Thursday, July 17, 2008

William the Bad

A long night of unsupervised activity culminated in William, four years old, standing with his arm cocked to toss the plastic spoon in his hand into the whirling blades of a floor box fan. Standing only a short distance away, I saw the entire scene develop, but was intrigued into inactivity by a moment’s hesitation, his hesitation. For a few seconds he was just standing there. Was he weighing his motivation against the possibility of punishment, I thought? And if so, let me grant him his reflective moment. But as we know, it only lasted a few seconds, just long enough to leave me out of position, like the effects of a well-executed stutter step. The noise was the worst part. The spoon broke immediately, disposable anyway, and was ejected through the back, and the blades continued to cool the room in their endless cycle, apparently unperturbed. But perception is always more influential than fact and that is not how William’s act was perceived—as simply a broken spoon and a loud noise. The crowd of adults that were busying themselves cleaning the room all stared in brief surprise. His mother stared at him threateningly, and as he retreated from her gaze she marched him into a corner. The fear in his eyes seemed punishment enough, at least for now, and perhaps understanding this, his mother simply sat him on a chair and forbid him to move. Everyone ignored his crying.

“William is soooooooo bad!” the conversation began a few hours later. “Did you see him throw the spoon into the fan?”

“Yes I did,” some said. “No, but I heard it,” said others.

“What do you mean ‘bad’?” I asked

“Just that. He is BAD!” one shot back in an authoritative air laced with the ardor of communicating truth.

Others laughed, and offered support. “Did you see him shaking salt into the lemonade?”

More laughter. “I saw him completely whack his sister with those Styrofoam noodles.”

More laughter. “I saw him stuffing cashews into the noodle,” offered another.

“Into the green one right?” asked another.

“Yeah!”

“And he was stomping food into the carpet.” More laughter.

“He is sooooo bad!”

Again I retorted, “What do you mean ‘bad’?”

“What you don’t agree? How would you describe his behavior?”

“I think William needs much closer supervision.”

“Yes, BAD!” one shot back. More laughter.

“Is that what you mean? He requires effort? Then your son is ‘bad’ too,” I added, addressing the only parents in the room with regard to their utterly adorable 10-month old.

“Well, no, all children require effort,” someone responded.

“Then say what you mean. I feel as though saying he’s ‘bad’ doesn’t communicate anything useful. I’m not saying William’s behavior wasn’t problematic but I feel like you all are so busy being adults, you can’t understand William.” I contemplated listing the connotations of ‘bad’ and showing their imprecision—inferior, unpleasant, unfortunate, decayed, injured, ashamed, disobedient, morally offensive, worthless. Even the most relevant to a child’s behavior, ‘disobedient,’ lacks precision, for who was William disobeying by throwing the spoon? Even if he was instructed to ‘be good,’ what does ‘good’ behavior look like, smiling and still? In William’s case, what is the difference between curiosity and mischief, or being strong-willed and stubborn? Is it a matter of scale of perspective?

“Ok, tell me this,” another asked. “Of all the children at the dinner, if you had to take one home to babysit for the night, wouldn’t you choose any of the others over William?”

“Not necessarily.”

“I feel like your response is not really because of the imprecision of the word ‘bad.’ Were you called ‘bad’ as a child?”

In the telling silence that followed, I blinked furiously, trying to wipe away with my eyelids the images that the insightful question had resurrected. I was called ‘bad’ as a child. I was stubborn, mischievous, short-tempered, confrontational, and probably many other things that made me a burdensome charge. It wasn’t, however, the word itself that so strongly affected me. It was the attitude towards me that those who believed it adopted. But in that moment, that wasn’t the argument I wanted to make; I read it as a weak appeal to their sympathy. An appeal that if mishandled could have been hurtful.

Someone was approaching me with a hug, but on my corneas between blinks burned the frustration of vulnerability and I stopped the approach at arms length.

“I don’t need a hug!” I said angrily. “Don’t insult me with a simplistic reduction of my argument to the bias of my point of view.”

That ended the conversation. Nothing more was said of William the Bad.

