Here’s a fun story from high school gym class. I'm hoping it will make the people who read my post for Feb. 13th forgive me for being much less readable when I'm feeling philisopical and logical at the same time.
Please note that the state of Illinois requires (required?) high school students to have four full years of gym class for graduation. That is only relevant in explaining why gym classes in a large high school such as mine were the one place where students from all skill sets and backgrounds found themselves mixing. Otherwise, my high school experience was highly stratified in terms of scholastic ability.
Naturally, this is a story of me being amused by irrational conflict.
In my gym class during my senior year, I got really lucky with my classmates. The vast majority of the time, I had put my gym class in odd places in my schedule to open up other opportunities. By senior year, my obvious gym schedule options were shared by the people who were taking the same specialized classes I was. Put directly, I had a gym class with a bunch of friends.
But it was 20% friends at best. The rest of the class was random people, most of whom I had never met before. The antagonist of this story was just such a person.
She was a friend of a friend. Both she and the friend we shared were on the girl’s cross country team. For reasons I never understood, she decided that I was her enemy.
When I say I don’t understand her reasons, I am being dead serious. I had never spoken to or even noticed the girl until I was told that she hated me. Her hatred was not very well researched, because it eventually became clear that she was under the impression that I was stupid and in immediate danger of failing out of half my classes. She seemed to think I was some sort of Neanderthal whose value system was based entirely on sports. Being in gym class with me should have gone a LONG way towards killing that notion, but it didn’t seem to register to her. It’s not that she wasn’t clever, because she was, but not about this. She was also pretty cute and reasonably popular, so the typical bitterness factors shouldn’t have explained it either. It’s just that somehow, she got a fictional impression of me lodged in her head, and it refused to leave.
Most of her aggression was vented by her telling our shared friend how stupid she thought everything I did or did not do obviously was. This absolutely delighted my friend, whose competitiveness (especially with me) can best be described as “prone to cage-matches.” Emboldened by this illusion of support, my self-proclaimed enemy began going public with her mockery by actively mimicking actions I was taking, exaggerating them to look caveman-esqe.
I thought this was the best thing ever. It is worth noting that I defied description in high school. I’m still impressed with one quirk that I still have, but have learned to hide better. From grade school through to about the 12th grade, I openly found people making fun of me hysterical, so long as it was either clever or ironic. This was highly disconcerting for people trying to pick a fight, because on many separate occasions, people trying to make a fool of me in public had to deal with me laughing hysterically and gasping out that I loved their word choices. Apparently, I was supposed to confirm or deny what was being discussed instead, but I don’t argue with comedians. To me, it’s a waste of happiness.
Anyway, you have to imagine a skinny, cross country girl with a cute ponytail, competitive personality, and utter contempt for my existence mimicking my every move and portraying me to a large crowd of people as a modern caveman. She managed to make me look forward to gym class I was having so much fun laughing at myself/us. This reaction, I believe, made her decide that I was clinically retarded.
Naturally, things escalated over time. Eventually it got to the point where she would actively make caveman “roars” to accompany my athletic actions, especially during team sports. After I noticed the amusing pattern, I started to roar back, which she seemed to find beyond amusing, presumably for different reasons.
Eventually, the curriculum came to a slow-paced sport. During a chunk of bitter cold winter, gym class was confined indoors in the field house. We played ultimate Frisbee. Unlike what we had done so far, indoor ultimate Frisbee was a sport allowing for plenty of banter, and the teams get to freely mix on the court, unlike in, say, volleyball. We had reached the tipping point.
On day three, I intercepted a Frisbee pass from her team, and landed from a jump with a smile on my face and an audible thump as my sneakers hit rubber. She was the person who had thrown the pass, from about 20 feet away. She was not pleased. Since I planned to throw the Frisbee the other way, in her direction, she had plenty of time to close the distance. In a matter of seconds, as I scanned for a pass, she was about five feet in front of me.
She balled her hands into fists, locked her arms straight out at her sides, put both feet firmly down in an open stance, and roared at me.
I roared back, with a huge grin on my face.
She roared right back, louder than before so that half the gym stopped and looked at her.
Suddenly noticing how many people were now staring, I very casually stood up straight, shifted my weight conversationally onto one leg, raised an eyebrow, smiled knowingly, and loudly asked, “Orgasm?”
Five seconds passed in complete, frozen silence.
Then, suddenly, she tilted her head back, clenched both fists so tightly that her knuckles turned white, and shouted at the ceiling, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW!”
I passed to a teammate behind her, and my team moved easily down the court to score.
We turned around, point made, to see her entire team (minus her) literally rolling around on the cold rubber floor in tears, laughing. From across the room, we clearly heard her shout down at them, “THAT’S NOT FUNNY!”
The gym teacher eventually came over to see if the pile of bodies rolling on the floor had something to do with widespread injuries.
From that day forward, the girl never spoke to or about me again. I considered it my loss.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Trust and Love
A question that has been on the minds of philosophers and artists throughout time remains with us today, but in a rare, embattled form. Whereas literature abounds in essays and treatises on the true meaning of romantic love, few practical answers have ever been suggested. Generally, the theme most commonly agreed on today is that love is a powerful force that defies description, but is unmistakable when encountered.
This definition serves well enough in most situations for the simple reason that the idea of mistaking romantic love for something else is generally thought of as laughable. In many regards, this is an acceptable philosophy. Rarely has an exclamation of “I love glazed doughnuts!” inspired romantic jealousy. Similarly, a declaration of “I love you!” is rarely followed by a question of, “What do you mean by that exactly?”
Despite that fact, it remains a compelling question. The general assumption is that love is a sensation shared and defined by the couple experiencing it. Outsiders to a particular relationship are unaware of the depths and sensations of the love that holds it together, though spotting the existence of some form of love is generally assumed to be easy. But is this a reasonable assumption? Can it truly be argued that couples defined by love are bound by a sensation strictly the same for both members? Is it reasonable to think that couples held together by love may in fact be held together by sensations wildly disparate for each member, but complimentary to the union of the pair? If yes, is there a limit to how different these sensations can be before the idea of a shared love seems less credible?
For that matter, the general assumption is that love is an experience reserved for a pair. This is generally accepted as common knowledge, and suggestions to the contrary are alarming to some and infuriating to others. Granted, there are occasional dissenters to this point, but they are widely agreed on as being radical, fantastic, or proponents of an “untrue” love. However, even those willing to brand as radical those who believe love can extend beyond a couple are likely to admit that they have had numerous loves over the span of their lives. Given that, the definition is not that love is reserved for a set couple, but instead that love is reserved for one set couple at a time.
Taken individually, none of these minor questions pose much threat to common thoughts on love. However, as a group, they have the potential to raise troubling questions about the fundamental assumptions held about what is generally regarded as a universal, desirable phenomenon.
