busy with this or that urgent task, and she doesn't have an ear for social graces (so if you invite her for dinner, say, she'll come at the wrong time).  And this means that her continued loneliness is in large part her own doing.

 

Is this me too?

 

Maybe.  I've got different segments in my life, but – as Debbie pointed out – I don't integrate them very well and I'm not even sure how to integrate them.

• Work: There are probably two people that I feel really relaxed and friendly around.  One of them is a woman who works for me, so I probably have to be careful not to let fraternization go too far.  The oither is another manager in another department … he and I like to get together and bullshit a lot, and we've talked about getting together for dinner but it has never happened.  He did actually invite me to Thanksgiving Dinner, but I had plans (as I wrote about here).
• UU Sangha: There are a couple people here that could be friends – well, I think of one in particular that I really like.  But I'm not sure how to make the leap out of the sangha-context and into general friendship.
• Downtown Sangha: Same story, except I know the people less well.  There are more of them (it is a significantly bigger group) and I go there less regularly.
• Museum: There's a local museum of popular art that I frequent … again, same story.  I'd love to make friends with the associate director, for instance, and whenever I'm there I try to talk with her at length about whatever their current exhibit is.  Whenever she sees me, her eyes light up … I'm sure I'm not making this up.  So how do I take the next step?
• Volunteer work: You know I volunteer every Saturday evening.  Could I make friends with the staff there?  Actually as it turns out there's one other volunteer on Saturday evenings, a young woman I'll call Suzie.  Suzie lives over near where I do; so since I walk to the site every Saturday, now she does too and we walk home together talking.  She's Wiccan, though not quite the same variety Wife used to be.  But it has given us something to talk about, and we have talked quite a lot for people who have only seen each other once a week for the last two months. 

 

Fine, so I'm making friends with Suzie.  But Fate really had to push her at me in a way that I almost couldn't avoid.  I'd like to make friends with some of these other people too, but I'm really not sure how.

 

On the other hand, now that the topic has been turned back to me so directly, I'm going to have to think about precisely this question of making more space in my life for other people ….

 

 

Pamela's threesome

OK, this article is more than three years old, but I only found it this week ... while looking up the link to past into the post where I reference Pamela Druckerman's book on infidelity.  Anyway, it turns out that Pamela Druckerman has quite a few articles available on the Internet.  Including one about how she planned a threesome for her husband's fortieth birthday.

Here's the link: http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/advice/a4307/threesome-sex-menage-a-trois-planning/ 

Mostly I mention it because the article is just a lot of fun.  The author pokes fun at herself in a friendly way while talking about how she looked for another woman to go to bed with her and her husband.  But she also mentions a couple of things she discovered once they were all in bed together.  It so happens these are things I discovered too, when in bed with Wife and (on different occasions) Boyfriend 1 or Boyfriend 4.  They are also things I don't normally think of when I mention these events, because usually my focus is just on how a threesome doesn't have to be all bad even if you are one of the Two and not the One.  Anyway, here are two things she noticed:

1. Sex can actually take a long time, and if you aren't actively engaged you can get kind of bored. Maybe if you're quiet you can sneak away to make a sandwich, or check your e-mail? Maybe the other two won't notice?
   
2. I never had the slightest sexual interest in Boyfriend 1 or Boyfriend 4. In both cases the "threesome" was really two concurrent pairs, both involving Wife. And Pamela said she found something similar as well: she had been expecting the other woman to be kind of interesting to her, and found that ... gosh, she really wasn't. Ho hum. Oh well.

Mostly, though, I just thought the article was fun.  If you haven't read it yet, maybe you will too.

What do you want for Christmas?

I attended Sangha this evening – not the UU Sangha I attend regularly but another one in town that I also go to when I can – and once the meditation was over, instead of listening to a dharma talk, we did an exercise.  First, we split up into pairs.  One of the pair asked the other a question, the second replied, and the first said "Thank you."  Then the first person (yes, the same one) asked the very same question again, the second person (who answered before) answered again (this time differently), and the first person again said "Thank you."  And so on.  For ten minutes.  After ten minutes, the two switched roles: the questioner started to answer and the answerer started to question.  For another ten minutes.  The idea is not to take too long with your answers, but to say what comes into your head and then watch how your answers change over ten minutes.  This can show you what thoughts, ideas, beliefs, or desires are lurking in the recesses of your mind where you might not be aware of them.

