I guess you could say I’m a bit of a detective.

Now, I’m not so obtuse as to believe that the mere fact a person asks/begs/pleads/juggles for money automatically means that he is homeless or “down on his luck” in a meaningful, dickensian way.  But I do know that whatever inspires a person to ask a stranger for money, whether it be desperation, depression, or any number of soul-crushing addictions, it is a behavior that I cannot (or perhaps choose not to) imagine exhibiting.

In that sense, if nothing else, it is fair to say that the person in this story is worse off than I can imagine.  That said, there are a couple of reasons why I felt it a tad strange — or at least a bit uninspired — that this particular man in this particular situation asked me for straight-up American currency.

Number one, I didn’t have a hand free to dig into my pockets (wherein the currency theoretically resides).  And number two, the reason I did not have a hand free to dig into my pockets was due to that fact that I was carrying two enormous bags of food.

Food, glorious food!

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I’m a softie, though, so I said to the guy, “Honestly, I don’t have any change, but how about a peach?”

A pause.

“Nah.”

Yes, after quick consideration, this man — possibly homeless — sighed out a half-hearted nah.

Nah.

I was floored.

First of all, if you’re asking strangers for money, you should at least have the decency to pretend you’re interested in using that money for food.  Food like a peach!  If nothing else, this perception needs to be a part of any money-taking routine/charade:  You pretend that you’re not going to put my $0.60 toward a Steel Reserve tallboy later on, and I pretend not to know that very same fact.

That’s the deal.

But then, as I turned the corner and headed home, my anger rapidly faded into confusion.  The more I thought about the interaction, the more I realized that the awkwardness and indignity I felt ultimately had nothing to do with poverty, politeness, shame, gentrifier’s guilt, or any social science theory neatly explained in a Sociology 101 textbook.

Nah.

This is about peaches!

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Who, no matter what his circumstances, turns down a free peach?

I don’t care if you’re looking for drug money, beer money, beer-laced-with-drugs money, or not looking for anything in particular.  When someone offers you a free peach, you take the free peach!

Peaches are wonderful.

Free peaches are manna from heaven.

As a general rule, I am intrigued by these getting-asked-for-change circumstances, but that intrigue is usually followed by a sharp, painful sort of guilt that I specifically associate with my interactions with the homeless (or “homeless” if you prefer).  Leading up to — and in the midst of — these interactions, my internal monologue shifts into detached academic mode.  I carefully weigh and consider the macro-socioeconomic issues that led to the interaction, thus diminishing the actual (“potential”) suffering taking place before me.  The ease with which I am able to quickly disassociate from a very real, upsetting interaction is an aspect of my personality that I am willing — but so far completely unable — to shake.

As a result, I’m a bit of a sucker.

I say “a bit of a sucker” as opposed to “a full-fledged sucker” because I never physically open my wallet.  When I have change — as in, physical, clangy coins in my pocket — I will give it away.  Even in the event the total amount of change surpasses $1, it is available to anyone who asks earnestly.  But I will never reach for paper bills.

The paper bills are mine.

In the 21st century, this is actually a bit of a problem if you goal is to get currency in the hands of those who request/need it.  I am still perfectly willing to give away my change, but the fact is I don’t use cash much these days.  Every transaction that I can complete using a credit card will be carried out in that manner.  Basically, I only have coins in my pocket when I am returning from a Cash Only (“tax evading”) establishment.  As a result, with each passing year — though my standard for money-distribution has not changed — the amount of cash I distribute consistently diminishes.

Presumably, I am not the only one with the “change in pocket” standard for giving money to homeless people.  My guess is that there are thousands of people who are in the same boat as me: they would give more money than they do, but because they are tied to using their credit card, they are not often provided the opportunity to do so.  In the end, the pool of “available” money for the needy shrinks as credit card usage increases.

But could this be a good thing?  Perhaps, as a result of the ever-diminishing pool of money, asking people for spare change will no longer be a functional way to raise money for your food/drugs/food-drugs.  Perhaps, to the extent that us change-givers are enabling a lifestyle that ultimately should be altered, there is a net benefit to our not having any pennies, quarters, nickles, and dimes in our pockets.

Wouldn’t that be peachy?

Meek, "Keep Your Coins I Want Change"

It is time to move on!  

It is time we recognize that some of us continue to engage in completely inefficient, illogical behavior.  It is time we recognize that we should not expect the present to resemble the past, and that our future should not — and will not! — resemble the present. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is time to move on.

Let’s stop leaving voicemail messages.  Forever.

It is not often suggested that society should take cues from tweens, teenagers, tweenagers, or whatever we are currently calling Our Nation’s Most Insufferable Generation (side note: do not forget that you used to be exactly like them except your clothes were somehow even stupider).

