Rational or Irrational

Each December the New York Times publishes a list of the top ten books of the year. The list came out in today's paper and I had not only not read any of them, but had not heard of any. A couple caught my eye, but the one that has me thinking for the last few hours is called, Thinking Fast and Slow. Here is the blurb that describes the book:

We overestimate the importance of whatever it is we're thinking about. We misremember the past and misjudge what will make us happy....[the author] demonstrates that irrationality is in our bones, and we are not necessarily the worse for it.

There is something, of course, ironic about me thinking about this for the last two hours. But here are some of my musings--however irrational. Is it possible that what I am sure about represents a composite of misjudgements? If irrationality is in our "bones", and we are not necessarily the worse for it, does this means that rationality--valid logical thinking--has insidious effects?

I spend a good deal of time in my head. If I "misremember the past" and "misjudge what will make me happy" then it becomes very difficult to plan.

The Box Tops

In September 1967, after the summer of love, the number one hit was a song taken from a movie called, To Sir With Love and the singer was a woman named Lulu. The song endured but shortly after it reached number 1, it was supplanted by a song by a group called the Box Tops. The song was called, The Letter, and it began with a lyric that reflected a frenzied reaction: "Give me a ticket for an airplane, aint got time for a fast train, lonely days are gone, I'm a goin' home, My baby she wrote me a letter."

The timing of the song release was likely fortuitous. Baby boomers in the millions were leaving home and going to college that September after the summer of love. The idea that a letter could be powerful enough to bring a sweetheart charging home was a comforting notion to those who had recently been separated. Of course it was likely in the realm of the real world that by the time the plane had landed, the "baby" who "wrote me a letter" might have had a second thought, making the flight's descent smooth sailing compared to the bumpy landing of the traveller.

One hears the Box Tops song now and again on Oldie stations, but I think it might have a muted impact in this next generation. By the time a sweetheart in 2011 is an hour away from a lover, there would be muliple texts, a call or two on a cell phone, and maybe a picture transmitted easily on a blackberry. "Here is me at the train station feeling blue."

Would someone be likely to bolt off the train if he received a text saying, "I miss you to bits" twenty five minutes after the last embrace? Maybe so, but I think there is a power to a posted letter that carries the weight of some time away. Would you rather get a birthday card that is handwritten, or a text wishing you a great day? Maybe soon the distinction between the two forms of communication will be blurred, but somehow I doubt that the lyric, "My baby, she wrote me an e-mail" would compel someone to hop on an airplane.

BCS without the C

It is time for my annual rant against the Bowl Championship Series.

In all of sport, and this counts wrestling, there is nothing so silly and patently false as the BCS. This year, the wisdom of who knows who, has determined that the University of Alabama should play LSU for the championship. Previously this year LSU defeated Alabama in a game that was a cure for insomnia. The final, 9-6, was less exciting than watching your neighbor walk the dog.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that there are several teams with only one loss to someone other than LSU, and several teams that are exciting, can score touchdowns, and have deserved the opportunity to compete for a championship, the oligarchy that runs college football has decreed this ridickalus game.

Let's consider Oklahoma State. They lost one game. They lost the game on the day after they discovered that the coach of the women's basketball team had been killed in a plane crash. They lost, I believe, in overtime after mourning all day. Well, hell, they don't deserve to play.

How about Boise State. They lost one game because a kicker missed a field goal. That is the only game they lost. They are exciting have lost only one game in each of the last two years. They are playing in what might as well be called the Toilet Bowl.

College football postseason is nothing more than a series of exhibition contests. Since two teams have been decreed the best teams, what difference does it make when others play. Can there be anything that is more like a soccer "friendly" than the Independence Weedeater Bowl.

In Division IAA, II, and III there are tournaments taking place currently. It is much more exciting and genuine, as far as I am concerned, to see whether University of Wisconsin Whitewater will defeat Mount Union in Division 3, than to see how the hoo hah University of Wisconsin/Madison division 1 team will win in the silly Rose Bowl.

When I was a kid I would watch wrestling with Bruno Sammartino, Gorgeous George, Haystacks Calhoun, Jumbo, and assorted other "wrestlers". My father would tell me that it was all phony. He was right. But no more phony than whoever is called the national champion in college football this year.

this is going to hurt

When I was nine or ten I got hit in the mouth by a baseball bat. It was an inadvertent strike. My friend Gregory and I were playing on a grassy area near our apartment building. As I recall we were near one of the several signs in the neighborhood that read, "No ballplaying of any kind." Scofflaws in training, I guess, though in the neighborhood it seemed that we were not alone. I recall that a number of years later I played football on a lawn and we, without really thinking much about it, used a similar forbidding sign as the touchdown goal marker.

I cannot remember now how exactly Gregory hit me in the mouth with the bat. It was certainly inadvertent. We might have been picking up the bats after our game and he accidentally swung a bat around or it could have been during a game when I was catching and caught the back of the bat as he finished his swing. It doesn't matter. I just knew I had been hit. I can't even remember now much bleeding if any. But I did not think it would go away.

My folks took me to the doctor who, and who knows if my memory is playing tricks on me now, always seemed to be there no matter when we showed up. I actually had two doctors like this. My pediatrician was a woman named Dr. Lipsett, and the family doctor was named Shapiro. I can vaguely remember Dr. Lipsett, but I can see Dr. Shapiro as if he was sitting on the nearby chair here where, currently, my cat Pumpkin now seems to be extraordinarily comfortable.

