Saturday, July 25, 2020

Old Friends Make Good

One of the cool things about being old is one is less likely to be unduly impressed by famous people, because we remember them when their daddies were taking the switch to them in the back yard, just at the bed-wetting and squirrel-torturing stage, before they made a bunch of money to fill up their depleted souls and were able to bomb entire countries into gravel as though they were their own ex-wives or the kids that laughed at them in gym class.

Still, it's startling to stumble across a familiar name from one's own youth, and seek out a current photograph of someone you clearly visualize suspended at an eternal age twelve, suddenly catapulted into a doughy dotage like the rest of us.

I saw just such a familiar name the other day. It appeared in a George Will column. As a twelve-year-old the boy was smart, erudite, and damned impressed with himself. Sure enough this fellow is still an intellectual. He's written this whole thing about Deep Literacy, defined as engagement with "an extended piece of writing" in a way that draws the reader into "a dialectical process with the text." And how much we've lost in the way of critical thinking through our addiction to digital content. Or something like that. Too long, didn't read.

Well, I could certainly look into it to see if it's the same fellow. That's the cool thing about digital content: sometimes you can find out what happened to all those people you've lost touch with. At least if they had unusual names.

It's weird. We were all stoned, ambition-free hippies in college, I thought, and then after a few years when I signed on as a mail carrier, I discovered everyone else had gone to law school and was now pulling down a half-mil a year and speaking in complete sentences. Some of them owned slaves.

So while I was thinking of that, I typed in another unusual name from my sixth-grade class. And by gum there was a whole thing about her. It turns out she is a senior marketing research professional available for comprehensive management of primary and secondary research projects and integraton of information across multiple data sources. Dude!

I pressed on. Methodologies include: qualitative, quantitative, trend tracking/secondary search, private online community panel management, competitive intelligence.

Um. Positioning, segmentation, brand equity, consumer relationship marketing, new product development (concept, product, volumetric forecasting), marketing mix, multi-country studies...

All right. If all that means "adept at being your very best friend for an entire year and then suddenly one day turning her back and siding with your other friend against you and never telling you what you did wrong and sending you into your adolescence in an emotional tailspin that lasted several years," by gum, I think I found my girl.

Then I clicked on a photo of George Will's boy. Yup. Totally the guy who smacked me in the side of the face with a slushball.

37 comments:

  1. I have to agree with your friend. (Not about the slushball; that was totally uncalled for.) Something is lost when people no longer read, but wait for the movie or TV version of a book to come out. A friend recommended Outlander to me a couple years ago, and I found the first book in the series at a used book store. It stayed on the shelf for a long while because it is a VERY long book, with a series of seven more VERY long books to complete the story.

    Then came Coronavirus. I reallyreally NEEDED an alternate reality because this one was scaring the crap out of me. So I started it and got hooked. I'm currently starting the fifth book (I'm a fast reader. One of the perks about reading a lot.)

    I also started watching the TV version on Netflix. While good, it just doesn't suck one in the way a book can. A book can relay how the characters feel and what they are thinking. One can become the character for a little while. Sometimes a character can influence my speech patterns or how I dress. (Yes, I DO tend to go into a book series with fanatical zeal. You should've witnessed my Harry Potter or my Lord of the Rings years. Am a geek.)

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    1. I'm pretty sure this fellow hasn't read Outlander. Strictly a non-fiction guy. Ideas. Opinions. Logic. Argument. No kilts.

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    2. NO KILTS!!! Jesus... how does he get laid?

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    3. I love Outlander. I only watched the first half of the first season, though; I'm hesitant to relive the second half of the first book in full-color, graphic, moving images. Several other parts of the series, translated to the screen, would also be beyond my sensibilities, I'm afraid.

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    4. Then plow on into Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey series next, and put the gloss back into your impressions of your fellow man. Diana Gabaldon relied on him heavily for history and for how to write novels in series. There are 20, and that quickly became too few.