Conventional wisdom suggests that unless you’re looking for the a comprehensive list of talentless pop stars or morbidly curious what it is like to speak with someone born after Y2K, it is probably best to leave these kids alone and hope that they won’t defund medicare and social security when they grow up.

But I recommend that we actually look to them, at least with regard to voicemail.  Simply put: kids don’t get voicemails.  They understand voicemails, sure, but that is precisely why they do not get them.

The next generation knows better.

To be clear, when I say “voicemail,” I’m referring to the voicemail tied to our cell phones.  Though there are plenty of landlines still functioning all over the world, the vast majority of the people I interact with on a daily basis depend primarily on their cell phones.

Every aspect of our voice mailbox is predicated on the technology that preceded it: the answering machine.  We all know that the original purpose of the answering machine was to provide a method for a caller to convey information to a telephone owner without actually speaking to him/her.  The answering machine benefited both the caller, who did not have to call back to convey certain information, and the owner, who did not have to be there to receive it.

The answering machine was a godsend.

Amazingly, though the technology has been around since there was a wall divided East from West Germany, our cell phone voice mailboxes contain the precisely the same instructions that we’ve been boring our friends and family with since the 1980′s.  “You’ve reached the voice mailbox of Soandso.  At the ‘beep,’ please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”  I think as a people, we should be beyond this by now.  There are those who do think we have it all figured out, the ones who use their message to record a simple, “You know what to do!”

Apparently, we do not.

Thankfully, understanding the magic of the answering machine is not passed onto the next generation through DNA.  “Kids these days” — the ones who did not grow up relying on this particular technology — are able to view the machine’s usefulness through an objective lens.

And that is a good thing.

So what does the next generation understand that some of us clearly do not? Simple: they understand that the most efficient, effective way to communicate with someone who is not answering their phone is to send that person a text message.

There are those who will deem this practice “impersonal,” but I think that criticism ignores the fact that impersonality is the very essence of the original answering machine: as a rule, you are talking to nobody.  What could be more impersonal than that?  

Text messages provide several benefits over voicemail messages:

1. Caller is able to communicate ideas quickly
2. Caller is able to communicate ideas discretely
3. Receiver instantly receives communication
4. Receiver is able to quickly read/respond
5. Receiver is able to discretely read/respond

For example, let’s take a look at this classic Seinfeld clip:

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While it may be a little bit depressing that almost every single telephone-based joke in the Seinfeld clip above would be lost on a member of Generation Text, it is emblematic of the transition that is taking place.  Since the popularization of cell phones, the following situations depicted in the clip no longer resonate:

1. George is able to listen to an answering machine message as it is being recorded
2. George picks up the phone in the middle of a message recording
3. George pretends he does not know that he has been contacted by Allison
4. George plausibly calls the wrong number in order to avoid communication

The main concern that George has with regard to being “found out” is his not wanting to go to the coffee shop because Allison might spot him there.  Can any of us still imagine a world where our being physically located by chance is the only concern we have if we do not wish to be contacted by an acquaintance or have a plausible excuse for not having received their communications?

George was living in simpler time: simply ignore the answering machine and lay low.

Today, our cell phones give us great power to contact anyone in a moment’s notice, but on the contrary as well.  None of us are ever more than a touchscreen away.  Yet, despite the fact that 21st century technology and society does not resemble this particular Seinfeld episode, many of us pretend that we still live in George Costanza’s world.  

Count yourself among this illustrious group if the piles of cassette tapes stacked behind George and Jerry’s pre-iMac computer did not register as laughably dated.  Etch your name in stone if you also recognized the song being parodied in George’s answering machine message.

Let’s all agree to send text messages instead of leaving voicemails.

Who is with me?

The next generation of Americans may not know much, but they do know the best way to get in touch with each other.  Even if you can bet what they end up talking about won’t make any sense.

In any case, you can stop pretending like this isn’t good news: you hate what your voice sounds like anyway.

This is the thirteenth FWOTD.

fanatischism (fa-nat-i-skiz-uhm)
noun

a remarkable but completely avoidable cocktail of sadness and anger invariably stemming from one’s choosing to base a portion of his/her mood on the success and failures of a particular sports team or professional athlete

For example: “I am the biggest New York Mets fan in the world and can’t stand it when they lose!”

The ‘fanatischism’ explained visually in 10 seconds.

There is a great divide — a “schism” if you will — between the relationship that a fanatical sports fan believes he has with his most favorite team and the objective analysis of the relationship’s actual impact.  While the fan will claim to extract a great deal of happiness and will unquestionably justify the amount of time, energy, and money he puts into his favorite club, the reality is that far (far!) more often than not, his team will end up not winning a championship and he will be filled with pain and sadness.