 

And in honor of Christmas, the question was: "What would you like someone to give you?"

 

So theoretically one pair might start off like this:

 

A: What would you like someone to give you?

 

B: A new car.

 

A: Thank you.  What would you like someone to give you?

 

B: A house on the beach.

 

A: Thank you.  What would you like someone to give you?

 

B: More time with my kids.

 

A: Thank you.  What would you like someone to give you?

 

… and so on for ten minutes.  Then finally, …

 

B: Whew!  Now it's finally my turn to ask.  What would you like someone to give you?

 

A: Enlightenment.

 

B: Thank you.  What would you like someone to give you?

 

A: World peace.

 

B: Thank you.  What would you like someone to give you?

 

A: Actually your house on the beach sounded pretty good.  Can I have one too?

 

B: Thank you.  What would you like someone to give you?

 

… and so on for another ten minutes.

 

And then we discussed what we discovered about ourselves.

 

Some people found it really revealing of things they hadn't known about themselves.  One woman said she found there were a whole lot of things she wanted, even though she realizes she already has a lot of things and doesn't have anywhere to put them all.  So why does she want more?  But she does.  There was a man who said he wanted some resolution to arguments with people from ten years ago.  He had thought that those were ancient history and that he had lost all interest in them, but apparently not.  Another woman said she found that all the things she wanted were things only she could give herself, like self-acceptance.  And so on.

 

For myself, I wasn't very surprised by the things I wanted.  And all the way home I was congratulating myself on knowing myself so well that I wasn't surprised.  Some of the things I said I wanted, for example, were:

 

Travel

 

Art

 

Scholarships to pay for the boys's educations

 

Time and quiet

 

Nothing

 

For the people I have difficulty with [thinking here of Wife and Father] to feel true love and acceptance

 

To be able to see to the bottom of quandries and make decisions more quickly

 

To know what I want to do next

 

To know that the boys will both grow into the fine men I know they have the potential to be

 

To have someone over for dinner

 

To be able to ease someone's mind

 

… and so on.

 

I don't remember all of them – it went on for ten minutes, after all – but I answered slowly and none of the answers would have surprised you.  I asked for a few material things – my car needs some body work, and most of my dress shirts are looking pretty ratty these days – but not many.  And it didn't occur to me to ask for things like a final separation agreement, because I know that's plugging along and it will happen when it happens.  Anyway, as I say, I was preening myself on knowing myself so well that none of these was a surprise.

 

But then once I was home, as I started getting myself some dinner, I began to think that maybe my lack of surprise didn't indicate deep self knowledge.  Maybe, in fact, it was a consequence of recycling the same old stories I tell you folks over and over.  I answered most of the questions slowly, so maybe I was trying to remember, "What have I thought before about wanting?" instead of spontaneously spitting out what I really want.

 

Maybe.  And maybe this is just classic second-guessing of myself.  But I don't think it's only that, even if that's a part of it.  And the reason is that after I got home, I thought of something that I didn't mention, … that I really do want … but that hasn't been on my lips or in my blog posts.  I haven't talked about it a lot, so it took a while to burble up to the surface.  But it's real, and that makes me wonder if the faster answers weren't, or at any rate if they are just more superficial.  My new answer is this:

 

More friends

 

Merry Christmas, everybody.

 

 

 

 

The future of marriage

It's been a while since I sat down to make any dogmatic pronouncements about what marriage is or isn't … about what it should be or shouldn't be.  Maybe I lost interest once I finally started to get my own marriage sorted out.  Also, now that I think about it, I realize that I am a little more skeptical than I once was of one-size-fits-all solutions.  If you can find a modus vivendi that works for you and the people around you, that's probably all you need.

But I have started reading Pamela Druckerman's book Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (2007).  And I find that there is a little voice in the back of my head commenting on what I read.  So after reading one interview my little voice says, "Yeah, that's about right"; while after reading another it might say, "That person doesn't begin to understand what marriage is really about."  So maybe I have arrived at a new dogmatic position after all, without realizing it.  Maybe if I open up this post and just start typing, I can figure out 

what it is that I've come to believe.

Marriage is a school for character.

