Pratfalls, Face Plants and Other Indignities

My wife is a wonderful wife and mother. Nothing matters more to her than the health, safety and happiness of her family.

And yet, she suffers from an unmotherly affliction that overcomes her whenever she sees one of us get hurt: her eyes get wide, her body shakes, her mouth opens, and out comes a rolling, gleeful, and completely uncontainable fit of laughter.

One of her daughters might have just walked into the kitchen table - at whatever age put her at exactly the right height to hit the table after never having had to bend down in the past to get under there - and she's likely crying in genuine pain...but before Mommy can hug her and kiss her and make her all better, Mommy must first stop laughing hysterically.

When we were first married, we lived in a small semi in Richmond Hill. The stairs to the basement had a low ceiling (low even for someone of my stature) and one day my wife and I were on the landing and she sent me down to the basement to get something. With the youthful exuberance of one first married, deeply infatuated with his (relatively) new bride, I bounded down the stairs excitedly - keen to grant my bride's request - and promptly smacked my forehead into a 4-inch vertical piece of the ceiling (probably fashioned that way by the builder to somehow help its overall downward slope while saving a few moments of effort). My feet continued down the stairs a few inches above the next one or two steps while my forehead remained temporarily attached to the piece of ceiling it had found. Then I remember being completely horizontal in the air, with a bit more forward momentum. Then bumping down the stairs. And then I was on the ground, at the bottom of the stairs, dazed and confused, with little birds carouseling about my head. Back up on the landing, I heard my beautiful young wife, bent over, laughing uproariously, stomping her feet, and otherwise of no help to her possibly dying husband. She didn't dial 911. She didn't ask if I was okay. She didn't dash down the stairs to take my pulse or check for broken bones or any other damage...she couldn't. For a good 5 minutes, she had no control over her bodily movements.

I could have been badly hurt and those first few seconds/minutes might have made the difference between life and death, but I don't blame her. I was mad at her - don't get me wrong - but as I then learned, she's got an affliction. My Dad has the same one. As does my childhood friend Paul. Great people, all of them, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want any one of them with my life in their hands after I've walked through a plate glass door, or tripped over a curb and face planted onto a sidewalk.
(Watching a movie like Rat Race with slapstick galore, yes, I want them with me then. Nobody makes the experience more fun.)

I watched a businessman yesterday, uniformed in his suit and tie and hustling off to one of the downtown towers, lose his footing as he climbed the stone steps from the street. He didn't go all the way down, but planted a knee, caught himself with his un-briefcased hand, and quickly righted himself. His first reaction, once back in control, was to swing his head around and scan his surroundings to see if anyone had seen his stumble. Why? Because nobody likes the indignity of being caught in a clumsy moment, let alone laughed at.

Years ago, friends and I were at a concert at the Ontario Place Forum on an icy autumn day. The Forum was a stage surrounded by a few rows of seats, and then large hills on which people could sit and watch the show. Back then (and maybe today?) you could enter the Forum in various ways, one of which was to climb a hill and then make your way down the other side to find a seat. On this particular day, the hills were slick with ice on the interior side, and a whole lot of people coming over the hill suddenly found themselves airborne and then on their butts sliding down the hill - with hundreds of people laughing and applauding their very public misfortune. It became a game - the stadium holding its collective breath as each new victim appeared at the top of the hill, then losing its collective mind as the inevitable wipe-out ensued. Imagine the humiliation. Some people were graceful about it, stood up, dusted themselves off, and took a bow. Others pretended nothing had happened. I remember a kid crying. I remember some genuine anger. I guess we all handle the moment differently.

Not that long ago (15 years? 20?) I had the opportunity to play softball with my oldest sister - the unofficially ordained "Queen of the Pratfall". She got a hit, which itself was something I'd never expected. She rounded first and then second with speed and drive I didn't know she had. And then she fell. But not in a way that ordinary people fall: Her face went down first (for most of us, our hands would have instinctively shot out to take the brunt of the fall - but it was her face that nobly declared "don't worry hands, I've got this one.") When running at full speed with little dexterity, the face suddenly hitting the ground significantly alters what the rest of the body is doing. In her case, her feet continued shuffling forward - in the air now - until not so gracefully touching down on the back of her head. For a moment, she was completely folded in half, and then her legs' inertia continued forward, completing the least athletic flip it will ever be my pleasure to witness.

And my sister sat up, looked at us - some of us laughing, some of us staring in horror - brushed the infield sand off her clothes, and laughed harder than anyone else. She handled the moment well.

When I was lying at the bottom of the basement stairs all those years ago, I didn't handle the moment well. I think I yelled at my wife. I think I said something like "Would you mind fucking checking if I'm fucking hurt and might need to be fucking hospitalized before fucking laughing at me?" Like I said, I guess we're all different.

Two-year-olds and three-year-olds are only partially people at that age. They are clumsy. They've only recently learned to go about on two legs. Their heads are too big and heavy for their tiny little bodies. They bump into things. They fall down stairs. They bang their head. They lose their balance when there's absolutely no reason to do so. When these things happen, they want (and need!) their Mommy's tender loving care. In my house, they used to get Daddy's tender loving care and Mommy in tears, laughing hysterically, pointing, and then finally stepping up to the TLC plate, trying to hug them but still shaking with laughter, trying to console them, but still giggling under her breath. And yet they love her.