And anger.

And he will transfer this anger — sometimes quietly and sometimes loudly — to his friends and loved ones.

And then those people will be sad and angry.

It is the circle of strife.

Statistically, if there are are 30 teams in a league and you are a “big fan” for 60 years, you will see your team win a championship twice.  You will see your team not win a championship 58 times.  Statistically.  And even in rare instances (roughly 3% of the time) where the favorite team does end up winning a championship, the joy is fleeting because another season is just around the corner.

It seems appropriate, then, to ask whether we are being fair to ourselves when we invest a huge amount of our emotional energy to root for people who do not care about us to do arbitrary things in order to win an particular set of games influenced by officials prone to human error in an league environment that — in an ideal universe — should lead to a small, fleeting window of euphoria in 3% of the years we spend invested?

Packers fans one short season after a SuperBowl victory

I suppose this analysis isn’t very interesting, except for the fact that we sports fans do this to ourselves for reasons that are not entirely clear.  There are very few rational reasons to root for a particular sports team/athlete, especially in the today’s completely demystified corporate sports environment.

Each season we witness our favorite athletes speak calmly and clearly into microphones around the world: This is a business.  You have to understand this is a business.  College athletes don’t make this point particular because they themselves do not get paid, but they probably should since it’s probably not an enormous coincidence that the NCAA brought in over $840 million in 2010-2011.

We know it is a business.

It is patently obvious that our professed love and unapologetic irrationality is being leveraged against us for economic gain, and we don’t seem to mind.

But maybe we should.

Let’s hash out the two sides of the sports fan relationship:

Fan’s View of Relationship With Team

1. Chooses team usually based on proximity and/or tradition
2. Cares deeply about outcome of games/seasons
3. Spends money to show support for team
4. Spends time monitoring progress of team
5. Professes love and adoration for team employees

Team’s View of Relationship With Fan

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In the end, we are choosing to make enormous emotional, temporal, and financial commitments to people and entities who couldn’t care less about us and are engaging in a behaviors that have no meaningful impact on the real world.  

Unless, of course, your team wins — or loses! — a championship.

Fanatics after their team wins championship!

Fanatics after their team loses championship!

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A lot of folks are upset about this Dr. Pepper 10 commercial because the product is being advertised to men in a gender-negative way that is at best alienating and at worst insulting to women.  I’m annoyed by Dr. Pepper 10, too, but my frustration stems not from the question of whether it is socially acceptable to market a product to 49% of the world’s population by cinematically flicking off the other 51%.

Quite frankly, I’m not concerned about how Dr. Pepper 10 is being marketed.

I resent that it exists at all.

There are any number of cliched reasons to be anti-soda/pop/coke.

Most of us agree that, as a rule, these carbonated comfort drinks contain zero nutrition, unapologetically destroy our teeth (with fun bubbles!), and are so inexpensive that there is a serious economic incentive to fill our bodies — and our children’s bodies — with fizzy stuff instead of any liquid that resembles actual food intended for human consumption (like juice)!

And yet, none of these reasons are the root of why I believe we — men and women! — should know better than to purchase Dr. Pepper 10.

Put simply, Dr. Pepper 10 is barely a unique product.

Here are the other products in the non-”flavored” Dr. Pepper family:

1. Dr. Pepper / 100 calories, caffeine
2. Dr. Pepper (Diet) / 0 calories, caffeine
3. Dr. Pepper (Caffeine Free) / 100 calories, 0 caffeine
4. Dr. Pepper (Diet, Caffeine Free) / 0 calories, 0 caffeine

So far as I can tell, those four products match the four “desire states” that lead to purchasing Dr. Pepper-based liquid.

1. I like the flavor (Dr. Pepper)
2. I like the flavor, but not the calories (Dr. Pepper-Diet)
3. I like the flavor, but not the caffeine (Dr. Pepper-Caffeine Free)
4. I like the flavor, but not the calories nor caffeine (Dr. Pepper-Diet, Caffeine Free)

This “new” product is merely a 10 calorie version of Dr. Pepper.  In other words, Dr. Pepper 10 is Diet Dr. Pepper plus ten calories.

Ten.

Of course it’s true that 10 calories is infinitely larger than zero calories, but it’s still fair to ask: What brand of consumer is turned off by a zero calorie version of Dr. Pepper (Diet Dr. Pepper) but would instead be compelled to purchase a ten calorie drink (Dr. Pepper 10) who is not purchasing Dr. Pepper?  The commercials plainly state that Dr. Pepper 10 is being marketed towards men, but “men” is not the group that buys it.

So which consumer group is it?

The Indecisive, of course.

