bad

A CASUAL INTERROGATION SCENE

My favorite social anxiety is when someone asks how something has been going in my life

“You’re taking a summer class? How’s that going?”

Do you feel that oncoming panic? It feels like being in an interrogation room, and there are two detectives with arms folded, standing over the (weirdly) metal table. The detective playing the “bad cop” demands answers, while the other is the “good cop” detective, warm and welcoming, but that’s only because he, too, wants answers.

I’m sitting at the table, looking up, pleading my innocence. I have nothing to hide; I’m not even sure why I’m being questioned in this case. I honestly believe that if I explain everything I know, I’ll be let go, peaceably. So, I blurt out:

“I’m taking a psycholinguistics class, which is about the study of how the brain interprets written and spoken language.”

The detectives look on, both are professionally unhappy with my answer.

I keep going: “Umm, so there’s a debate about if the brain is modular or not when interpreting spoken language: Are we thinking about a sentence as a whole, or is syntax – what a sentence means – broken down into parts that make the meaning clear? And we do this all the time!”

I’m expecting something, anything positive from the detectives. I’m impressed by my explanation, which is a first. Considering the class, this is an elegant description of something that has taken me 6 weeks to understand.

Except, the bad-cop detective slams his hands on the metal table. “I’m going to give you one last chance to come clean about this. How’s the class going?”

I’m about to crack; I’ve just told them! “We also go over how best to teach kids to read, which the school systems aren’t doing. We should be teaching phonics! Phonics, damn it! That’s all I know! Really! You can read it yourselves, in numerous published studies. It’s a really cool class, I promise!”

The good-cop detective shakes his head with a mirthless sigh; he’s seen enough. He reaches for the door and says to his partner, “I’ll be outside when you’re finished.”

The bad-cop unclasps his sleeve and rolls it neatly up an obnoxiously muscled and tattooed forearm. Across his flesh is something that looks like a starfish. It looks faded, like the bad-cop detective personally pricked the tattoo into his own skin with an inkwell and a sewing needle. “You should know,” he says, “I didn’t want things to come to this.”

The dangling bulb light above the table grows brighter. I feel the cobra-quick grasp of the bad-cop detective’s fingers around my terribly outdated T-shirt. He grins and pulls his fist back…

I brace for four bulging knuckles to splinter my cheekbones on impact.

“Finished!”

I open an eye, unsure of what’s going on. “Finished?”

The good-cop detective opens up the door, ushering his partner outside. The bad-cop detective doesn’t even look at me as he says, “Yeah, we’re finished here. You can go.”

“But,” I plead, “what about my story? Don’t you want to hear the rest of it?”

“Save it,” says the bad-cop detective. “I was bored after the word ‘psycho’.”

“It was psycholinguistics,” I say. “You couldn’t listen through one word?”

“Get this kid out of here,” says the bad-cop detective to the guard outside. “His syntax is bothering me.”

***

WANTED

I’m terrible at telling a story about myself in person.

The scene you’ve just read, more or less, is how every conversation goes in which I’m asked about my personal life. I often see questions as interrogations, as though I’ve been arrested and placed in a room for police questioning. Even worse, it feels like I’m that suspect with nothing significant to add to the case. Which, isn’t a good experience for the suspect, either.

Like any suspect, if you’re put through the trouble of being questioned, one would hope it’s because you had something meaningful to contribute. Why dislodge someone from their day and dismiss what they had to say? Nothing hurts a suspect more than not being found wanted, I find.

But this is how it feels when I’m asked things; it’s the twist ending to the interrogation scene: The detectives leave the suspect behind because he’s BORING them with details that don’t apply to the case.

Even for wanted suspects, this is embarrassing.

***

SOCIAL TIME OUTS

I’ve thought about why I’m terrible at talking about myself out loud. Over the course of this week, here’s what I’ve found:

When someone is asking about how life is going, they want to know how you – as a character – have faced some sort of adversity in the course of what you’re going through.

In other words, they want to know how YOU started to approach something, how YOU were met with an obstacle, how YOU figured out how to get past said obstacle, and, finally, how YOU are different from what happened.

This makes for an enticing story. How do I know this? Because this is the literally the playbook of what makes all stories worth hearing.

Were you ever told a story that didn’t include a character you gave a shit about? Case closed.