Take for example the idea that a couple is capable of holding member-specific sensations of love. This seems reasonable for the simple fact that, given that a couple contains two separate people, they must be – in the very least – capable of loving aspects of the partner not found in themselves. However, taken to extremes, this leaves open the idea that a couple can love each other on the basis of wild disparities in personality that do not lend themselves to traditional definitions of love. One partner can love the sensation of having complete control over the other – conscious or not – while the submissive partner loves the sensation of security this may or may not bring. Such imbalances of power can open the door to questions of manipulation or the concept of one party taking advantage of the other. Should such a situation exist, and if it does not lessen the sensations drawing a couple together, is the relationship held together any less by love? Is this chasm in the sensations of love within the pair still supportive of a love compatible with more traditional thoughts on love? If not, what holds such couples together?
The second question raised is that of romantic love existing in only one location, per person, per moment. For many, this notion is the cornerstone of the definition of love. But how stable a foundation is this? It seems logical that if one strongly feels that love can be felt for only one person at a time, then the idea of “lingering feelings” for a former lover are based on something that is not love. What then is this? Is this an experience unique to only a small portion of the population? And if so, does this then essentially require that a remarried widow or widower fall out of love with his or her deceased spouse before the idea of remarrying for love is conceivable?
Debate on this point is sure to exist. However, I feel that a compelling case can be made for the idea that, no, a person may continue to love a former spouse long after he or she has been taken and another lover has assumed a comparable place in the mind of the survivor.
If debate on this point is even accepted as existing, then a troubling corollary rises immediately in its shadow. Does one member of a couple have to die for the survivor’s love to be reassigned? If not, what form of distance must be attained for the idea to be widely accepted? And what name is to be given for the sensation felt if a long-removed, yet ever-dear lover should reappear to find a new couple established?
If the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” is assumed to be true, then the answer is obvious. The person whose love is unexpectedly shared by two people both with respectable claims is forced to announce – relatively quickly – where his or her true love lies.
Let us assume – for the moment – that this is the natural order of things. We then accept that one couple will form (or continue to exist) from this mix of three people and that the unfortunate third party is out of luck. Does this unfortunate turn of events mean that the love of the “extra” third party is now a lesser form of love? In agreeing that this is the case, a troubling issue arises. The love the third person feels is likely exactly the same love that it was before the decision. That is, the love that society fully supported before the unexpected reunion has suddenly – by an outside force – been decreed a lesser, undesirable form of love. If the lover rejected is the newest lover, then the love felt as recent as a day ago becomes undesirable purely from circumstance. If the lover rejected is the elder of the two, then the fidelity of the older lover despite circumstance is actually used as the force bringing criticism to his or her continued attachment.
Is either of these possibilities, fantastic as they are, an acceptable scenario in the modern definition of love? Or is the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” really a cover for an emotion or impulse separate from love itself?
Similarly, is unrequited love any less love for its lack of reciprocity?
Should the answer to either of these questions deviate from the most common answers – should “one couple, per place, per time, per person” be simply overwhelmingly common instead of outright necessary or unrequited love be thought of as love all the same – then the modern definition of love is unstable and insufficient.
What then is missing? Perhaps the most reasonable approach to answering this question is less than rigorously logical. In its essence, the “common” definition of love seems to deal entirely with passions felt and for whom. The unstated, missing part then seems to be what makes that a tenable position. Simply stated, love is presented as a force holding couples, families, and society together at the basest level. If it is nothing more than a matter of overpowering passion, this supposedly cohesive force would likely do more damage than good.
The missing piece of the definition must be a stabilizing element. Further, it must be a stabilizing element that explains how, on some level, we have sympathy for the passions of those who experience loves less tenable than others.
In its essence, this missing piece must be based on trust. Initially, this seems to be something of a logical leap. However, the core point is simply that there is a mutual hope and understanding between lovers that the passion of the other is compatible with their own best interests or desires. As passionate love is without logical basis or contractual obligation, this simple stabilizing assumption can be reduced to nothing so much as a sensation of trust.
Couples for whom the sensations of love are different within their match trust that the impulses and desires of their partner do not conflict with their own – regardless of how baffling this estimation may be to society at large.
The couple is overwhelmingly the base unit of love not because it is necessary, but rather because it is overwhelmingly the point from which estimations of mutual goals, trust, and reliance can be judged. Jealousy can be thought of as simply the mind of a lover interpreting the actions of his or her love as serving another individual or individuals above regard for the viewing lover. If there are no other individuals who can be thought of as relying on the trust of one’s lover, one can feel completely secure in having all available love, all available trust, to one’s self.
Similarly, while there may be nothing more than habit mandating the notion of “one lover, per place, per time, per person,” it is inarguably the simplest arrangement of lovers to ensure that the foundation of trust is secure. As such, it certainly deserves respect as a conservative and safe position from which to feel love. Despite this, it seems that the only reason that it must be held by individuals as the only respectable form is simply that to imply otherwise may unwittingly imply to current or future lovers (or even to one’s self) that one has not yet found all that one is looking for. To do that, even unknowingly, is to undermine the foundation of trust backing love in the first place.
If a hypothetical argument – that love for one person only is not necessarily the highest form of love – offends or alarms the reader, then it seems safe to assume that the reader has more than enough passion fuelling his or her love, and that that love is more than secure by the broad, modern, passion-based definition. However, the potential sense of alarm or anger calls into question just how impervious to attack the underlying stability – the trust basis, if you will – of passion-based love really is.
It should be a harmless enough thought exercise, at least, to stop and ponder hypothetical (or more familiar) transgressions in love. Are they in fact violations of passion? Or are they rather violations of trust or security? Perhaps they may be both. But if that is the case, is the loss of passion the result of a loss of trust? Or is the loss of trust the result of an assumed loss of passion? Perhaps there is some truth to be had in the idea that a loss of one will almost certainly bring about a loss in the other.
If this is the case, then how necessary are most of the conventions of love? For that matter, is it sensible to establish any unrealistic or self-defeating basis of trust for a lover without directly viewing such an arrangement as an inevitable affront to their passion?
This definition serves well enough in most situations for the simple reason that the idea of mistaking romantic love for something else is generally thought of as laughable. In many regards, this is an acceptable philosophy. Rarely has an exclamation of “I love glazed doughnuts!” inspired romantic jealousy. Similarly, a declaration of “I love you!” is rarely followed by a question of, “What do you mean by that exactly?”