Yes, the Indecisive!  You know, the folks who buy 1% milk instead of 2% or skim, neapolitan ice cream instead of a real flavor, and prefer “low fat” to “no fat.”  They buy paper plates made from recycled materials and prefer their ranch dressing “on the side.”  They like medium “hot” sauce, don’t eat meat (except chicken), and just want a couple bites of your dessert.

And of course, they invented the spork.

Dr. Pepper 10 gives these indecisive consumers an opportunity to “choose” between products that are barely discernible (Diet Dr. Pepper and Dr. Pepper 10).  Grocery patrons that specialize in baby-splitting can show their off their (non-)decision-making prowess by grabbing the thing in the “middle” (10 calories vs. 0 or 100 calories).

And though doing so feels like a choice, the reality is that when you buy Dr. Pepper 10, what you’re buying is not an exciting new product — and barely a new product at all — but a tangible representation of your inability to show any kind of commitment or decision-making skills.

So while it’s true that Dr. Pepper 10 commercials exclusively directed at men are insulting to one of the genders, it might not be the one that you think.

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On July 20th, 1969, Two very important things happened as a result of the Apollo 11 mission:

1. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon.
2. Children began to reasonably expect that by the time they became adults, they would own rocketpacks.

I can’t help but feel a deep, nerdy empathy for the 10-year-old who, with tears welling, watched Armstrong and Co. touch-down and romp around in the Sea of Tranquility.  That child had fantastic expectations about his future that made perfect sense at the time, but that we know today to have been completely misguided.

Though our instincts might be to partially place blame on an overly optimistic star-gazing youth, it is impossible to ignore the incredible amount of rocketry-related technological progress that had taken place during his sentient lifetime.

Yet from the perspective of that 10-year-old at the time, it wasn’t incredible at all.  In 1966, just three years before the manned mission, the United States had sent its first unmanned missions to the moon’s surface.  Only 4 years before that was the United State’s first spacecraft to reach another celestial body.  The pace was incredible, and no scientifically-inclined individual in those days — child or otherwise — had justifiable reason for pessimism.

It was just life.

Of course we are shooting rockets into space.

Of course there are people standing on the moon.

Of course I’m going to have a rocketpack.

What were the reasons to believe otherwise?

To be sure, my generation dabbled in the promise of rocketpackery, but oddly, though I was born more than a decade after the moon landing, I never felt that I was destined to carry a rocketpack. My friends and I more closely associated the technology with science fiction than the obvious end-result of our current scientific pace.  We never lived in a time — like those kids who watched the moon landing — when strapping a jet engine to our back seemed plausible, let alone the logical conclusion of the direction we were headed as a society.

At least I had video games.

Let me be clear: It’s not unusual or remotely interesting that a 10-year-old in 1969 has a vastly different impression of how the world was going to progress by the time he became a grownup compared to the impressions a 10-year-old in 1992, but the promise of a rocketpack is an interesting case.  Usually, a modern child would have a more optimistic sense of what is possible given the advances that had occurred in his lifetime on top of whatever the child from a previous generation knew/understood.

Not so in the case of the rocketpack!

As time went on, while the desire to fly around via one’s own personal rocket remained constant, the reasonable expectation that it would happen in our lifetime diminished with gradual-to-great speed.

Ironically, full-scale globalization and unrelenting world-wide media is what distracted wide-eyed kids like myself from the planet earth.  By the time I was cognizant, national attention had shifted from space travel and exploration to military technology.  Growing up, I was far more likely to hear reports of the Patriot missiles and “bunker-busters” of the (First) Gulf War than anything resembling the optimism inherent in the Apollo missions.  I feel this is true despite fond, specific memories of watching the sun rise one morning in Florida in hopes that we would see (what turned out to be an aborted) Endeavor launch.

So here we are, even further from July 20, 1969.  Do any of us still feel as though rocketpacks are in our future?  Do kids today have any optimism whatsoever about rocketpacks?  I know there are a bunch of prototypes floating (!) around, and I know that investors are always “working on a new fuel source,” but we landed on the moon over 40 years ago and the best we have to show for it are jetpacks that hover for around a half minute.

I’ve had sneezing fits that lasted longer.

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Color me unimpressed.

In any event, my generation lucked out.  What we lack in rocketpackery we make up for with the Internet.  Sure, we don’t have any fancy astronaut heroes, but there are over a billion search results for “cat videos” on Google.  Yeah, it’s true that we never really experienced what it was like to root for our country in a purely scientific, progressive context (as opposed to military and athletic prowess), but now we can order a pizza without picking up the telephone!  And our telephones don’t even have cords anymore!  No, we won’t get to watch US citizens walk on the surface of Mars anytime soon, but hey, did I mention the cat videos?