The same applies for when saying something about yourself; ultimately, the story is about YOU going through change.

My mistake in answering the question, “How is your summer class going?” was in trying to describe the class. There was no ME in the story. That’s because I didn’t think talking about myself was interesting; the class must be what everyone wanted to know about. So, Instead, I covered the course materials, explained details about theories and modern approaches of psycholinguistics—and exactly NONE of my story had myself as a character going through change.

Can you imagine why faces glazed over with waning interest?

It’s during these times that I wish it was socially acceptable to call a “Time Out” during conversation. If a conversation is going too far off the rails, calling a “time out” to clarify the intention of a question would solve a lot of problems.

Time Out: “Oh, Robert, hey. Umm, I was asking about how you like the class, not what it’s about. That’s interesting, too, whatever psycholinguistics is, but I’m really just asking how you’re feeling about taking a class. Does that make more sense? Ok, start over.”

Or,

Time Out: “When I ask about your day, you don’t have to list everything that happened in a 24-hour period of time. You can just tell me the things that meant something to you, personally. Ok, go on.

And,

Time Out: “Let’s assume when I ask what we should eat that I simply mean what the both of us would eat together, and not something weird that you consume in private and in the shadows of your home. Ok? Let’s try again.

Can you imagine? It would solve so much.

***

CASE SOLVED

I’ve heard that a good mystery story incorporates two things:

It teaches about a new subject
Great characters navigate that subject to solve something.

I think this is a great stencil for talking about oneself.

So, if I’ve learned anything from this week, here’s my revised response to the question, “How’s your summer class going?”

“It was one of the hardest classes I’ve ever taken. The thing about summer classes is that they are accelerated, so you get 6 weeks to fit it all in instead of the usual 15. I didn’t think I was going to be able to keep up. Four to eight hours of lectures about psychology, reading studies, two quizzes a week, plus assignments and group discussions on top of that. It was basically a part-time job.

What saved me, I think, was liking the material. I love learning about the mind. Did you know that the reason people struggle to talk about themselves is that human beings are wired for conversation? It’s true. Talking introduces more topics, so there isn’t a chance you’ll run out of something to say. If you’re monologuing, like I am, you run out of things to say. Do you know what the secret to better speaking is? Planning. Just taking your time and planning what you’re going to say.

That was a huge stress relief with the class, honestly. I thought I had to get everything right away, but after I learned that, I slowed down and it was a lot more fun. And by the end of the class, I was enjoying it. I got a 96%. The class average was a 78%. Not sure how I pulled that off, but it was awesome.”

Not a great answer, but much better than listing off things about the class, don’t you think? I like the person telling me that story a bit more, and I’d listen a little longer…supposing I get one or two TIME OUTS to change the subject with soon after.

I just finished the class and even I’m ready to move on from psycholinguistics for a while. Yeesh.

Time Out: Ok, you’ve read this far. What I really want to know with all of this is how you tell stories about yourself. Do you talk about things or about how you feel as a character about those things?

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

It began with a string of bad ideas: don’t feed the crying baby, kick the dog who is always sleeping in the narrow corridor, break the alarm clock that never turns off. After laughing at how ridiculous they were, Stripford thought of many more bad ideas. Why not put one pantleg in his suit and walk out the front door to work? When backing up his car, why grab the steering wheel at all?

These were the kinds of ideas he thought of when nothing was working in his life. The argument always ran thus in his mind: if nothing was working right, why do anything the right way at all?

This was the day when Stripford decided to act on this impulse.

When the alarm clock rang, he threw it against the bedroom door, smashing it to pieces. His wife bolted upright in bed at the commotion, and the baby began crying in the next room. She asked him to tend to the little one. He didn’t reply and put on his suit for work and let the baby wail away while he nibbled on leftover cupcakes in the kitchen.

The Pomeranian, Benny, slept in the lone corridor of the cramped apartment, ready to stir at the exact moment that Stripford stepped over. With a shrug, Stripford landed a buckler of a kick into the dog’s ribcage. The mutt half-yipped, half-barked and raced around the apartment to escape further punishment, which was quite amusing.