I first argued that on some Internet discussion list twenty years ago, I argued it more recently than that on the Patio site, and I still believe it.  Living with another person, making your plans around another person, having to consider the other person in everything you do … these things bring you face to face with your own selfish impulses, and you have to conquer them or you are lost.  So it's a good thing (from this perspective) that marriage is so cumbersome to get out of.  That cumbersomeness forces you to go back and try again and again before just moving out.

Marriage provides a home for raising children.

I argued this on the same Internet discussion list, I still believe it, and I am convinced it is the single most important thing marriage can do.  If you have children, and if your marriage provides a good home for them to grow up in, I can excuse a lot of other dysfunctions.  Of course I'm not talking about the kinds of dysfunctions that make the marriage a bad place to grow up, nor the kind that will teach the children bad ways to behave as adults.  But if somehow you can manage to provide a genuinely wholesome environment in which your children can grow into kind, considerate, responsible, and mindful adults, then your other failures – though they may tarnish your life in other respects – are pretty much excusable from the perspective of your marriage.  This actually deserves to be set up as a principle of its own.

Marriage must be practical, not idealistic.

Marriage doesn't have to fulfill you, and probably won't.  It doesn't have to make you happy, and possibly won't – some days it is sure to make you unhappy, and for some people that's how it works out in the long run too.  You don't have any right to expect or demand fulfillment or happiness from the world; and – if you did – marriage isn't the tool to get you there.  By the same token, you shouldn't expect perfect transparency, where the two of you can peer clearly into each other's souls.  (This is another big change in my opinions, because perfect transparency in marriage is something I used to long for.)  If by some miracle this or that person really is fulfilled or made happy by marriage, that's great.  Of course.  But it is only a happy accident and the rest of us shouldn't get our hopes up.  Your mileage may vary.

Adultery happens. Get over it.

I don't mean adultery is inevitable, because it's not.  I don't mean that it happens in a majority of cases, because it doesn't.  But I do want to argue that it doesn't have to be a big deal, and that most married couples would probably be happier if they were willing to treat adultery (or even the threat of adultery) as no big deal.

This is a big change from what I believed back when I started this blog seven years ago.  Back then I was torn between my intellectual conviction (based largely on the arguments of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land) that there was nothing logical in jealousy, and the heart-rending anguish I felt at Wife's affairs.  I wrote a lot of posts trying to explain (to myself as much as anyone) why I felt the way I did.  And maybe I didn't have to go to so much trouble, because feelings are feelings.  They don't have to be explained or justified … they are what they are.  But partly they are fueled by expectations: if you expect absolute monogamy, then adultery feels like betrayal; and that's a very nasty feeling indeed.  Even if your intellectual expectations about monogamy as such are confused or inchoate (as mine were), if you nonetheless expect marriage to make you happy or fulfilled (as I did) then adultery pulls the ground out from under you so that you tumble disoriented into free-fall.  So it is important to understand that marriage has to be practical, that it can't meet all your earthly desires.  That may not be enough by itself to stop you from hurting the first time your spouse fucks somebody else, but maybe it is a starting-point from which you can begin to work on yourself.  After all, marriage is a school for character, right?

Of course, if you are the spouse left sitting home alone, you are within your rights to ask for help.  It's not like you should be forced to deal with the pain all by yourself, when maybe the two of you can figure out an accommodation which makes things smoother for both of you.  On the other hand, as noted above, it's unrealistic to ask for perfect transparency as the "accommodation" you need.

Another consequence of everything I have said so far is that – if you've got children in the house – adultery is not grounds for divorce.  Period.  In fact, if you've got children in the house then I think divorce-on-demand has to be wrong.  Children don't need their parents to be happy and fulfilled, but they do need stability.  So as long as they are living at home, divorce should be allowed only for causes which endanger that stability in one way or another.  Such causes exist – incest, addiction, abuse, and abandonment are a few that come to mind.  But claiming "irreconcilable differences" cannot be good enough, any more than arguing that your wife burned your soup.  Suck it up, bubbeleh.  For the sake of the children.

On the other hand, going starry-eyed romantic over your lover-du-jour is no excuse for abandoning your responsibilities as a parent, any more than your boss will accept it as an excuse for abandoning your responsibilities on the job.  If you want to spend a long lunch fucking like bunnies and coming in waves, that's great – but you still have to make goddamned sure that Junior gets to Little League practice on time, that you are there to applaud at Sister's ballet recital, and that dinner is ready at a suitable hour when the whole family can sit down at once and eat together.  These things are a given, one way or another.  If you can find some clever way to plan a creative sex life around these constraints, more power to you.