Despite that fact, it remains a compelling question. The general assumption is that love is a sensation shared and defined by the couple experiencing it. Outsiders to a particular relationship are unaware of the depths and sensations of the love that holds it together, though spotting the existence of some form of love is generally assumed to be easy. But is this a reasonable assumption? Can it truly be argued that couples defined by love are bound by a sensation strictly the same for both members? Is it reasonable to think that couples held together by love may in fact be held together by sensations wildly disparate for each member, but complimentary to the union of the pair? If yes, is there a limit to how different these sensations can be before the idea of a shared love seems less credible?
For that matter, the general assumption is that love is an experience reserved for a pair. This is generally accepted as common knowledge, and suggestions to the contrary are alarming to some and infuriating to others. Granted, there are occasional dissenters to this point, but they are widely agreed on as being radical, fantastic, or proponents of an “untrue” love. However, even those willing to brand as radical those who believe love can extend beyond a couple are likely to admit that they have had numerous loves over the span of their lives. Given that, the definition is not that love is reserved for a set couple, but instead that love is reserved for one set couple at a time.
Taken individually, none of these minor questions pose much threat to common thoughts on love. However, as a group, they have the potential to raise troubling questions about the fundamental assumptions held about what is generally regarded as a universal, desirable phenomenon.
Take for example the idea that a couple is capable of holding member-specific sensations of love. This seems reasonable for the simple fact that, given that a couple contains two separate people, they must be – in the very least – capable of loving aspects of the partner not found in themselves. However, taken to extremes, this leaves open the idea that a couple can love each other on the basis of wild disparities in personality that do not lend themselves to traditional definitions of love. One partner can love the sensation of having complete control over the other – conscious or not – while the submissive partner loves the sensation of security this may or may not bring. Such imbalances of power can open the door to questions of manipulation or the concept of one party taking advantage of the other. Should such a situation exist, and if it does not lessen the sensations drawing a couple together, is the relationship held together any less by love? Is this chasm in the sensations of love within the pair still supportive of a love compatible with more traditional thoughts on love? If not, what holds such couples together?
The second question raised is that of romantic love existing in only one location, per person, per moment. For many, this notion is the cornerstone of the definition of love. But how stable a foundation is this? It seems logical that if one strongly feels that love can be felt for only one person at a time, then the idea of “lingering feelings” for a former lover are based on something that is not love. What then is this? Is this an experience unique to only a small portion of the population? And if so, does this then essentially require that a remarried widow or widower fall out of love with his or her deceased spouse before the idea of remarrying for love is conceivable?
Debate on this point is sure to exist. However, I feel that a compelling case can be made for the idea that, no, a person may continue to love a former spouse long after he or she has been taken and another lover has assumed a comparable place in the mind of the survivor.
If debate on this point is even accepted as existing, then a troubling corollary rises immediately in its shadow. Does one member of a couple have to die for the survivor’s love to be reassigned? If not, what form of distance must be attained for the idea to be widely accepted? And what name is to be given for the sensation felt if a long-removed, yet ever-dear lover should reappear to find a new couple established?
If the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” is assumed to be true, then the answer is obvious. The person whose love is unexpectedly shared by two people both with respectable claims is forced to announce – relatively quickly – where his or her true love lies.
Let us assume – for the moment – that this is the natural order of things. We then accept that one couple will form (or continue to exist) from this mix of three people and that the unfortunate third party is out of luck. Does this unfortunate turn of events mean that the love of the “extra” third party is now a lesser form of love? In agreeing that this is the case, a troubling issue arises. The love the third person feels is likely exactly the same love that it was before the decision. That is, the love that society fully supported before the unexpected reunion has suddenly – by an outside force – been decreed a lesser, undesirable form of love. If the lover rejected is the newest lover, then the love felt as recent as a day ago becomes undesirable purely from circumstance. If the lover rejected is the elder of the two, then the fidelity of the older lover despite circumstance is actually used as the force bringing criticism to his or her continued attachment.
Is either of these possibilities, fantastic as they are, an acceptable scenario in the modern definition of love? Or is the idea of “one couple, per time, per place, per person” really a cover for an emotion or impulse separate from love itself?
Similarly, is unrequited love any less love for its lack of reciprocity?
Should the answer to either of these questions deviate from the most common answers – should “one couple, per place, per time, per person” be simply overwhelmingly common instead of outright necessary or unrequited love be thought of as love all the same – then the modern definition of love is unstable and insufficient.
What then is missing? Perhaps the most reasonable approach to answering this question is less than rigorously logical. In its essence, the “common” definition of love seems to deal entirely with passions felt and for whom. The unstated, missing part then seems to be what makes that a tenable position. Simply stated, love is presented as a force holding couples, families, and society together at the basest level. If it is nothing more than a matter of overpowering passion, this supposedly cohesive force would likely do more damage than good.
The missing piece of the definition must be a stabilizing element. Further, it must be a stabilizing element that explains how, on some level, we have sympathy for the passions of those who experience loves less tenable than others.
In its essence, this missing piece must be based on trust. Initially, this seems to be something of a logical leap. However, the core point is simply that there is a mutual hope and understanding between lovers that the passion of the other is compatible with their own best interests or desires. As passionate love is without logical basis or contractual obligation, this simple stabilizing assumption can be reduced to nothing so much as a sensation of trust.
Couples for whom the sensations of love are different within their match trust that the impulses and desires of their partner do not conflict with their own – regardless of how baffling this estimation may be to society at large.
The couple is overwhelmingly the base unit of love not because it is necessary, but rather because it is overwhelmingly the point from which estimations of mutual goals, trust, and reliance can be judged. Jealousy can be thought of as simply the mind of a lover interpreting the actions of his or her love as serving another individual or individuals above regard for the viewing lover. If there are no other individuals who can be thought of as relying on the trust of one’s lover, one can feel completely secure in having all available love, all available trust, to one’s self.
Similarly, while there may be nothing more than habit mandating the notion of “one lover, per place, per time, per person,” it is inarguably the simplest arrangement of lovers to ensure that the foundation of trust is secure. As such, it certainly deserves respect as a conservative and safe position from which to feel love. Despite this, it seems that the only reason that it must be held by individuals as the only respectable form is simply that to imply otherwise may unwittingly imply to current or future lovers (or even to one’s self) that one has not yet found all that one is looking for. To do that, even unknowingly, is to undermine the foundation of trust backing love in the first place.
If a hypothetical argument – that love for one person only is not necessarily the highest form of love – offends or alarms the reader, then it seems safe to assume that the reader has more than enough passion fuelling his or her love, and that that love is more than secure by the broad, modern, passion-based definition. However, the potential sense of alarm or anger calls into question just how impervious to attack the underlying stability – the trust basis, if you will – of passion-based love really is.