I’m turning 30 in a few months and I’m starting to believe/fear that I’ll never own a rocketpack of my own.  Maybe it’s for the best, though.  A rocketpack would seriously cut into my Internet time.

Are any of us prepared?

Though nowadays we politely chuckle at the notion that scientifically-inclined folks once believed the sun revolved around the earth, there’s not much going on these days to suggest that we’ve ever truly shaken that particular mentality.  Despite the fact that we have mastered the science of heliocentrism, humans continue to fundamentally believe that we — in all of our glory! — are the very real center of the universe.

There are a number of reasons to be skeptical of the Mayan 2012 prediction, not the least of which is the fact the geniuses who put together the calendar in question are the same ones who relied on human sacrifice and were not able to predict their own demise.  In essence, the Mayans are not a civilization known for their ability to plan ahead of time.

Further, just like we’ve always known about the advice of Miss Cleo, the credibility of any professional prognosticator collapses upon realizing that the predictor is frantically exploring methods of fiscal solvency.  Those who could accurately predict the future would certainly not need to rely on my $2.99/minute nor have a business model based almost entirely on the viability of off-peak ad buys on basic cable.  The Mayans, of course, were not selling their calendar for profit, but I’m sure they had a vested interest in maintaining its authority.

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You probably wouldn’t take too seriously the advice of a sopping-wet weatherman running through a parking lot in the rain with a newspaper over his head yelling, “Weather predictions!  Get your weather predictions!  Only $5 a piece!” and yet, here we are, giving tongue-and-cheek credence to a civilization composed of peoples who weren’t even around long enough to see hampsterdance.com.

Generally, when we refer to the Mayan 2012 warning, we take it to mean that “the world is going to end in 2012.”  But unless you think the sun is going to explode, or the entire universe is going to implode, or the large hadron collider is going to create an event that somehow sucks our big blue planet into a literal oblivion, the planet earth is going to be just fine.

To reiterate, here is a list of horrible things that would not actually be the end the world:

1. Nuclear war leading to the end of all biological life
2. Biblical flood leading to the end of all life
3. Natural disasters leading to the end of all life
4. Hyper-contagious biological virus leading to the end of all life
5. The Rapture (as I understand it)

If any of those things were to happen, the world would still be here.

The world would be fine.

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We are not exactly keen on the Mayan people’s fondness for attempting to shape the future predicated on a steady diet of blood letting and human sacrifice, so it’s a little suspicious and weird that we consider any of their predictions at all.  And yet, when you think about it, it’s actually not too surprising that we are laser-focused on their end-of-the-world declaration when you consider our collective self-obsession.  That it comes as no surprise to any us that we are alive during the end point in the history of a planet that is around 4.5 billion years old should come as no surprise.

No surprise at all.

So how shocking is it, really, that we once believed the sun revolved around us?

Let’s say the Mayans were (are?) right.  Let’s even go as far as to say that their calendar exists for the sole purpose of sending a message to future inhabitants of the earth that the End of Days is coming, eventually.  If that is the case, we are making the wrong kinds of preparations (not to mention the wrong kinds of movies).  We are focused on nuclear war, religious war, and environmental catastrophe when the reality is that none of these things would literally lead to the end of the world.

And so here we are, in what could be — but is, for the record, totally not — the pivotal moment in the world’s history and we are too self-absorbed to even digest the dire warning correctly.  When we think of the world or universe ending, the absolute worst thing that we can imagine — in the deepest, darkest, scariest portion of our highly-developed brains —  is that we and our human companions are no longer kicking soil around on the earth’s crust.  But just as you do not cease to exist when an army of red ants is maliciously swiped from your leg, the world will be just fine without us stomping around on an insignificant portion of its surface area.

If the world were to end as we presume, via hellfire from the sky, or from a Great Flood, or as the result of continents-wide earthquakes or a supervirus, we would just be another notch on nature’s bedpost, just like the dinosaurs who romped around for a time before us.

I bet the tallest brontosaurus, in his tiny walnut-sized brain, as asteroids began to rain unapologetically from the sky, thought to himself, “The world is ending (and I never even figured out why my arms are so hilariously short)!”

Since we humans are proof that the world did not end ex post dinosaurus, we should also recognize that the same will true if (when?) we are systematically wiped from the planet in the next 12 months.

The year started out on a serious note when I wrote Mom Homage in honor of the person responsible for 30-40% of the clicks on this website.  Shortly thereafter, I alienated every single old-school, kind-hearted person I know by penning a screed against thank you notes before exposing my general distaste for General Tso’s when it is sold by the pound.

