Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 289

The perils of the road

This is what happens when you spend the weekend performing in Illinois:

You miss a dance party that was apparently held in your own home.

My problem with honorifics

I'm not a fan of titles, which is a nice way of saying that I really, really hate titles. 

Let me explain. 

I have several good friends who have earned doctorates in a variety of fields.

Some are actual medical doctors. If a person is having a heart attack on an airplane and the flight attendant asks if there is a doctor onboard, these are the people who can rightfully stand up and offer assistance.

Others possess doctorates in various non-medical fields: education, public policy, sociology, literature, mathematics, and more. These are folks who remain in their seats during the onboard medical emergency, keenly aware of the limitations of their doctoral title. 

Some of these people make use of their doctoral title in professional settings.
Some use it in personal settings, too.
Others do not.
It was years before I learned that some of my friends had earned a doctorate.  

Here is my problem with titles like these:

A title like "doctor" is a signal of exceptionally hard work and great academic accomplishment, but it also quite often coincides with the opportunity to engage in this level of academic pursuit. These are intelligent, dedicated individuals who in most cases benefited from parents who supported them at some point during the pursuit of higher education. These are people who were sent to college by their mothers and fathers. Dropped off at the dorms with futons and small refrigerators and desk lamps. These were folks who had some or all of their college education paid for by their parents.

There is a lot of research on the socioeconomics of doctoral candidates that support this assertion. 

Doctoral candidates tend not to be people who were forced to work 40 or 60 hours a week while attending college just to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads. While their accomplishments are no less impressive, they have almost always been earned alongside a certain degree of unwavering familial support.

But what about the people who are perfectly capable of earning a doctorate or other title-conferring degree but did not have the opportunity to do so because of life circumstances?

Take my friend, Amy, for example. Amy is a woman who was raised by a drug addicted mother and an abusive father. She taught herself to drive at the age of 12 so she could bring her mother to the grocery store and force her to buy food for herself and her sisters. Her childhood was filled with uncommon struggle and an unacceptable level of neglect and abuse. 

When Amy was young, she was shot in the head and survived. She earned a large settlement as a result of the shooting that she intended to use to pay for college only to discover that her mother had spent the money on drugs. Seeing no other way of paying for college, Amy transformed herself into an outstanding soccer player and earned an athletic scholarship to Sacred Heart University. She graduated with honors and began a teaching career by day and working at night as a waitress and bartender in order to pay off student loans and eventually fund and earn a Master's degree.

Working two jobs while attending college is an incredibly difficult thing. I know. I did it myself.  

Amy taught alongside me for several years before rising to the level of vice principal. She is currently home with her first child and expecting her second, but someday in the not-to-distant future, she will be the principal of a school. She has no doctoral degree and may never have the opportunity to earn one given her life circumstances, but is Amy any less deserving of such a title?

I don't think so.

In fact, she might be more deserving of a title than anyone I know. 

Honorifics and titles rarely tell us much about a person. They are capital and lowercase letters and bits punctuation that we place ahead of a name as a moniker of some significance, but truthfully, they mean little when it comes to taking the measure of a person.   

I know some remarkable people in possession of doctoral degrees. I know some wholly unimpressive people in possession of them well.   

And while their title may indicate a certain level of education, they are also often indicators of stable childhood homes, loving parents, a certain level of socioeconomic upbringing, a absence of debilitating injuries or diseases, and much more.

This is why I hate titles. People mistake them as meaning something. Worse, they leave people like Amy without a much deserved title.  

This TED Talk by Regina Hartley speaks to this issues well. I highly recommend it.

Driving in cars (and planes) with complete strangers

Yesterday morning, in the midst of the snowstorm, I drove past a woman walking in the road. She had an umbrella braced ahead of her and a CVS bag in her hand.

I pulled over and offered a ride. She was wary at first, but I assured her that lunatic killers don't go out in snowstorms.

The only lunatic on the road in a snowstorm is the one in search of an Egg McMuffin, some donuts for his kids, and a grande decaf for his wife.

Her name was Denise. She lives nearby. She owns a car but is afraid to drive in the snow. She underestimated the strength of the storm when she left the house and didn't realize that none of the sidewalks would shoveled. She works as a receptionist in a doctor's office in Wethersfield. She was grateful for my offer of a ride, saying that it "felt like it was the 1970's again," when drivers picked up pedestrians all the time.

Later on, I was at Bradley International Airport, approaching the security gates when a woman standing beside me said to an airport official, "I've never been in an airport before. What do I do?"

I offered to help her through her the security check and get to her gate. We removed our shoes. Emptied our pockets. Took off our coats. Removed laptops from our bags. After we passed through the scanners, I walked her to her gate and left her with an American Airlines agent who promised to get her on the plane.

The woman's name was Janie. She lives in Old Lyme. She was on her way to Philadelphia for her friend's wedding.

An hour later, I was flying somewhere over Pennsylvania, talking to a man named Jim who was seated beside me. Jim lives in Chicago but does business in Hartford regularly. We talked about the Chicago Bears, Gillette Stadium, his decision not to have children, and backgammon.