He dented a neighbor’s car parked under the carport of the apartment complex, having refused to steer when backing out. On the highway, Stripford didn’t look to change lanes and ran a minivan off the road. The subsequent beeps and threatening gestures that reflected in his rearview might have been menacing the day before, but Stripford shrugged. He mentally checked the box of the list of Bad Things in his mind: reckless driving.

At his dental practice, Stripford merely glanced at decaying molars and glazed over at dentures in need of polish and refinement. He told children they might as well eat as much candy as they wanted so he could stay in business when they next visited for cavities. Mothers scorned his terrible attitude, threatening to complain. His dental assistants festered in the breakroom after lunch, each sharing one of Stripford’s suggestive innuendo about their fitted scrub uniforms, and each agreed to complain or file suits to HR.

Stripford was to pick up his eldest from school at 2:30, but he never showed. Passing by the school, he saw his little boy sitting on a bench outside, overlooking the parking lot for any sign of a silver sedan rounding the entrance. This was a particularly unforgivable Bad Idea that required more effort to perform for Stripford, and so he next stopped at a fast food restaurant to order a tripe deluxe Piston Burger, one so drenched in fryer grease that the inevitable uptick in cholesterol would surely befuddle the family doctor come his next checkup. His intestine churned noisily as he drove to the beach to stare at the weekly gathering of recreational women’s volleyball. He unapologetically parked as close as possible and ogled them; the games didn’t last long.

At the end of the day, Stripford parked his car in the adjoining parking lot to his own apartment complex. It was nighttime and the visitor spots in front of his home were occupied with his wife’s parents and friends, each certainly called to comfort and console why Stripford would ignore their crying infant, or kick the family dog, and even refuse to pick up their 10-year-old boy from school. He had ignored all phone calls, even the 3 voicemails left by HR from the dentist office. He checked off the box in his mind that read: Successfully completed list of Bad Things.

But he had so many more Bad Ideas, ones that were even more creative and realistic. Why not abandon the family? Why not take his savings to Vegas and bet big? Why not travel the interstate to that tiny diner off the highway and meet up with – what was the name of that waitress? – Molly…something?Stripford considered all the Bad Things that could still be done and found the list endless. He was gripped by dread knowing that an eternity could be spent checking the boxes on every heinous act.

He would never be done, never be rid of all the wrongness in his life.

Unless, he decided, to check the final box on the list of Bad Things this very night. The Bad Thing to end it all.

It would require heading inside the apartment, attempting to calm and explain his streak of reckless behaviors, apologizing profusely for his brief day of madness and stress. After they all had gone – still angry and bitter, to be sure – Stripford would excuse himself the bathroom for a long shower, turning on the water. Instead, he would dig underneath the sink for a hidden pack vintage razor blades he had received from his father a long time ago. His father explained that one blade was missing and never found. Stripford knew where it was, at the end of his father’s list of Bad Things.

He took one step forward and something stopped Stripford. He stood still, still enough to cease thinking for a moment.

The cool summer evening dropped below 60 degrees and he began to shiver. He wanted warmth, like cuddling up to his wife, even after an exhaustive day of tending to a newborn, she was still the best comfort of all on nights like these.

He listened to the sound of distant traffic on the highway some two miles away and how lonely he felt in its wake. It was calmer outside and Stripford found he didn’t prefer the calm. He much preferred the irritable cries of his newborn son and the bips and beeps of his 10-year-old’s video games that he played late into the night when Stripford needed sleep.

The parking lot was vast, and he could go anywhere, but why did he want to? There was always the cramped corridor of the apartment where the dog always waited for the opportune moment to awaken each morning to surprise Stripford. He nearly stepped on the mutt a hundred times over, but the dog was the happiest creature in the world to see him each day.

The night was hazy, but not enough to hide the twinkling stars above from shining down. They might have been brighter in the countryside, perhaps on a vacation somewhere next summer when the kids could see the world for what it was. He had heard of a place from one of his dental assistants, the ones he had made suggestive comments about.

He exhaled, and the breath of his day plumed out into the crisp night air like car exhaust.

Stripford began thinking again.

No, he thought, the razors were packed in the medicine drawer, not underneath the sink.

Weekly Post-Ed #59

A CASUAL INTERROGATION SCENE

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WANTED

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SOCIAL TIME OUTS

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CASE SOLVED

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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

All the Bad Things Out of the Way