It should be a harmless enough thought exercise, at least, to stop and ponder hypothetical (or more familiar) transgressions in love. Are they in fact violations of passion? Or are they rather violations of trust or security? Perhaps they may be both. But if that is the case, is the loss of passion the result of a loss of trust? Or is the loss of trust the result of an assumed loss of passion? Perhaps there is some truth to be had in the idea that a loss of one will almost certainly bring about a loss in the other.
If this is the case, then how necessary are most of the conventions of love? For that matter, is it sensible to establish any unrealistic or self-defeating basis of trust for a lover without directly viewing such an arrangement as an inevitable affront to their passion?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Metaphorical Description of the Development of the Capacity for Love
I wrote this some time ago. When I first wrote it, I opened with a preface that claimed it was a two-part story. I pointed out that part one would probably be unpopular. Because of that, part two would sound insulting if for no other reason than that it’s posed as a sequel to part one. It still is a two part story. And the same relationship will probably be true. Feel free to voice your own opinion.
Part One.
In their youth, people are flexible and impressionable creatures. It’s a miracle that children ever manage to make it out of the sandbox without having killed each other with plastic shovels over arguments about candy, killing bugs, building castles, and making mud pies. But, by some freak chance of evolution, the miracle happens more often than not. The kids DO make it out of the sandboxes, leave the shovels behind, and move on to kicking the crap out of each other with much more dangerous weapons.
Strangely, it’s all uphill from there. All of childhood is spent learning how and how not to deal with other people. From such simple lessons as “stealing will make you enemies” to “being nice will make you friends,” slowly but surely, kids learn that other people exist to do more than please them. Or, in the very least, some of the more gifted kids manage that lesson.
Then puberty hits and replays the whole drama. It’s basically the same story as childhood. People suddenly have to come to terms with the fact that people are attracted to and must interact with other people in new and often disturbing ways that didn’t exist before. At first, it is a complete mystery to most that those other people do not exist solely for their own pleasure. It seems instinctively obvious that other people are sex objects. The idea that they might see the world differently is generally about as clear to the inexperienced person as the difference between a sandcastle and a mud pie was in the sandbox. Back then, intense dramas played out when the bully thought that the sand making up the castle would make an excellent mud pie. And he was right. Just not in the eyes of the person who built the sandcastle. But it took an awful lot of sandcastles being built for everyone to realize that the mud pie turns back into a sandcastle just as easily as it turned into the mud pie the day before. The only real secret was picking friends who either liked mud pies, or friends who liked sand castles.
When the sandbox arena grows to include sex/love though, everyone is quick to notice that there are a LOT more possible ingredients to work with than just sand and water. This time though, experience and society have already been so good as to inform everyone that the secret is just to find proper teammates. But society inevitably is either too vague, or worse, too restricting, to actually provide a helpful answer on what too look for in teammates. As a result, picking the “friends” to build castles, mud pies, whatever, can be a very, very complicated process. But it doesn’t go any faster being shy.
Part Two.
Weeding out most of the bad teammate choices is pretty easy. They never even present themselves. The sandbox is plenty big enough to make playing with everyone not only unnecessary, but impossible.
And with a few encounters, it even becomes pretty easy to notice that maybe you just don’t get a rush feeling the squishy mud when making mud pies.
So you get bored with mud pies and just hang out with the castle makers from then on. Pretty soon you’ll start to notice that maybe even most castle makers are boring unless they like having a good set of turrets.
And then, as you get even more experience, you start to realize that even turret makers are kinda predictable unless they’re prone to add a good tower.
Right about then, courtyard design becomes fascinating.
Eventually, everything just seems unfinished without a moat.
And by the time the moat is dug and filled, you find that either you’ve just set up a life-sized, fully functional castle with possibly as small as a duo team…
…Or you’ve built yourself an excellent private fortress.
I have a lot of faith in two things. 1) You can’t rush building your castle, simply because you don’t know what it will look like until you finish it. Since it might eventually be a house for two, it would be wise to build it with space for both occupants. 2) If you try to rush build it anyway, you just end up with a small fortress that neatly anticipates the needs of its one designer but frightens everyone else away.
Part One.
In their youth, people are flexible and impressionable creatures. It’s a miracle that children ever manage to make it out of the sandbox without having killed each other with plastic shovels over arguments about candy, killing bugs, building castles, and making mud pies. But, by some freak chance of evolution, the miracle happens more often than not. The kids DO make it out of the sandboxes, leave the shovels behind, and move on to kicking the crap out of each other with much more dangerous weapons.
Strangely, it’s all uphill from there. All of childhood is spent learning how and how not to deal with other people. From such simple lessons as “stealing will make you enemies” to “being nice will make you friends,” slowly but surely, kids learn that other people exist to do more than please them. Or, in the very least, some of the more gifted kids manage that lesson.
Then puberty hits and replays the whole drama. It’s basically the same story as childhood. People suddenly have to come to terms with the fact that people are attracted to and must interact with other people in new and often disturbing ways that didn’t exist before. At first, it is a complete mystery to most that those other people do not exist solely for their own pleasure. It seems instinctively obvious that other people are sex objects. The idea that they might see the world differently is generally about as clear to the inexperienced person as the difference between a sandcastle and a mud pie was in the sandbox. Back then, intense dramas played out when the bully thought that the sand making up the castle would make an excellent mud pie. And he was right. Just not in the eyes of the person who built the sandcastle. But it took an awful lot of sandcastles being built for everyone to realize that the mud pie turns back into a sandcastle just as easily as it turned into the mud pie the day before. The only real secret was picking friends who either liked mud pies, or friends who liked sand castles.
When the sandbox arena grows to include sex/love though, everyone is quick to notice that there are a LOT more possible ingredients to work with than just sand and water. This time though, experience and society have already been so good as to inform everyone that the secret is just to find proper teammates. But society inevitably is either too vague, or worse, too restricting, to actually provide a helpful answer on what too look for in teammates. As a result, picking the “friends” to build castles, mud pies, whatever, can be a very, very complicated process. But it doesn’t go any faster being shy.
Part Two.
Weeding out most of the bad teammate choices is pretty easy. They never even present themselves. The sandbox is plenty big enough to make playing with everyone not only unnecessary, but impossible.
And with a few encounters, it even becomes pretty easy to notice that maybe you just don’t get a rush feeling the squishy mud when making mud pies.
So you get bored with mud pies and just hang out with the castle makers from then on. Pretty soon you’ll start to notice that maybe even most castle makers are boring unless they like having a good set of turrets.
And then, as you get even more experience, you start to realize that even turret makers are kinda predictable unless they’re prone to add a good tower.
Right about then, courtyard design becomes fascinating.
Eventually, everything just seems unfinished without a moat.
And by the time the moat is dug and filled, you find that either you’ve just set up a life-sized, fully functional castle with possibly as small as a duo team…
…Or you’ve built yourself an excellent private fortress.