Dr. Shapiro was a heavy guy with a double chin who seemed jovial nearly every time I was there. We might have to wait a stretch to see him, but whenever we got to the doctors, eventually, he would see me.

So, Dr. Shapiro takes a look at my kisser and shakes his head a couple of times. Then he takes out something from his arsenal and tells me he is going to put it on the area where I'd been clocked. Then he tells me something that he rarely had told me previously, "This" he said "is going to hurt".

Well, I dont remember thinking much of this warning. I had been to doctors before and before a shot had been told that something was going to hurt. But often this warning came with a laugh as if to indicate that it was a right of passage and I would be fine. This time there was none of that. Nevertheless, I was not particularly concerned. He put the stuff on me.

It hurt like hell. I can remember it to this day. He was not bluffing. Whatever it was, when it connected with my bruised mouth I hit the roof. Eventually, of course both the pain and any vestiges of Gregory's bat left, but the pain was pretty good. I wrote in these blogs about a toothache I had recently that was off the charts painful. This was not in that category, but certainly it is memorable.

The thing is that throughout my life when something ominous was about to happen I have tended to downplay the pain that was upcoming. Emotional or physical. I figure something is going to hurt some and often am way off the mark in terms of the sum of the some. How bad can it be is a good attitude to take, but it is worth recognizing that sometimes the depths of pain can be beyond the capacity to conceptualize until we experience it.

Thanksgiving

In 1967 I was a freshman at what we then called SUNY Albany. The fall was a magical time for me. I marvelled at, and revelled in, the college experience. I had made some new friends, found History, Spanish, Literature, Math, something called Sociology engaging enough, had, somehow, made the freshman basketball team, and began to appreciate the simple joy of a local tavern listening to yarns from fellow students as well as old timers who were, no doubt, twenty years younger than I am now.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I decided to take a bus home and surpise my folks by arriving a day early. I got a ride to the bus station and took a Trailways to Port Authority arriving around 11. There I subwayed to Penn Station and took a late night train to Hicksville. From there I took a cab to our home.

I left my suitcase in the living room and tried silently to climb the stairs. I woke up my brother. He had been feeling under the weather and had just gotten to sleep. So, while happy to see me, he needed the sleep and now at about 2 in the morning I did too. Seconds later, I conked out in the twin bed that was "mine' in the bedroom we had shared as we grew up.

In the morning my father was readying himself to exit the house en route to work. There he saw my suitcase in the living room and bounced upstairs to see that I had come home in the middle of the night. He woke up my mother who was delighted to see me as well. She, excited, woke up again my poor brother, still not finished with his rest.

The thing is that all of them. My mother, father, and brother were excited about my return. We were together again. And it was this, far more than the turkey we ate the next day that was the most nourishing part of the holiday.

Love is the foundation. I am aware of my good fortune.

November 22, 2011

I can rarely remember where I place my wallet and keys. Ask me what I did one year ago this month and I will have to check my logbook--and this assumes I remembered to record what I did one year ago in my logbook. I need to write my passwords down on a sheet otherwise I would never be able to check my messages or get into my e-mail.

But ask me, or anyone of my vintage where I was 48 years ago today, and nobody, but nobody, will have trouble telling you exactly where they were when we heard the news.

onslaughts--real and imagined

Last Saturday I was talking with my parents on the phone. My father writes to the family regularly with insightful comments about his philosophy on life. Earlier that day he had sent us a letter about how stress can be reduced by realizing that much of what causes stress are events that we anticipate, but do not typically occur. He referred to the Mark Twain quote that goes: I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. My brother had responded to this letter by sending several similar quotes.

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you. ~Calvin Coolidge

Some men storm imaginary Alps all their lives, and die in the foothills cursing difficulties which do not exist. ~Edgar Watson Howe

When we were speaking I mentioned the popular book that came out in the late nineties called, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff* (*And it's all small stuff)

But it's NOT all small stuff. The author of the book, Richard Carlson, died at 45 when he suffered a blood clot in his lungs while on a plane. When the stuff is not small, but big, there is no balm.

The day after the phone call, I was reading the Sunday newspaper. I typically read the Sunday papers by first reading the Sports and second reading the book reviews. This indicates, very clearly, my priorities and hobbies. Joan Didion's book, Blue Nights, was reviewed. Blue Nights is a memoir about the death of her daughter. Previously she had written a memoir The Year of Magical Thinking about the death of her husband.

The review was beautifully written and included this line "The author as she presents herself here, aging and baffled, is defenseless against the pain of loss. [The book] is most provocative at another level, the level at which the author comes fully to realize, and to face squarely, the dismaying fact that against life's worst onslaughts nothing avails..."

I think this is so.

This week I wondered what it is like to be Joe Paterno. A man who was revered up until early this week and who now will forever, wrongly more than rightly, be linked to a scandal. Moreover, I wonder about those who were allegedly victimized by the accused perpetrator, Jerry Sandusky.

My father, as usual, is right about the therapeutic value of not worrying about things that are unlikely to happen. And Calvin Coolidge was right, nine out of ten troubles will not likely be troubling. But the tenth, even for the most resilient among us, is very difficult to overcome.