But this consideration leads ineluctably to another one.

Marriage does not have to be between one man and one woman.

This phrase is used as a political slogan in the fight over gay marriage, and of course (as I have already explained in another Patio article) I agree with the implication there.  There is nothing in the nature of marriage that restricts it to heterosexual unions.  But I want to make another point that is just as important but a lot more radical:  there is nothing in the nature of marriage that confines it to dyadic pairs.  In fact, raising children is so much work that there is a good argument for spreading the burden among more than two people.

I speak here from experience.  You may remember that Boyfriend 4 lived with us for two years.  There were tensions and problems, but the really bad ones – the insuperable ones – were all related to his alcoholism.  The other tensions we could handle.  And honestly, as long as Boyfriend 4 was sober, it was a huge relief knowing that there was one more competent adult in the house.  Partly this is because Wife was often sick, or tired, or crazy.  But that wasn't all of it.  We found we could each take over certain areas of responsibility because we didn't have to worry about the others.  Wife volunteered in the boys's classroom.  Boyfriend 4 kept the boys on task in the evenings till they finished their homework, and fixed dinners.  I earned an income that could support all of us – not lavishly, and certainly not to the levels Wife was hoping for.  So after a while we asked Boyfriend 4 to get a part-time job to pay for his cigarettes and other vices (booze excluded) … also to pay off some long-term debts that had followed him around for years because he was irresponsible with money.  (Ironically, even though he was admittedly bad at managing money, he was able to put a brake on Wife's spending by chaperoning her most of the day.)

Even if it had been legal, it would have been a bad idea to "marry" Boyfriend 4: his alcoholism and his history of bad debts would have made the idea a non-starter.  But that means somebody else in the same position – maybe as part of a different family than ours – could have a place.  If a third adult helps make the family a more stable, nurturing environment for the kids to grow up in – and Boyfriend 4 certainly did that, as long as he was sober – then why not?

Once the kids are out of the house, it might be time to call it quits.

That doesn't have to be true for everybody, of course.  But it was true for us.  And some marriages really aren't made to last forever.  I used to think that all marriages should last forever, until mine didn't.  Now I understand that this is something nobody can dogmatize over, and in my dour and depressive moods I think marriage laws ought to be reformed to allow separation at a moment's notice.  But not really.  Because children require stability, marriage should be stable as long as the children are at home.  But after that, you've done your job.  Anything extra is gravy.  Of course some couples stay together happily until death.  Others don't.  For those that don't – provided they managed to raise healthy, happy, well-adjusted children before going their separate ways – there's no room for blame.  These things happen, and sometimes they are right.

Narcissistic Personality Quiz

OK, this is just for fun on a Friday afternoon.  I found a quiz online which is supposed to determine whether you are a narcissist.

You can find it here: http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/narcissistic.htm 

Actually I found it a few days ago, but I keep re-taking it because keep getting scores that I can't believe.  Wait ... it's not what you think.

There are 40 questions.  I'm not sure, but I guess that each question scores either a 0 or a 1, depending on whether you choose the narcissistic answer or not.  Maybe it is more sophisticated than that.  In any event, what they say about the scoring is as follows:

Between 12 and 15 is average.
Celebrities often score closer to 18.
Narcissists score over 20.

Simple enough?  Sure.  I thought so too.  So when I first discovered the quiz I took a few minutes, whisked through the questions, and clicked the button to calculate a score.

I scored 4.

Wait, surely that's not possible.  Well I didn't worry about it then because I had other things to do that day (like work) but I came back a couple of days later and tried again.

This time I scored 3.

So just now I tried one more time, doing my level best to answer the questions as narcissistically as I could manage.  I thought of some of the screamingly narcissistic things I have written here, for example.  (This one still embarrasses me deeply.)  I tried to give myself whatever edge I thought I realistically could, given the way the questions were worded.

And this time I climbed all the way up to 7.  That's a full half of a "Normal" rating.

How is this possible?  Knowing how easily my ego can come untethered from reality, how can my score be so low?