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    5. I have the Outlander books, but I don't think I have all of them. I haven't even finished chapter one of book one, because, as already stated, it's a very long read. I also have the series on a usb and I'll get around to watching it eventually. I'm working through usb's alphabetically and I'm into the C's now.

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  2. Several decades ago I read a book called something like "Is There Life After High School?" The premise was about the way that the adolescent experience (in our society that means high school) shapes your life. The book went into details about psychological and intellectual development that I glossed over -- but what I do remember is an anecdote by a man who went to Whittier High School with Richard Nixon. What the man remembered most was that he defeated Nixon for Student Council president. That victory stayed with him always.

    [Whether Nixon remembered the defeat was not stated.]

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    1. Now I would love to have "having beaten Nixon for Student Council President" as a memory. Unfortunately, we still had him to kick around after that.

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  3. It's pretty much a function of age that most of us know or have met a number of well known people, especially if you knew them before they made it big. Sometimes it's fun to tell stories to kids (those under 50) just to see the looks on their faces. You can always embellish since they probably don't believe you anyway.

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    1. I have to embellish my own stories because I can't remember them.

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  4. I have had only a very few people I knew when I was younger who have since "made it big". Maybe I just hung around with very unmotivated kids. But it is very disappointing when I try to tell stories about those few with whom I have connections and all I get are blank stares. "Well, back in the day Bob Dylan was a pretty big deal".

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  5. Your friends’ comments are as entertaining as your stories Murr. You’ve amassed a fine collection of followers.

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  6. I was able to score at least an expression of 'wow. respect' from my son when on a zoom call he was telling me that he was deep into Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes and loved it. I said, "Do you know who his mother is? Diana Gabaldon." (He did know who she is). I remember way back in ancient times when she was on usenet doing her research.

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    1. She's a good in-person speaker too.

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    2. OMG - that all red like Greek, to me.
      Cop Car

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    3. Well, it also read like Greek, to me.

      BTW: I can no longer comment with my URL. Will continue to try.
      Cop Car

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    4. Good going, guys, befuddling ANonyMous, and him admitting it...

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    5. No no no, that's a different Anonymous, from the nice side of the family.

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  7. A boy I barely knew, in the class a year behind mine, grew up to be an ATF agent, and went under-cover with the biker gang, The Outlaws, for a year. He wrote a book about it. An unusual number of short guys in my class became fundamentalist religious 45 supporters with high blood pressure and bullying attitudes. Most of the girls I knew are still quite likable. So it goes.

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    1. You know? I don't know many right-wing people. I don't see them among my various fellow alumni, or in my neighborhood, or on my Facebook page, or anywhere in my family. I am destined to remain sane.

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    2. Unlike Murr I don't find that having friends who are right-wing cause me to lose sanity. I think they are nuts mind you but they let me know how the right-wing thinking is going and gives me a chance to let them know how centrist thinking is going.
      Cop Car

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    3. I don't like how their comments stay in my head to reappear in the middle of the night and make me despair of humanity.

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  8. Wow. I lead an underprivileged life, I guess. I am not aware of anyone I knew growing up who is now notable for anything. But I am six degrees of separation from some famous people. Does that count?

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  9. Happily Facebook- and Twitter-free. I treat my childhood acquaintances as I treat the concept of god(s): don't know, don't care.

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  10. I rarely stop to think what other kids in my classes turned out like. They all stayed in school while I left at 15, so I know they've probably done better than me, but are they happier for it?

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  11. I can’t think of any high school classmates who have made it big. I do know that many of the popular crowd, the jocks and cheerleaders, aren’t looking so good these days. Apparently they had their best times in high school.

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    1. I had some pretty good times in high school without being a jock or a cheerleader! (You have to be able to hop higher than two inches to cheer.)

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  12. Most of the popular guys from my high sch went on to become corporate lawyers; since I can't find out anything about the popular girls, I guess they went on to, as Janis put it, "marry young & then retire."

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    1. If you pick your first husband right, you can be set for life. I've heard.

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