In February, I tried my hand at serious short fiction.  It did not go well.  Lesson learned.  But by the end of the month, I returned to my inane roots and disassembled grocery shopping, or what I call The Least Efficient Process in the Universe.

March brought on the beginning of baseball season and the realization that February is mathematically the worst month of the year.  I dismantled kindergarten logic and pointed folks who were interested to an inspirational video about What Teachers Make.

I lost my grandmother in April and also realized that I have also lost the ability to call anyone I knew without the help of my smartphone. I turned 29, which I decided is the same as turning 30.

In May, self-checkout stations found their way into my crosshairs, as did cereal commercials and poor, defenseless apples.

June is the month that I decided we should stop using the word “overrated” and stop pretending the show Undercover Boss is about the plight of the American worker.  I also debuted the so-far-two-part That Should Be A Thing series in June.

That Should Be A Thing Part I: Open Door Policies
That Should Be A Thing Part II: Parallel Universal

My brain started to melt a little bit in July (it seems), because I started out that month a weird love letter to freedom and a discussion about whether friendship means something different inside a bar than at a lunch counter (if those even exist anymore).  Then I went on to discuss the strange realization that I never put my fan on high and the completely un-strange realization that I am scared of bears.

August started out with a little backwards-looking introspection and even-further-back exploration of the food we (can choose not to) eat.  The month ended with a retrospective of still-helpful shorthand phrases I used to use when the Internet and I were coming age.

September started out pretty serious, first with a frank discussion about (my) (very) low-skilled labor, and next with a poem I wrote on 9/11/2001.  The middle of the month is when I appeared as a guest blogger at Lessons From Teachers and Twits.

Thankfully, things lightened up a bit in October!  I sang the praises of the classic bicycle bell and awkwardly recounted the day when it became clear that I should not be put in charge of counting.  The month ended with a love letter to Halloween, the one day when we pretend that we believe in ghosts and that children can enjoy the company of their neighbors.

More recently, I wrote a defense of the barometer and told a true tale of graphite, art, and friendship.

And finally — just before the end of the year — I got to say “uncle” when my burrito-shaped baby nephew Max was born!

Of course, 2011 also saw a number of additions to the Fictionary:

1. annexiety  (01/25/2011)
2. glawing  (05/11/2011)
3. expertease  (08/25/2011)
4. fictionary  (10/19/2011)
5. cropportunity  (11/09/2011)
6. desirony (12/13/2011)

What a year.

See you in 2012!

For the record, we’re up to twelve FWOTD now.

desirony (de-si-ro-ny)
noun

an emotional imbalance that stems from the impossible, unfortunate longing to erase knowledge and experience so as to be able to experience, again, for the first time, the overwhelming joy of a particularly influential discovery

For example: “I am so jealous that you are fortunate enough to never have read Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  I’ll never touch the book again because I know it won’t be the same as the first time, so all I’m left with is an uncomfortable case of desirony.”

Desirony is constructed from two root words: desire and irony.

After all, what could possibly more ironic than the desire to remove a positive experience from your own life for the purposes of seeking it out the first place?

I doubt Alanis Morissette could even answer that question.

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(An aside! The most ironic thing in the world actually happens to be Alanis Morissette’s Ironic, the video for which you can find above.   It is not at all controversial — and is in fact bordering on cliche — to point out that song, which reached #4 on the Billboard chart in 1996, contains lyrics that seem to completely misunderstand the meaning of the word “ironic.”  However, due in part to the song’s popularity, primary usage of the word is shifting to favor Morissette’s definition ["unfortunate"] as opposed to, you know, the actual definition ["ironic"].  In conclusion, Alanis Morissette is probably a genius.)

Though our lives — even your life! — are filled with joy, we do not long to reexperience every single positive event that has ever happened.  We fondly remember these events, sure, but we are not overcome with the specific desire to, for example, relive the night we watched a reasonably entertaining movie like A Serious Man.  There is no part of you that pines for the experience of watching it again, for the first time (unless you are an enormous, insufferable Coen Brothers fanboy/girl).  On the other hand, maybe you do think about your maiden Shawshank Redemption voyage.

Or maybe it’s just me.

In any event, while I am not yet convinced desirony is an affliction that impacts anyone other than myself, I have nonetheless have decided that it is a word worth introducing to the world (that will never be used again).

Remember: You can check out the other mostly-useless Faux Word of the Day words by checking out the Faux Outrage Fictionary!

We were told to prepare for a Christmas Baby, or perhaps a Chanukah Baby, or maybe even the “First Baby of 2012″ that local news stations insists on covering (and donating diapers to). In the end, though standard American calendars do not arrive pre-printed with December 2nd in bold lettering (I guess International Day for the Abolition of Slavery is too much of a snoozefest to be considered worthy of embolden status), the date suddenly seems more notable than any other.