She's got an affliction. So does my Dad. So does Paul. And yet, they're all good people.

Some people don't like being laughed at when they fall down go boom. Others don't seem to mind as much. Some laugh at themselves. Some scream profanities at the person/people laughing at them. Again, they're all good people.

And sometimes, people who laugh at others when they hurt themselves marry people who don't like to be laughed at when they've hurt themselves.

True love means staying together for decades despite our differences.

Patterns, Patterns Everywhere and not a Stop to Think

The street is crowded and all sorts of people are walking toward you. That man looks dangerous, so you keep a watchful eye on him. The woman over there is clearly in a bad mood, which is a shame because she looks like a nice person. Maybe she's in the middle of a relationship that's ending? Those two girls walking together are such good friends that they've even started to look alike. That kid's gonna have to marry rich because he's not getting a job any time soon (not until he loses the skateboard at least). That guy's way too busy for his own good; slow down man, try smelling the roses...

All that in the blink of an eye.

We are walking, talking pattern-matching machines. Our brains instantly assess and categorize who and what we see - instinctively looking for threats, opportunities, and so forth. All part of our survival programming.

Our senses sense and our brains make sense of what's sensed by looking through our storage banks, file-after-file, for similar patterns that can be quickly translated into meaning. We do it when we read. We do it when we watch movies and listen to music and eat. And we do it when we're strolling down the street looking at complete strangers and making instant judgements about them.

Nothing new or particularly insightful here, except that we tend not to pay attention to this particular aspect of our human experience. We just trust the processing we do and go about our days blinded to the impact it might be having on our moment-to-moment encounters with the world.

As we get older and experience more and more things (and books and movies and people) our storage banks become richer, the patterns become more firmly associated with meaning, and we become more and more trusting of and governed by the "wisdom" we've accumulated.

That's why we become so frustrated with our kids when they don't trust us and when they don't listen to us and when they challenge us and act as if they know and we don't. We expect that we can do the pattern-matching for them (don't date that loser, don't trust that "friend", don't hang out in that neighbourhood, ...) and they will implicitly have the faith in our experiences that we do.

And, of course, the frustration goes in the other direction as well: How would you know? You've never even met him! Things have changed since your were a kid. (Even more frustrating when your parent turns out to be right so often).

But here's what's wrong with the pattern-matching: We're programmed to do it fast. Survival often requires immediate decisions, after all. So our brain takes short cuts, filtering out the minutiae and paying attention to a finite set of cues to which we've ascribed meaning (...that growling sound reminds me of the time that a sabre tooth tiger ate Jimmy).

When it comes to people passing us on the street, our assessments come down to things like the cast of the eyes, the slope of the eyebrows, the way the hair is worn, the posture, the clothes, and of course the accompanying equipment (skateboard, designer purse, knock-off purse, abacus in the pocket, and so on). Furthermore, our brains are doing these assessments based on stimuli provided via imperfect sensory devices (sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations all filtered through input/output equipment that is limited by design) and a relatively small sample-size of experiences (our own and others' with which we have been programmed).

We're getting partial data, dismissing cues we don't recognize or pay attention to, and making instant judgements that we innately rely on. Of course, being the good people that we are, there's a layer of conscious judgement that overlays the more mechanical snap judgements and governs our responses so that we don't act on impulses in socially unacceptable ways (like running away from the mean-looking dude, or hugging the sad, but nice-looking woman.)

In the course of the work that I do, I meet many, many, many, many, many people from across North America (mainly), from different industries, different jobs, different hierarchical levels, different pay grades, different geographies, different demographics, and so on. Increasingly, I see patterns in people. I meet someone and find myself acting as if I know how they're going to sound and behave before we've even shaken hands. I'm actually reacting to the person of whom he/she has reminded me, but I'm often (suprisingly) bang-on accurate in the superficial pattern-match.

One of my psychology-student daughters tells me this is because we all reinforce the patterns we see, and society has made this new person in front of me just like the person I matched him to (he's big, so he's a jock, which means in a group he's treated this way, which means he responds that way, ...). I guess that means there are legitimate human archetypes that society develops and perpetuates and those are the patterns I'm picking up on. Which isn't a very good thing at all (even if it simplifies my job).

Pattern-matching fuels racism and ageism and sexism and other -isms. It makes us leap to conclusions about people and their actions based on what we've seen in the past. It drives us to shape people to meet our expectations. It blinds us to nuances about people and situations that are genuinely new but difficult to process in our pattern-matching heads. It makes us crotchety old people who think they know better than everyone else, especially as our senses decline and the only signals we can pick up on in our pattern-matching machines are the extreme ones. It's what and how we teach our kids about the world.

But...

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana 

We need to remember past data points that may signal future dangers, or else we learn nothing from those experiences and should expect to see them repeat themselves time after time. That's wisdom.

And...