I think it all has to do with the way the questions are worded, because many times I found myself conflicted about how to answer: my otherwise boundless egotism ran smack dab into my shyness and social fear.  So I made a point of agreeing with statements like "I am special" or "I am extraordinary."  I even tried to agree with the statements about being a natural leader, on the strength of the repeated experience that I cannot fade into the background ... that at every new job, people who are introduced to me for the first time say, "Oh, so you're Hosea! I've heard so much about you!"  But then there were all these questions about whether I like to show off my body, or whether I can make anybody believe anything I want them to believe, or whether I actually enjoy being praised in front of a crowd of others.  And the answers to all those are consistently No, No, and No.  I can't avoid public attention, but it embarrasses me.  I can't stop myself from from "laying down the law with elegant insolence" [as Dorothy Sayers once wrote about Peter Wimsey] in areas that I know something about, but I almost refuse to have an opinion about anything else for fear of looking like a loud-mouthed ignorant boor.  And showing off my body?  Well I gave myself points for liking to look at myself in a mirror -- anything to boost my score up towards average -- but I don't pretend that other people notice me one way or another, or want to.  As far as I can tell, I'm kind of average-looking.  Maybe a little taller than average, but not by much.

So don't mistake my low score for indicating any kind of special virtue.  It's just that one set of vices are held in check by another.  Of course, I guess that's not all bad.  At least something holds them in check.

Anyway, it was fun.
   

Relocation

Suppose I free-associate for a few minutes on the subject of taking my boss's job in Sticksville, if indeed it does come open.  I sent in an online application, but do I really want it?  The interesting thing is that I can think of reasons on either side, but some part of my brain that specializes in being critical can undercut most of my reasons as "not real reasons".  It's interesting.

So for example, in favor of taking the job I can see the following:

• It's a promotion.  In principle it's actually a promotion up two levels, because there are a lot of spots in the organization that aren't filled yet.
  
  But is it really that important to you to climb the corporate ladder?  I thought you were past all that, now that you are out of your thirties and into your fifties.
   
• It's flattering that the boss above that position brought it to my attention.
  
  So you want to take a job because it flatters your ego?  Really?
    
  
• It offers me the chance to travel somewhere new, and I love to travel.  I always have ... it's part of who I am.
  
  But I remember you saying just a few months ago that none of us "really is" anybody at all ... that it's all just a question of the choices we make, and that those choices are frequently inconsistent.
     
  
• Besides, if they offer the job to somebody else, I'll probably end up arguing with him a lot about how things should be done, since I've got such strong opinions about that on my own already.
  
  Aha ... so it's good for you to take the job because you are ornery and insubordinate.  OK, now we are getting somewhere.  (smile) 
   
• It's the right thing for the company, ... maybe.  What I mean is that I have a huge amount of experience that directly pertains to the work this person is going to do.
  
  And do you really care what's right for the company? I mean, are you such a Company Man that whatever is right for them is thereby right for you? Also, ... once you phrase it like that you are really setting yourself up for disappointment if they choose somebody else!

On the other hand, opposed to taking the job I can see the following:

• It's in Sticksville.  It's a tiny town.  There's nothing going on there, and it's surrounded by miles and miles of empty farmland.  Remember the woman you met there who had moved from an even smaller town and thought Sticksville was "the big city" because they had a barber and a bar.  Think about this.
  
  Yes, but every job is somewhere and every place has its pluses and minuses. Are you really going to be so fussy about where exactly you live? Isn't that a secondary consideration?
  
  Secondary to what?  Look, when you were still living with Wife and had the kids with you, maybe the biggest concern was to live in a "good place for kids" and no doubt Sticksville would have been that.  But now you are on your own and it's clear you want to live in a city.
  
  Yes, well there's a Very Big City only an hour away, and in fact some people who work in the Sticksville plant choose to live in the Very Big City and commute every day.
  
  An hour.  Each way.  Just bloody wonderful.
  
  And actually Very Big City is known for being a really cool place to live. I'd probably love it there. Of course I'd have the drive each day.
  
  Not every day.  When the weather is bad enough the highway is closed.  That's another factor.  Right now you live a beautiful city, with an overall mild climate.  You are talking about moving to a place with snow a good half the year, and blizzards.  Blizzards, for God's sake!  When's the last time you had to deal with a blizzard?  When's the last time you had to drive in a blizzard?
  
  When I was a kid we lived in a place with weather very similar to that.  I miss it. 
  