I have a lot of faith in two things. 1) You can’t rush building your castle, simply because you don’t know what it will look like until you finish it. Since it might eventually be a house for two, it would be wise to build it with space for both occupants. 2) If you try to rush build it anyway, you just end up with a small fortress that neatly anticipates the needs of its one designer but frightens everyone else away.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
EtOH
One of the things that even my closest friends overwhelmingly dislike about me is my almost complete aversion to alcohol. Paired with a nearly-perfect obliviousness to all forms of peer pressure, this can be distressing for more active devotees.
I wasn’t always like that. I gave the sauce a pretty fair chance, all told. In fact, though it’s currently all but unheard of for me to bother, my favorite drink is a dry, dirty gin martini. Not exactly a Shirley Temple.
Here’s the thing though. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I enjoy the martini because it has a somewhat interesting feel in my mouth and it has a pleasant “salty olive” taste to it. I can spend unexpectedly long periods of time pooling sips of that drink in my tongue and inhaling over it, trying to get used to the odd sensation that comes with the solvation of my lungs. (If you were skeptical of my claim of being oblivious to peer pressure, let’s just say that I have spent hours not seeing anything that made me want to stop “breathing” my martini in the middle of crowded parties.)
That said, I also have more than enough knowledge of chemistry and cellular biology to explain how getting drunk works. Oh, and I know that alcohol, ethanol, EtOH are the same thing. Excepting that “alcohol” means a beverage, “ethanol” means a fuel additive, and “EtOH” refers to a cleaning solvent (as they are most commonly used).
Let’s call the debate of “to drink, or not to drink” a tie so far, just to prolong discussion.
To explain why I stopped drinking, given all that, we have to turn to my personal experience. Before we get into details of that, I’ll tell a story from college.
At college, I had a few friends who secretly felt that I did not spend nearly enough time in severely altered states. I had a good friend who thought that cough syrup made for an excellent high, until one night he vomited up a large quantity of Robitussin on his white sneakers and dyed them pink. Nobody likes pink sneakers, unless you have to choose between them and practical-minded engineer-types.
Anyway, this friend and another friend of his decided to find out what I would be like roaring drunk, so they decided to make it happen. They knew that I would be unlikely to go along with this goal as written, so they decided not to give me a vote in the matter.
The close friend dabbled in pottery and because of this had a large selection of opaque, very-oddly shaped drinking glasses around. The capacity of such a glass, on average, was about two cans of soda. But because of shape issues, you would tend to guess that it was the size of one can, at best. Anyway, the two of them sat me down with a glass full of ice in my hand, poured me an amaretto on the rocks, and got me telling a story in which I had strong, amusing opinions. The point was basically to keep me distracted as they continually refreshed my drink when I wasn’t paying attention. Their plan half worked. I thought I had about a half glass of the stuff when in reality I was pushing half a bottle in half an hour.
But I said the plan half worked. After half an hour, the friend asked me if I was feeling ok. I said that I was fine and asked why. I was told that with all the sneaking me drinks, the two friends had become unaware of the amount of liquor they were slipping me until one of them remembered that the bottle had started out full and I was the only one drinking it. After thinking about that, they decided to cut me off.
I was mildly concerned, but had actually not noticed anything unusual. I felt fine, but slightly warm. The larger group was getting ready to leave to go out, and I went along. On the sidewalk, we ran into a guy who was then in charge of the Residence Hall Association, in which I was then a President. The guy wanted to have a long serious conversation with me right then and there on the sidewalk. I told my drunken friends to go on without me, because I was somewhat concerned about them making an intoxicated scene if I kept them waiting. It occurred to me that I was the drunkest person in the crowd according to the sheer math of it, but decided I was already caught in the trap and would just have to see how it went.
Twenty minutes later, he left and I rushed off to catch up with my friends. The conversation with him had gone about the same as any conversation I ever had with the man, and he clearly had not noticed anything unusual. I say this because 1) the man was the biggest power-hungry NARC I have ever met, 2) he took delight in busting anyone for anything, esp. drinking/drug use irregularities – a skill he was very good at, 3) he hated me personally and professionally for disagreeing not only with his policies but also with his methods, 4) he had voiced a desire to uncover anything suspicious in me to several of my friends “in confidence,” and 5) I noticed with some surprise that despite the amount I had had to drink, the only change in my outlook seemed to be that I felt a little warm.
I never got any “drunker.” On certain rare occasions, I have had to consciously “correct” my balance when walking. The thing of it is, I always succeed and no one ever notices a change. I used to routinely have two strong-version long island iced teas in a bar, leave, and then run into random friends who (on the way home) would accuse me of being cold sober. Similarly, the only change in my behavior as I get more drunk is a growing fascination with correcting that development. I start to drink massive volumes of alcohol-free liquids. This, paired with the fact that just using mouthwash is enough alcohol exposure to make me have to pee incessantly means that I then just spend the rest of my evening in the restroom. Logically, there is a point at which I would lose my ability to keep full (or any) control. But 1) I have no interest in getting there on any level and 2) if I did, I’d have instinctively hidden myself away somewhere to deal with it as a problem I needed to fix.
None of that makes for me being more interesting at parties. In fact, it makes me look like an anti-social loser with bladder control issues. Further, drinking has always resulted in me having significantly less fun if I notice anything at all.
Many people hear this and reply, “That just means you haven’t had enough to drink!” But here’s the thing. I have provided here the well-established trends describing how I respond to alcohol. I am not bashful about sharing those trends, even though I am aware they are extremely atypical. Even so, faced with those facts, even reasonable people will reflexively spout the above conclusion. No, really, consider the facts again. Your conclusion is not implied. I have more respect for the conclusion of, “Maybe you just need to relax/let go.” However, that’s the sort of comment that comes from people who don’t know me very well. When you get right down to it, there’s not much left in life that I didn’t start laughing about from all perspectives a very long time ago.
In a nutshell, after years of pondering all that, I have arrived at the point where when someone says, “You need a drink!” I reply with, “Why?” It’s a friendly “Why?” until I’m ignored as I prove that I know perfectly well that drinking would make me less happy and interesting for the fourth time.
I know drinking is a major social convention (here). And I know that a great majority of people enjoy it (here). But given that I don’t, why on Earth would I want to?
I wasn’t always like that. I gave the sauce a pretty fair chance, all told. In fact, though it’s currently all but unheard of for me to bother, my favorite drink is a dry, dirty gin martini. Not exactly a Shirley Temple.
Here’s the thing though. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I enjoy the martini because it has a somewhat interesting feel in my mouth and it has a pleasant “salty olive” taste to it. I can spend unexpectedly long periods of time pooling sips of that drink in my tongue and inhaling over it, trying to get used to the odd sensation that comes with the solvation of my lungs. (If you were skeptical of my claim of being oblivious to peer pressure, let’s just say that I have spent hours not seeing anything that made me want to stop “breathing” my martini in the middle of crowded parties.)