The moment Max was born, husband and wife became mother and father, mother and father became grandma and grandpa, and grandma and grandpa were finally bestowed the prefix they had been pining for and so richly deserve: “great.”  Cousins, incidentally, remain cousins.

As for me, I need to get used to saying “uncle.”

So far, Max knows a few things. He knows how to sleep, how to cry, fidget, look like a burrito, grab disproportionately large adult fingers, and is slowly learning – and I’m sure will quite soon master – the art of eating food. Most enjoyably, Max knows how to coo like a pigeon, which is especially impressive once you consider the fact that he has never even seen a bird.

My brother, his nervously smiling father, can’t help but to repeat one single word when he is asked to describe his son:

perfect!

He’s perfect.

A perfect baby boy.

Everything is perfect.

Truthfully, it’s hard to blame my brother, and it is quite easy to admire his position in life.  Max has done nothing wrong, and at this rate, he never will.  He will be a perfect infant, a perfect kid, a perfect tween, teen, young adult, and man before he’s elected the first King of the Moon or is the first to fly a rocketpack around Mars or whatever we’ll be impressed by in the impossibly-distant future.  Whatever Max does in his lifetime, right now we have every reason to believe that he will do it perfectly because there has been no evidence to suggests otherwise.

But while our hearts bet on perfection, our intuition unapologetically paints a wholly different picture.  There will be mistakes, intentional and otherwise.  There will be mishaps, misunderstandings, and heartache belonging both to parent and child.  There will be times when the tears will not be of joy as they were on Friday, but because we were wronged, or have wronged another.  There will be times when our voices will be raised not because of the overwhelming need to share, but because of the overwhelming need to be right.  There will be sadness, words uttered out of spite, and times when we simply fail to say “I love you,” even though it’s the only thing on our mind.

There will be all kinds of times.

And though Max may grow up in a world without knowing the pleasure of a dial-tone, he will be allowed — like all of us — to learn for himself what it is to be human.

He will learn what it is like to fail spectacularly, and to be better for it.  He will learn that in his days of deep, dark sadness, there are those who cannot help but to be there for him.  He will learn that the more he tries to separate himself from a past that he has no choice but to be a part, the more he will recognize that his footprints pushed into the dirt behind him are possible because of the trails that have already been blazed.  He will learn — as we all do — that what seems like destiny can also be understood as the result of a series of non-accidents expertly placed like rungs on a ladder enabling us to reach previously impossible heights.

The more I think about Max, the more I begin to understand that I am just as excited about his unfortunate brushes with imperfection as I am about his unflinching triumphs.  I want to see him learn, to grow, and for him to learn what it means to be growing.  I want him to know that it is okay to fail, a lot, because our initial failures are so often the first steps to a better understanding of the world around us.

In any event, I have a sneaking suspicion that above all, Max will be just fine.  He has two wonderful parents, four wonderful grandparents, and a huge network of friends and family who will be there to help pick him up when he falls.  He will be standing on the shoulders of giants, just as we all were and continue to be.

Though I believe Max’s first word will probably be “mama” or “dada,” selfishly, I cannot wait for the day when he finally gives in and says, “Uncle!”

In order to objectively measure what is normally understood to be subjective concept (“friendship”), we simply add up the number and value of the behaviors that we would engage in for another at a particular moment in time.  Of course, doing so would be a hideous waste of energy (and kind of creepy), but it could theoretically be done.

Ideal relationships (friendship or otherwise) exist when the two lists overlap perfectly, where both parties are equally beholden.  I say “equally beholden” as opposed to “entirely beholden” because relationships can be ideal without being huge emotional investments.  What matters is that two people agree on and bind themselves to equal terms of the relationship, and whether those obligations are particularly difficult to follow through on is entirely beside the point.

Venn Diaphragm (wikipedia.org)

But usually, since life is not often described as fair (as opposed to both “love” and “war”), it seems proper to assume that any understanding of Person1 vis-à-vis Person2 at TimeX contains two lists with columns of uneven lengths and weights.  We are a different sort of friend than our friends are to us.  And since what we do for another — by simple virtue of being a different human being — differs from what that individual would do for us, we begin to understand why Mr. Venn was so keen on inventing his precious Diagram.

Of course, all of this this does not mean that our goal should be to find the greatest number of people who are willing to perform the greatest number of actions for us at any given time.  I am certain that you would rather have a friend that you like meeting for coffee exactly once per week who only likes to meet you for coffee once per week than a friend that you like meeting for coffee once per week who wants to have dinner with you every night.

And vice-versa.