Six hours later, I was standing in a Chicago living room, surrounded by strangers, in the midst of their Christmas celebration. Several of the people at the party knew me from my appearances on The Moth Radio Hour and were excited to meet me. They had been listening to my stories on my Youtube channel before I had arrived. I was offered borscht. I showed them photos of Elysha and the kids. I met a Jewish rabbi amidst this family of Catholics who happens knows a rabbi who I worked with a month ago in New York. We discussed the economics of the Jewish temple. I learned about the role that storytelling plays in The Lost Boys of Peter Pan.

An hour later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a white sedan, driving through miles of Illinois cornfields with a family from Urbana, telling stories about life and love and professional disasters.

Needless to say, it was an unusual day for me.

It also occurs to me that other than the variety of locations, it might be a normal day in the life of my wife, Elysha, who seems perfectly capable of making a new and lifelong friend wherever she goes.

I am perfectly comfortable in the company of strangers today, happy to chat and tell stories and listen with an open heart. I might even enjoy meeting new people and spending time with them, as long as I'm not in a hurry or hungry.

I suspect that Elysha has a lot to do with this. Spend enough time in the company of someone like her and you can't help but realize the value of reaching out to people whenever possible and seeking a connection.

I'm still not likely to make a brunch date with a stranger in a Starbucks line or arrange playdates for the kids with random mothers in the doctor's office (both things Elysha has done), but I'm getting there.

Of course, if given the choice, I'd still choose these three over strangers any day.

Gas stations suck (at least in this regard)

Can we all acknowledge that placing the gasoline octane choices in reverse numerical order on gas pumps is done with the sole purpose of causing people who might be distracted to accidentally choose a higher octane than intended?

Not exactly a fair business practice if you ask me. 

Gas stations suck (at least in this reagrd)

Can we all acknowledge that placing the gasoline octane choices in reverse numerical order on gas pumps is done with the sole purpose of causing people who might be distracted to accidentally choose a higher octane than intended?

Not exactly a fair business practice if you ask me. 

Truth about meetings (at least most of them)

The three worst things ever

Sometimes characters in my books speak words and think things that I would never speak or think myself. 

Other times characters say words and think things that are directly from my heart and soul. In these cases, these characters are speaking on my behalf.  

In Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Budo lists the three things he hates most in the world.

His list is my list.  

1. Waiting
2. Not knowing
3. Not existing

My favorite sentence of the year

Earlier in the month, a friend of mine took some advice about living life well, and as expected, it worked out perfectly.

In telling me how well things turned out, she wrote this sentence:

"It's annoying how right you always are."

I don't usually identify my favorite sentence from a given year, but if I were to, this might be it.

It's got everything I love:

Acknowledgement of my genius.Evidence of my ability to annoy even as I am proven correct.The delightful inverse of "I told you so" - "You told me so," which is almost as satisfying.

Makes you want to solicit my advice on a daily basis. Doesn't it?

Cousin Oliver sucked.

Here’s my biggest complaint about The Brady Bunch:

The show ran for five seasons.

The writers had six kids, two parents, a housekeeper, a dog and a butcher to work with, not to mention a host of special guest stars ranging from Joe Namath to Desi Arnaz, Jr. to Vincent Price.

And yet they still needed to add stupid cousin Oliver to the mix in order to have enough material.

Not good.

Even stranger:

Wikipedia reports that Cousin Oliver was added to The Brady Bunch’s cast in hopes that his “with Dutch Boy haircut and wire-rimmed glasses, his resemblance to pop singer John Denver and juvenile appeal would help the flagging series.”

I confirmed this information on three other sites, including an interview in the Washington Post.

Let me say that again:

The producers of The Brady Bunch added a character to the show in hopes that his resemblance to John Denver would somehow boost ratings.

Bizarre.

I also found that Robbie Rist, the actor who played Cousin Oliver, appeared on John Denver’s variety show several times and won a John Denver Look-Alike contest.

This story gets stranger by the minute.

This is a thing.

Nordstrom is selling ordinary stones wrapped in ordinary leather this holiday season.

I'm not kidding. 

They describe it as "A paperweight? A conversation piece? A work of art? It's up to you..."

I would be more inclined to call it a moron detector.
A lunatic locator.
A "get a life" warning.

The stone, which is "sure to draw attention wherever it rests," retails for $85 and is SOLD OUT. 

As of this morning, the stone has one review on the Nordstrom website. It reads:

“Artistically, this product is inspiring. It reveals it’s beauty to those who observe, respect and adorn it with carefully chosen materials to enhance it’s surface. Rocks, like fond memories are to be passed on as a keepsakes for generations to come.”

A smaller, $65 version of the stone is also available for those of you who have only partially lost your minds. 

The next time you are feeling alone, lost, hopeless, or like a failure, take solace in this:

There are people in the world who paid $85 for a stone. At least you aren't that stupid.