That said, I also have more than enough knowledge of chemistry and cellular biology to explain how getting drunk works. Oh, and I know that alcohol, ethanol, EtOH are the same thing. Excepting that “alcohol” means a beverage, “ethanol” means a fuel additive, and “EtOH” refers to a cleaning solvent (as they are most commonly used).
Let’s call the debate of “to drink, or not to drink” a tie so far, just to prolong discussion.
To explain why I stopped drinking, given all that, we have to turn to my personal experience. Before we get into details of that, I’ll tell a story from college.
At college, I had a few friends who secretly felt that I did not spend nearly enough time in severely altered states. I had a good friend who thought that cough syrup made for an excellent high, until one night he vomited up a large quantity of Robitussin on his white sneakers and dyed them pink. Nobody likes pink sneakers, unless you have to choose between them and practical-minded engineer-types.
Anyway, this friend and another friend of his decided to find out what I would be like roaring drunk, so they decided to make it happen. They knew that I would be unlikely to go along with this goal as written, so they decided not to give me a vote in the matter.
The close friend dabbled in pottery and because of this had a large selection of opaque, very-oddly shaped drinking glasses around. The capacity of such a glass, on average, was about two cans of soda. But because of shape issues, you would tend to guess that it was the size of one can, at best. Anyway, the two of them sat me down with a glass full of ice in my hand, poured me an amaretto on the rocks, and got me telling a story in which I had strong, amusing opinions. The point was basically to keep me distracted as they continually refreshed my drink when I wasn’t paying attention. Their plan half worked. I thought I had about a half glass of the stuff when in reality I was pushing half a bottle in half an hour.
But I said the plan half worked. After half an hour, the friend asked me if I was feeling ok. I said that I was fine and asked why. I was told that with all the sneaking me drinks, the two friends had become unaware of the amount of liquor they were slipping me until one of them remembered that the bottle had started out full and I was the only one drinking it. After thinking about that, they decided to cut me off.
I was mildly concerned, but had actually not noticed anything unusual. I felt fine, but slightly warm. The larger group was getting ready to leave to go out, and I went along. On the sidewalk, we ran into a guy who was then in charge of the Residence Hall Association, in which I was then a President. The guy wanted to have a long serious conversation with me right then and there on the sidewalk. I told my drunken friends to go on without me, because I was somewhat concerned about them making an intoxicated scene if I kept them waiting. It occurred to me that I was the drunkest person in the crowd according to the sheer math of it, but decided I was already caught in the trap and would just have to see how it went.
Twenty minutes later, he left and I rushed off to catch up with my friends. The conversation with him had gone about the same as any conversation I ever had with the man, and he clearly had not noticed anything unusual. I say this because 1) the man was the biggest power-hungry NARC I have ever met, 2) he took delight in busting anyone for anything, esp. drinking/drug use irregularities – a skill he was very good at, 3) he hated me personally and professionally for disagreeing not only with his policies but also with his methods, 4) he had voiced a desire to uncover anything suspicious in me to several of my friends “in confidence,” and 5) I noticed with some surprise that despite the amount I had had to drink, the only change in my outlook seemed to be that I felt a little warm.
I never got any “drunker.” On certain rare occasions, I have had to consciously “correct” my balance when walking. The thing of it is, I always succeed and no one ever notices a change. I used to routinely have two strong-version long island iced teas in a bar, leave, and then run into random friends who (on the way home) would accuse me of being cold sober. Similarly, the only change in my behavior as I get more drunk is a growing fascination with correcting that development. I start to drink massive volumes of alcohol-free liquids. This, paired with the fact that just using mouthwash is enough alcohol exposure to make me have to pee incessantly means that I then just spend the rest of my evening in the restroom. Logically, there is a point at which I would lose my ability to keep full (or any) control. But 1) I have no interest in getting there on any level and 2) if I did, I’d have instinctively hidden myself away somewhere to deal with it as a problem I needed to fix.
None of that makes for me being more interesting at parties. In fact, it makes me look like an anti-social loser with bladder control issues. Further, drinking has always resulted in me having significantly less fun if I notice anything at all.
Many people hear this and reply, “That just means you haven’t had enough to drink!” But here’s the thing. I have provided here the well-established trends describing how I respond to alcohol. I am not bashful about sharing those trends, even though I am aware they are extremely atypical. Even so, faced with those facts, even reasonable people will reflexively spout the above conclusion. No, really, consider the facts again. Your conclusion is not implied. I have more respect for the conclusion of, “Maybe you just need to relax/let go.” However, that’s the sort of comment that comes from people who don’t know me very well. When you get right down to it, there’s not much left in life that I didn’t start laughing about from all perspectives a very long time ago.
In a nutshell, after years of pondering all that, I have arrived at the point where when someone says, “You need a drink!” I reply with, “Why?” It’s a friendly “Why?” until I’m ignored as I prove that I know perfectly well that drinking would make me less happy and interesting for the fourth time.
I know drinking is a major social convention (here). And I know that a great majority of people enjoy it (here). But given that I don’t, why on Earth would I want to?
Friday, February 9, 2007
"Bunghole" Is Actually a Real Word
I did not find the sport of debate remotely intriguing in high school. Or college. And I rarely find it interesting in its most used forms, especially those seen on the news.
I argue that the reason is that I am too literal-minded. I have very little interest in debate about topics that cannot be proven one way or another. In such cases, I reduce arguments down to to which side appears to be advocating a position that would prove the debate one way or the other, esp. if their efforts appear even-minded enough to possibly prove their original idea wrong, thus allowing everyone to move on.
That sort of philosophy does not lend itself well to debate as a scored competition. Let me give you an example of a recent “debate” that I was forced into during my job.
Backstory: While most of my job is predictable, I end up with occasional random tasks that would otherwise never cross my desk. If everyone else in my building has failed to solve a problem, no matter how silly or simple it might be, it is given to me to decide. This recently reared its head after three people had failed to obtain a drum adapter that would allow us to transfer material into and out of a new style of drum. The project was simple. My manager said, “I am going to forward you about 15 emails from people trying to find an adapter for these drums. They all failed for reasons which may be good or bad. I don’t care why they failed. Here are all the adapters they have tried. Please be the guy who makes it work, preferably without sending me more emails.”
Anyway, I get on the phone with some people and discover a rich backstory behind how we arrived at the current debate. It would make for dry reading, so we’ll skip over it. I’ll just say that it makes it clear why so many people could be confident in a wide variety of opinions about a yes or no question (“Does this adapter fit?”) without being overwhelmingly a group of morons.