Yet for better or for worse, we are not in a constant state of awareness of the specific nature of our relationships.  I don’t always know specifically what you would be willing to do for me just as you are not always sure what I would do for you.

For non-crazy people, none of this is a problem.

We don’t literally have lists.  We don’t know which list is large or which is small, and we don’t even know which list is bigger (and no amount of time spent in the locker room would aid us in answering this question).  But, because we are human and because we have a reasonably solid sense of the world around us, we are usually vaguely (and sometimes even keenly) aware who is worthy of our attention, and which of our acquaintances would be willing to pick us up from the airport at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Now, this is the point where I feel compelled to admit that the calculation of friendship would actually be much more complicated than the simple construction of a numbered “list.”  Certain behaviors we no doubt value more highly than others.  Allowing a person to borrow your pen certain should be weighed differently than allowing that same person to borrow your car.  Obviously, in any fair calculation, those two circumstances should be weighed differently.  Likewise, telling your friend that it’s okay to date your ex-girlfriend is a completely different situation than telling your friend that it’s okay to date your ex-girlfriend and actually meaning it.

Another glaring weakness of this analysis is that we are never completely aware of the actions we would be willing to take in a particular set of circumstances.  We are quick to criticize bad actors, bystander apathy, and unfaithfulness, but are often ourselves the worthy target of criticism.  Whether we are capable of, for example, standing up for – or commiserating with – a friend is quite easy to believe, but sometimes a little tricky to carry out in practice.

Only if you are lucky are you provided with an opportunity to prove to a friend that you are there for them, that you are a martyr for them — that your list of “woulds” is long and proud!  And as I learned many years ago, one of those “lucky” opportunities to display your martyrdom (a martyrtunity!) could come at any time, even if you find yourself confined within the pock-marked brick walls of French Road Elementary School.

And so in 1992 I learned just how long a list of woulds could go.

You probably know that fourth graders are trained to be Jacks (or Jacquelines) of all trades.  Though the harsh reality is that the vast majority of us were wasting our time – from a purely professional standpoint – in art, music, and gym class, we were nonetheless asked to become at-least-barely-proficient in self-portrait drawing, the glockenspiel, and dodgeball.  (Interestingly, “I hope nobody notices what I’m doing here” is the proper way to make it through all three of these skill sessions.)

First let me start off by pointing out that although this story takes place in an art classroom, my hopes of embarking on an artistic career ended about the same time my literal taste for uncooked macaroni subsided.  Once I was no longer interested in eating the stuff, gluing it to construction paper began to seem like a bit of a chore.

My classmates and I were milling about in art class, learning how to draw faces, or trees, or shadows, or…something with pencils.  And while my usual instinct here is to blame my lack of specificity on a poor memory, the truth is that I am probably as aware now as I was back then about the art topic de jure.

All I know is that pencils were the focal point.  My focal point, anyway.

We were never specifically instructed on the art of keeping pencils sharpened (mostly because it was not — and has never been — an art), but I considered pencil-sharpening my main function in the room that smelled as though a truckload of Crayolas had just detonated.  And I was good, real good.  The trick was knowing exactly how hard to push a standard pencil into the (manual!) sharpener so as to not to damage the critical point.  There is an upper limit on how sharp a pencil can become, and though there were times when I would channel Icarus and sharpen a bit too long or a bit too hard – flying too close to the sun – I was always ready to give it another go.

An artist, if he is to perfect his art, must above all be resilient.

One afternoon, following a particularly fortuitous pencil-sharpening experience, I began my march back to the paint-and-permanent-marker-stained seat I left only minutes earlier.  My friends were waiting for me.  I glided between desks, clutching my prize, a razor-sharp Number 2, stunning graphite point safely tucked inside my tiny fist.  The flesh-toned eraser stuck proudly outward, guiding me towards my destination like a paralyzed compass pointing due north.

And then I crashed, eraser first, directly into a table, cramming the graphite tip unapologetically into my palm.

It hurt, a lot.

Meanwhile, my friend Erik, who witnessed this whole ordeal from start to finish, had — so far as I could tell — a few options.  He could:

1. Offer words of support
2. Offer first aid
3. Offer to escort me to the nurse’s office
4. Offer a knowing joke at my expense

What Erik chose to do, however, in a moment of idyllic solidarity, was quickly find a loose pencil and jam it into his own hand.  Today, though our relationship is best defined by the words, “Facebook friends,” we have matching scars — tiny gray dots in our palms — to remember the time I decided to give up my pencil-sharpening hobby for good.

Since then, though I am certain that I have at least satisfactory number of friends that who would do any number of things for my benefit, I only know for sure of one friend who has ever included on his List of Things That He Would Do, the entry: “Intentionally stab self with pencil.”