We need to recognize our own limitations as pattern-matching machines - let our survival instincts do their thing and save us from the occasional sabre-tooth, and then slow down and use our highly-evolved brains to consciously question our own assessments.

Just because our sensory equipment and pattern-matching processor has put us on alert to something or someone triggering a match, that's just a data point surfacing from a past experience. Wise to note it, and far wiser to then apply some real thought to what the trigger was, why it fired, what it matched, and all the many reasons why it's probably a false match. In that way, we don't act on and perpetuate the false signals as if they are reality.

That'll never be instantaneous, but how often is it a survival imperative to instantaneously judge a person, and when is it ever right?

----

P.S. Did your own personal pattern-matching processor catch a few words breaking the pattern of font usage throughout? Go back and re-read them in sequence, and you'll find a corollary to Santayana's famous quotation above.

What it Means to be Canadian (Perspectives from a 7-Year--Old)

On this Canada Day, I asked my 7-year-old to share her thoughts on being Canadian. What does it mean to live in Canada? What does it mean to be a Canadian? What makes Canada a special place to live?

Her 10 answers were surprisingly deep. That said, in case you can't quite see the deepness I've added my own "David making sense" commentary to help you get there.

1. My friends and teachers live here. If I wasn't here, I never would have met them.

David making sense... Here our 7-year-old is pointing out the importance of multiculturalism and tolerance in Canada. She also extols our education system. Digging deeper, there's a bit of the if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest question implied as well: If she didn't live in Canada would her Canadian friends and teachers still be friends and teachers never having met her, or would they just be people? Speaking of fall...

2. Sometimes it's summer and sometimes it's winter. In some places it's cold in summer and in some places it's hot in winter. In Canada, in the summer you can play summer games and in the winter you can play winter games.

David making sense... In Canada, we enjoy an array of seasons - sometimes in a single week. That seasonal variety enables Canadians to be mediocre in all sports, instead of being really good at any one specific sport by focusing on it all year round (the exception, of course, is hockey because Canadians are the only people who have Tim Hortons to drink when their kids are playing it). We do love winning, but we love trying hard just as much. And if (when) we are disappointed with the outcome in a given sport, along comes the next season and we quickly move on. Where else but Canada?

3. I like the food. McDonald's here is better than in other places.

David making sense... Say no more about Canadian food. My 7-year-old thinks McDonald's is the culinary signature of our country. The wife and I were recently talking to some Americans in Stratford Ontario. We passed an Asian restaurant that proclaimed it served "Canadian Food". They asked what that means. We answered that it means the food is bad. McDonald's, on the other hand, is the place to get good, distinctly Canadian food. McDonald's elsewhere can't compare (unless of course you've eaten there, which our 7-year-old has not).

4. I like shoe stores.

David making sense... Shoes matter. Especially with the Canadian seasons changing all the time. You can tell a lot about a country by its footwear. In Canada, we have lots of it and many, many places where you can buy it. With two sisters in their twenties, our 7-year-old has seen her share of shoe stores and clearly she has chosen to like being there. What she doesn't like so much is shoes (and socks for that matter). She routinely spends 30 minutes trying to get her socks just right (so the little toe seam doesn't bother her, which it always does) and then her shoes just right (so that they don't put undue pressure on the socks' toe seam). Needless to say, I don't share her affinity for shoe stores.

5. Talking Canadian is nice.

David making sense... From eh to zed, there's no better language in the world. And Canadians use their language to say lots of nice things. So talking Canadian is synonymous with "nice", not to be confused with Nice (in France) where they speak French, which is not to be confused with the language that Canadians in Quebec speak.

6. We don't have tornadoes or earthquakes.

David making sense... Nothing ground-shaking here, other countries blow, Canada doesn't.

7. There's a spider living in our basement.

David making sense... Ahem. I can't make sense of this one. I don't know what she's talking about. If there was a spider living in our basement, surely it wouldn't be living anymore. Ahem.

8. People have pants. In other places people wear loin cloths (like Tarzan).

David making sense... We wear pants here, but not always and not everyone. For example, in our house, only the spider-killer wears pants. In other countries, loin cloths are a lot more common. And the problem with that is that when you're swinging through trees (like Tarzan) people can see up your loin cloth. When people say "Tarzan has balls" they don't mean he's courageous. But in Canada, where we talk nice, we'd never say something like that.

9. The baseball team has a bluejay, and bluejays are blue, my favourite colour.

David making sense... I'm just glad she didn't say hockey team. That makes her a much bigger sports fan than my other two daughters.

10. People can dye their hair.

David making sense... Clearly the 7 year old is reflecting on the freedom of expression we enjoy in Canada. People aren't persecuted for flamboyance, for looking different, for being different, and for showing who they are on the inside in how they make themselves up when they're out and about. All that said, in my family PEOPLE CANNOT DYE THEIR HAIR. Your hair is beautiful the way God gave it to you and once you change it, you can never go back to how it looks best. My wife has never dyed her hair and look how beautiful and young she still looks. So yes, in Canada people can dye their hair and all that stuff. Just not in this little corner of Canada.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!