Anyway, I end up on the phone with a sales rep after narrowing my search down to a few possible solutions. See if you can spot why I should not enter debate tournaments.
Sales Rep: “The two inch bung (drum hole) size refers to a hole that’s two and three quarters of an inch in diameter.”
Me: “Really? Interesting. Let me check, since I have one right here. Hmm. No, this two inch bung is clearly exactly two inches, since I am measuring it right now. I do have one of your adapters that is about that size, though.”
Sales Rep: “No, that’s impossible. There are no two-inch bungs that are less than two and three quarters of an inch wide. That’s how you can tell a two-inch bung.”
Me: “I’m holding a two inch bung right now as we speak.”
Sales Rep: “No one makes those. Is it a foreign drum?”
Me: “[pause, as I decide that there is no reason to pursue that line of thought] Hmmm. Not sure. But hey, let’s talk about something else. I see that you offer three types of bung adapters for this type of drum. I notice the one we bought looks wider than this other one. How would you describe the diameter of [model number] in relation to that other adapter?”
Sales Rep: “The one you have is wider. [model number]’s are for smaller bungs.”
Me: “Please send me one of the [model number]s to try out.”
Sales Rep: “Is that for some other kind of drum you’re interested in trying to use instead of the foreign drums you have now?”
Me: “Yes.”
I argue that the reason is that I am too literal-minded. I have very little interest in debate about topics that cannot be proven one way or another. In such cases, I reduce arguments down to to which side appears to be advocating a position that would prove the debate one way or the other, esp. if their efforts appear even-minded enough to possibly prove their original idea wrong, thus allowing everyone to move on.
That sort of philosophy does not lend itself well to debate as a scored competition. Let me give you an example of a recent “debate” that I was forced into during my job.
Backstory: While most of my job is predictable, I end up with occasional random tasks that would otherwise never cross my desk. If everyone else in my building has failed to solve a problem, no matter how silly or simple it might be, it is given to me to decide. This recently reared its head after three people had failed to obtain a drum adapter that would allow us to transfer material into and out of a new style of drum. The project was simple. My manager said, “I am going to forward you about 15 emails from people trying to find an adapter for these drums. They all failed for reasons which may be good or bad. I don’t care why they failed. Here are all the adapters they have tried. Please be the guy who makes it work, preferably without sending me more emails.”
Anyway, I get on the phone with some people and discover a rich backstory behind how we arrived at the current debate. It would make for dry reading, so we’ll skip over it. I’ll just say that it makes it clear why so many people could be confident in a wide variety of opinions about a yes or no question (“Does this adapter fit?”) without being overwhelmingly a group of morons.
Anyway, I end up on the phone with a sales rep after narrowing my search down to a few possible solutions. See if you can spot why I should not enter debate tournaments.
Sales Rep: “The two inch bung (drum hole) size refers to a hole that’s two and three quarters of an inch in diameter.”
Me: “Really? Interesting. Let me check, since I have one right here. Hmm. No, this two inch bung is clearly exactly two inches, since I am measuring it right now. I do have one of your adapters that is about that size, though.”
Sales Rep: “No, that’s impossible. There are no two-inch bungs that are less than two and three quarters of an inch wide. That’s how you can tell a two-inch bung.”
Me: “I’m holding a two inch bung right now as we speak.”
Sales Rep: “No one makes those. Is it a foreign drum?”
Me: “[pause, as I decide that there is no reason to pursue that line of thought] Hmmm. Not sure. But hey, let’s talk about something else. I see that you offer three types of bung adapters for this type of drum. I notice the one we bought looks wider than this other one. How would you describe the diameter of [model number] in relation to that other adapter?”
Sales Rep: “The one you have is wider. [model number]’s are for smaller bungs.”
Me: “Please send me one of the [model number]s to try out.”
Sales Rep: “Is that for some other kind of drum you’re interested in trying to use instead of the foreign drums you have now?”
Me: “Yes.”
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Standardized Fittings
Here’s a party story I tell. Note that, like many of my favorite stories, it actively invites the listener to decide if I am making fun of myself, or if I’m an arrogant prig who hates all other people. I always come down on the side of “I like to make fun of myself” in such debates. Virtually all of the rest of humanity insists that, no, actually, I’m an arrogant prig. I try to rationalize that disconnect with this observation: "If my stories don't make it seem like I’m making fun of myself -- if they seem to be serious -- then the only logical conclusion is that the rest of humanity is doomed." I say that anyone who decides to come down agreeing with something like that is over-thinking things and isn’t considering many obvious exceptions. One such obvious exception is that humanity has not yet been successfully doomed.
Here’s the story. I tell it to people who hear my job description and say, “Wow, that’s a lot of responsibility for a guy who think ‘personal fashion’ should be interpreted literally!” (Ok, maybe that’s not exactly what they say.)
One noteworthy decision I made as a chemical engineer involved shooting an idea out of the sky. I was approached by a shift supervisor and two chemical operators with a proposal designed to cut down on wasted time and save money. The idea was to standardize our connectors for gas transfers to operate equipment.
Yes, I will explain what that means. My building has three types of gas piped into the process bays.
1) Pure Nitrogen. It is used to create a non-flammable environment over reactors full of flammable chemicals. It stops fires. We like that.
2) Instrument air. It’s the same stuff that we breathe, but it’s at very high pressures. We use it to provide non-electrical power to equipment we don’t want to plug in. We use it to power industrial pumps in process bays where electricity is an invitation to start fires.
3) Breathing air. We hook this stuff up to operator’s respirators. The operator then breathes it in when the area they are entering is especially hazardous. It is literally breathing air pushed in from a room upstairs.
All three of these lines connect to hoses via different connections. You cannot force-fit a connection from one system onto an incompatible piece of equipment.
The idea I shot down was this: The group approached me and suggested we move from three types of fittings to one. That way, we could simplify our ordering process and prevent people from having to search around for special fittings when something broke. It would also allow us to solve a problem we had where the instrument air in an area broke. We could have just hooked up the (high pressure) Nitrogen to the pump and used it until the instrument air pipe was repaired. (Note: Technically, there is a way that very-specific suggestion could work, but even that one special suggestion is a bad idea for several boring reasons.)
I turned the question around and dared the group to think of two reasons why moving to a standard fitting for those three systems would be a very bad idea. No one could think of any.
The punch line is that “I’m the guy who makes sure people trying to breathe Nitrogen or high-pressure instrument air can’t.” It’s the sort of story that works best on cold-sober people. Then again, most of my stories are like that.
Here’s the story. I tell it to people who hear my job description and say, “Wow, that’s a lot of responsibility for a guy who think ‘personal fashion’ should be interpreted literally!” (Ok, maybe that’s not exactly what they say.)