Later, the-subject-of-my-deepest-affection told me that had I invoked my experience, my case would have been stronger. Rather than hearing the final question as a challenge to my claim to objective truth, I could have heard it as an appeal to the irreducibly specific, subjectively true nature of perspective.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Little Red Box

The little red box was tacky—heart-shaped and candy red and coated in the bristly quasi-softness of imitation velvet. It was too tacky to be the box for a ring, the ring. And even if the thought of such contents motivated its acquisition, I had no pretensions of this box serving that purpose. But it did serve a purpose. Like trying on a new pair of shoes before purchase, getting used to the feel of them on your feet, accounting for their unfamiliarity and stiffness yet projecting into the possibility of their inconspicuousness, their naturalness, I would finger the little red box alone in my room trying on the idea of its use. Holding it under a lamp in the palm of my hand, I would open it with my thumb, straining slightly against the stiff springs of its hinge and imagine an inhabitant half buried in the pursed lips of the cushion within. It would not be a diamond; that had been specified. Yet if that were the case, what would it be—jade, sapphire, amber, pearl? Would it be faceted—round, princess, oval, marquis—or rough? Would it be set traditionally, or something as unorthodox as the stone, and in what material—in gold, platinum, hemp? Into the white underside of the lid, I asked these questions of the little red box. And into the fabric of its silent response I would weave the daydream of the scene of exchange—the context, the question. Before the response, however, I would close the lid with a snap, stopping short of uncertainty.

I played this game with myself for months. And each time I was always sure to hide the box afterwards where only I could reach or would care to look—that is until the day I moved out of my apartment and the subject of my contemplation helped me pack. Carelessly I left it out, meaning to take it with me like everything else. We entered my room, her on my heels, and in the few seconds it took for me to notice my oversight and snatch the little red box from the surface of my dresser—perhaps had I removed it more casually it may have gone unnoticed—the tranquility of ignorance with regard to my secret that previously characterized her expression was replaced by the fire of curiosity.

When I refused to show her what I was hiding, she unsuccessfully tried to wrestle it from my pocket. Over the next three weeks the secret contents of the little red box became the preferred currency for the most trivial of exchanges—recipes of well-made dinners, the responsibility of washing the dishes, the privilege of choosing the rented movie—each of which I opted to do without. After each proposal I changed the hiding place, assuming her curiosity, if tested, would outweigh my caution.

But finally, one warm summer night, she asked me more tenderly than ever before to tell her what was in the little red box. It occurred to me that I could show her its interior while still keeping my secret. The contents that I guarded were simply a series of intentions, which like the air, though tangible is invisible.

So I reached over her shoulder to extract the box from it most recent hiding place and offered it to her to open. My sudden acquiescence and the proximity of the hiding place made her suspicious, and she said as much, simultaneously suggesting that the pursuit of a secret is more enjoyable than its discovery; but she opened the box nonetheless. Obviously disappointed by its emptiness, but perhaps relieved that her persistence hadn’t ruined a romantic moment, she accused me of having removed the contents and orchestrating this scene to derail her curiosity.

Am I so transparent?

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Changing

The change was like noticing that you have grown, so subtle that it went unnoticed but dramatic when brought to your attention.

As we spoke on the phone late one night, she casually made reference to our distant future. Consoling me over the recent sale of my car, she said, “Don’t worry. We’ll have another car one day.”

Perhaps it was my sleepiness that lowered my guard. But instead of hearing the plural pronoun—embroidered into the fabric of the future tense—instead of hearing it like a bad cell phone connection, I registered it but responded as if it were as innocuous as an apostrophe collapsing two words into an efficient contraction. This sleepy concession, however, surprised me. When had I stopped fighting? When had I stopped being afraid of the echoes of a simple consolation such as this? How long before I could easily concede references to our home, or to our children, and their implications?

Merely weeks ago I would have teased her over such unguarded word choice, parroting the phrase with the inflexion of a question, emphasis on the conspicuous pronoun. And she might have done the same, both of us, in this way, guarding our independence and vulnerability. In fact, it had become some kind of game that we’d play, speaking circuitously to maintain an ambiguity about the possibility of our futures together. We’d both diligently serve as both player and referee, despite all the signs suggesting that our long term intentions were the same.

But this night, I didn’t play, and neither did she. I simply let the reference and its implications pass over me like the sleepiness to which I was slowly succumbing. And though this indicated a definite change, that night at least, it went unacknowledged, both of us still guarding our vulnerability.