  That was forty years ago.  You miss it in an abstract, nostalgic way.  Wait till you have to drive in it.
  
  [A little over four years later I had exactly that experience and it bloody well terrified me. You can read about it here.]
   
• It's a management job where you'll be responsible for multiple sites.  That also means you'll be responsible for hiring, disciplining, and evaluating staff at those sites.  And isn't it true that part of what you've liked about this job (compared to, say, the one you had at your last company before this) is precisely that you don't have to do a lot of managing?  That you can be a subject matter expert with the title of "Manager" but you have almost nobody working for you?  Gonna lose that with this new job.
  
  I know, I know.  But look, management is a skill.  I picked it up before, and I'll pick it up again.  At least I know I can pick it up, because I've done it before.  So no worries.
   
• The boys are going to feel betrayed.  It's like you said a week ago: first you sold the house they grew up in, but at least you kept an apartment in the same city.  They can still figure that they have a home in Beautiful City.  (Wife had to move an hour away because of cost.)  Now you'll give up even that, and what have they got?  Son 1 is at University.  Son 2 is at Durmstrang.  Wife is ... well, where she is.  And you'll be in Sticksville, or maybe Very Big City -- snowbound, either way. 
  
  Yes, but come on.  People adapt.  I moved every year of my life until I was seven.  Besides, you can't really expect me to make all the decisions for the rest of my life based on what the boys want, can you?  Because they'll grow up, move away, and lead their own lives.  If I try to live my life around them, then most of the year (except for the occasional holiday) I'm going to be screwed.  They won't be there.
  
  Maybe so.  But they'll still hate it.  You prepared for that?
  
  I've been thinking.  Maybe I can offer them that every year I'll rent a cottage by the beach in Beautiful City for a week, and we can vacation there together.  Maybe that will help ease the blow. 
  
  Maybe.

Does everybody else argue with himself (herself) this much?  If I look back and try to pick out which "reasons" I don't immediately undercut or negate, what am I left with?  Ummm ... I'm not sure there are any.  Maybe the one about wanting to take the job because I'd just argue with anybody else who took it.  And what kind of reason is that?  

I started writing this a week ago.  I'm going to post it to get it the hell out of limbo.  If anybody's reading this and has any feedback, it is more than welcome.  Trust me on this.

Yeah, he's right you know.  For once, at least. 

Thanks

I just spent thirteen hours on the road, driving back from visiting a large passel of relatives for Thanksgiving.  The drive wasn't a lot of fun, but the visit was delightful.  This branch of the family are all truly good people, and it gave me a good reason not to join my parents and Wife as they visited Son 2 at Durmstrang.  (In the interests of clarity, I would have dearly loved to see my mother and Son 2; but it was a great relief not to have to see my father and not to be asked to sit down at a meal with Wife.)

 

It's the season for gratitude, and I'm grateful that I got to spend it in such pleasant company.  Even better, Son 1 cobbled together transporation from University and joined us.  I could try to tell you stories of the long weekend, but they are all stories of visiting, talking, and eating: every one of them a pleasant thing to do, but none of them dramatic enough to make a gripping yarn.  It was just a good, quiet time.

__________

 

I have a couple of other topics that I want to think through, which means coming back to write about them at greater length.  I will introduce them here as a promise to return.  But I don't expect to do them justice right now.

 

FIRST: I continue to find that my fantasy life is full of arguments with my father … much the way it used to be full of arguments with Wife (but hardly ever is any more).  I keep saying I should use this blog as a way to write down all the elements of my relationship with my father, in order to come to some better clarity about it.  Well yeah … I should do that.  Really.

 

SECOND: My boss's job seems to be coming open – many miles and two time zones away, in Sticksville.  I have submitted an application for it.  From the company's point of view, I think I'd be a logical choice.  (Of course, I might be in for a rude surprise.)  On the other hand, I expect the boys to think (even if they don't say it out loud): "Hey, what is this? First you sold the house in which we grew up our entire lives, and now you want to leave the town in which we grew up too? So that we won't even have a single room or stretch of floor in that town to call 'Home' any more? WTF???"  How about my own point of view?  I'm not really sure.  Again, this is something to talk out until I realize I've talked myself into it or out of it.

 

But not tonight.  It's time for a light supper and bed.  Or at least a glass of sherry.