One noteworthy decision I made as a chemical engineer involved shooting an idea out of the sky. I was approached by a shift supervisor and two chemical operators with a proposal designed to cut down on wasted time and save money. The idea was to standardize our connectors for gas transfers to operate equipment.
Yes, I will explain what that means. My building has three types of gas piped into the process bays.
1) Pure Nitrogen. It is used to create a non-flammable environment over reactors full of flammable chemicals. It stops fires. We like that.
2) Instrument air. It’s the same stuff that we breathe, but it’s at very high pressures. We use it to provide non-electrical power to equipment we don’t want to plug in. We use it to power industrial pumps in process bays where electricity is an invitation to start fires.
3) Breathing air. We hook this stuff up to operator’s respirators. The operator then breathes it in when the area they are entering is especially hazardous. It is literally breathing air pushed in from a room upstairs.
All three of these lines connect to hoses via different connections. You cannot force-fit a connection from one system onto an incompatible piece of equipment.
The idea I shot down was this: The group approached me and suggested we move from three types of fittings to one. That way, we could simplify our ordering process and prevent people from having to search around for special fittings when something broke. It would also allow us to solve a problem we had where the instrument air in an area broke. We could have just hooked up the (high pressure) Nitrogen to the pump and used it until the instrument air pipe was repaired. (Note: Technically, there is a way that very-specific suggestion could work, but even that one special suggestion is a bad idea for several boring reasons.)
I turned the question around and dared the group to think of two reasons why moving to a standard fitting for those three systems would be a very bad idea. No one could think of any.
The punch line is that “I’m the guy who makes sure people trying to breathe Nitrogen or high-pressure instrument air can’t.” It’s the sort of story that works best on cold-sober people. Then again, most of my stories are like that.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
How to Smoke the GRE
31 Simple Steps to Outstanding GRE Results:
1) Forget to eat during at least the 24 hours before the test.
2) Avoid serious studying. Procrastinate, under the theory that, “The first try is just for practice anyway.”
3) Make up an imaginary, incorrect top score of 1200 for the non-writing test sections and believe it’s real.
4) Accidentally schedule your test for an excruciatingly cold day with winds that blow small cars off highways.
5) Own a small car.
6) Learn the address of the test center, but avoid knowledge of where geographically that might be.
7) Leave on the serious road trip with what you assume is just about enough time to get to the test center.
8) Put blind faith in the directional guidance of a GPS navigator.
9) Put blind faith in your home state to not significantly renumber addresses after you purchase a GPS.
10) After arriving to a pristine winter pastoral, shut off the GPS and attempt to deduce logically where the test center might be.
11) Finally identify a large clump of identical unmarked buildings resembling crosses between an unlabeled office building, a vacant warehouse, and an “Applebee’s.”
12) Blindly park by and enter the only such building with cars near it.
13) Have a small, private celebration over the fact that the random guess about the building was miraculously correct.
14) Take the GRE.
15) View the score report. Become depressed that the scores reported are less than 1200.
16) Copy reported scores down onto the top page of the scrap paper in huge, labeled numbers.
17) Make chitchat with the guy who collects scrap paper and babysits ID’s about retaking the test as you are handed a sheet of paper entitled “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.”
18) Copy your scores over the pre-printed text of said “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” sheet of paper.
19) Do not read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.” Continue writing your score in large numbers over the printed text instead. Allow scrap paper guy to read huge score from either sheet.
20) Become shocked and mildly offended when the bemused scrap paper guy answers by asking how exactly you plan to do much better next time.
21) Collect your ID and leave, leaving only the wake of your sudden, stony silence.
22) Impulsively have a change of heart and decide to read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” while packing up to go home.
23) Become confused. Ask receptionist why sheet of paper does not cover scores in the 801 to 1200 range.
24) Realize you have spent 10 minutes being a total tool.
25) Allow audible, delighted laughter to overtake mortified embarrassment.
26) Seriously consider carrying your car home to burn off a sudden rush of energy.
27) Step out side and remember why you came dressed as a chilly “Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man.”
28) Choose to drive car instead.
29) Drive to nearby vegetarian restaurant and order several full meals, greatly amusing the bored waitstaff with unprecedented vegan gluttony.
30) Go home.
31) Annoy GRE-nervous friends with outlandish “practice” test story.
1) Forget to eat during at least the 24 hours before the test.
2) Avoid serious studying. Procrastinate, under the theory that, “The first try is just for practice anyway.”
3) Make up an imaginary, incorrect top score of 1200 for the non-writing test sections and believe it’s real.
4) Accidentally schedule your test for an excruciatingly cold day with winds that blow small cars off highways.
5) Own a small car.
6) Learn the address of the test center, but avoid knowledge of where geographically that might be.
7) Leave on the serious road trip with what you assume is just about enough time to get to the test center.
8) Put blind faith in the directional guidance of a GPS navigator.
9) Put blind faith in your home state to not significantly renumber addresses after you purchase a GPS.
10) After arriving to a pristine winter pastoral, shut off the GPS and attempt to deduce logically where the test center might be.
11) Finally identify a large clump of identical unmarked buildings resembling crosses between an unlabeled office building, a vacant warehouse, and an “Applebee’s.”
12) Blindly park by and enter the only such building with cars near it.
13) Have a small, private celebration over the fact that the random guess about the building was miraculously correct.
14) Take the GRE.
15) View the score report. Become depressed that the scores reported are less than 1200.
16) Copy reported scores down onto the top page of the scrap paper in huge, labeled numbers.
17) Make chitchat with the guy who collects scrap paper and babysits ID’s about retaking the test as you are handed a sheet of paper entitled “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.”
18) Copy your scores over the pre-printed text of said “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” sheet of paper.
19) Do not read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores.” Continue writing your score in large numbers over the printed text instead. Allow scrap paper guy to read huge score from either sheet.
20) Become shocked and mildly offended when the bemused scrap paper guy answers by asking how exactly you plan to do much better next time.
21) Collect your ID and leave, leaving only the wake of your sudden, stony silence.
22) Impulsively have a change of heart and decide to read “Interpreting Your GRE Scores” while packing up to go home.
23) Become confused. Ask receptionist why sheet of paper does not cover scores in the 801 to 1200 range.
24) Realize you have spent 10 minutes being a total tool.
25) Allow audible, delighted laughter to overtake mortified embarrassment.
26) Seriously consider carrying your car home to burn off a sudden rush of energy.
27) Step out side and remember why you came dressed as a chilly “Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man.”
28) Choose to drive car instead.
29) Drive to nearby vegetarian restaurant and order several full meals, greatly amusing the bored waitstaff with unprecedented vegan gluttony.
30) Go home.
31) Annoy GRE-nervous friends with outlandish “practice” test story.
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