Sit down - No.2
Sit down, it’s time for another so-called “teenager story.”
This one wouldn’t even make a “5” on your Cousin Amanda’s scale.
In my senior year, I used one of my electives to take Modern European History, because it was taught by Mr. Truro (the Communist).
As it so happened, many of my classmates, including at least a dozen close friends, made the same decision.
Among them was Evelyn Kane, whom I had been stealing glances at ever since my seventh-grade Block class. (“Block” was similar to your core group of Social Studies, Reading and Writing classes, except that it met every morning in the same room, with the same teacher handling all the subject matter.)
Actually, I had done more than just stare at Evelyn from afar ―but not much more. I had asked her to dance at the junior-high dances and even walked with her through the halls from time to time (but not “take possession” arm-around style). And there had been other classes when we had the opportunity to work together as part of a group.
In Truro’s class, since we were all Seniors, we were permitted more independence, such as going to the library on our own, to research an assignment. On these occasions, I would walk to the library with Evelyn, share a table, and do the same work. Sometimes, our group would be a threesome or foursome or more, and sometimes it would be just the two of us.
Since the assignments were not time-consuming, there was time to chat. In this way, I became acquainted with her in a way that was more like my relationships with my longtime (male) friends.
I do not know why this did not immediately lead to a date, other than the usual reason of my lack of courage in such matters. The embarrassments of junior high that had made me swear off dating had finally worn off, at least enough so that, as a Senior, I began to date again, and to attend private parties thrown by my friends.
Perhaps it was a matter of already dating someone else that kept me from asking Evelyn out. That’s a shame, and for more than one reason. First, as the year wore on, my dating only seemed to lead to problems and a feeling of being pressured and, again, embarrassed. And second, of course, it kept me from truly getting to know Evelyn. (I should also mention that for a time Evelyn was dating a very close friend of mine.)
Looking back on these events from the far side of middle age, I can (finally) see a connection, or, more accurately, a disconnect, between “dating” and “getting to know someone.” In fact, in my mind, as a teenager (but also as an adult, since it takes me so long to learn these things), the two concepts are almost the opposite.
“Dating” was done as a means to an objective. The objective, as a teenager, can be summed up as “having a girlfriend.” Just exactly what all is entailed (and what acts committed) in having a girlfriend is something that varies from teenager to teenager. As an adult, dating continues to be associated with an objective (which might be termed “having a wife”).
“Getting to know someone” is not associated with an objective. One does not get to know someone for the sake of something else, one does it for its own sake; it is the objective.
And it could be the objective of dating. (Perhaps, in some advice books on how to bring up a teenager that are sitting on library shelves, vainly waiting for someone to read them, it is, at least officially, the objective of dating.)
What if getting to know people, rather than having a girlfriend, had been the objective of my dating? Would there have been less pressure? Would I have made better choices?
Perhaps I would not have passed up the opportunity to ask Evelyn out. If I had seen that the concept of having a girlfriend, with its attendant concept of loyalty to that person (implying you didn’t date someone else, which is, of course, called “two timing”), was less important than learning how to get to know other people (especially the challenge of getting to know members of the opposite sex), that might have made me less hesitant, wouldn’t it?
But I couldn’t see that. In fact, I wasn’t anywhere near that point as a high-school senior, as a college senior or even ten years after that.
What’s more, there’s a difference between “seeing it” and giving advice about it, as I am doing now, and actually acting upon it. Would I act upon it, if I were in your shoes, or is this just another respect in which I’m a hypocritical parent? As a test case, let us look at my father.
When my mother died, he seemed to have but one thought: find another companion. And yet, I am sure that when I was a teenager and he was middle aged, his advice would have been to date for the sake of getting to know people, not for the purpose of “having a girlfriend” (a companion).
So I freely acknowledge my hypocrisy. I don’t write these “stories” to show you that I know it all. I may know a thing or two, but am I able to put it into practice?
Rather, I write to illustrate possibilities for you. Just because everybody else, even your father and your grandfather, goes about dating as a means of having a companion doesn’t mean you are locked into the same fate. Escape is possible…
There’s another complication here: if “everybody else” does this, then whomever you are dating is likely to look at it as a boyfriend-girlfriend commitment. So how can you possibly buck a system like that?
I think I have something to offer in the way of an answer, now, in my late middle age, that I did not have before. It is that you can use this as a way to tell who is a better person to get to know.
What do I mean by that? After a date, you can think over the question of whether your date thinks it’s important to have some sort of commitment from you, or whether she thinks it’s more important that you get to know each other.
When I think back on the dating I did as a high-school senior, one of the dates was definitely expecting a commitment. That could have been a clue to me. I could have used that as a way to decide that it would be better to spend some time getting to know Evelyn.
What if, from the beginning of my teenage years, that had been the way that I had decided whom to date?
It would have been easier to date someone in the first place, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t have had to worry so much about it being interpreted as some sort of commitment. I would have been able to gain experience in “getting to know people” right through junior high and high school, instead of waiting until senior year.
Perhaps it would have made me place less importance on dating customs (such as walking around the halls together, or inviting someone to go to the movies) and more willing to make less conventional arrangements to socialize (such as meeting to study at the town library, or participating in a club).
I admit there is a potential problem with my suggestions: peer pressure. Anytime you do something unconventional, they start in on you, right? (Even if it’s behind your back.)
Sometimes I think that peer pressure had me so scared that it kept me from doing anything at all. I thought the only way to escape it was not to be seen, and so, for a while, I would take the bus straight home from school, talking to no one … what a waste of years that will never come back!
But you’ve heard a lot about peer pressure, or bullying, already. You know the advice for dealing with it. The key ingredient, which only you can supply, is courage.
I may not have had the courage to buck peer pressure, but that doesn’t mean you cannot rise above my standard.
Finally, there’s a reason for dating to “get to know” someone that is so valuable that I think it outweighs all the other considerations and makes it important to act now.
By making an effort to get to know people, which includes deciding, after you’ve gotten to know them a little bit, which people are better people to know, you develop a skill that is at least as valuable as all of the knowledge from all of the classes you are taking, no matter what subject.
The “skill” is that you will get better and better at these decisions. You’ll get to the point where you can spot people who just aren’t going to listen and know they’re the ones to stay away from.
You’ll get better at getting people to listen to you, and that could not only mean a better kind of dating in your teenage years but a better kind of job later on. (To get a job, say, as a research scientist, it helps to pass your science courses with high grades, and to get a degree in an appropriate subject from a prestigious college, but it’s still a question of convincing the people running the research lab to hire you, and that takes skills of getting people to listen to you.)
Back to my “story.” (I freely admit that my “teenager stories” are ninety-percent lecture and only ten-percent story.)
It so happens that I did date Evelyn, but not until after we graduated, in the summer of ’72.
It was a double date. After baseball practice, I asked a friend if he wanted to get together that evening. He said that he and another friend were taking out dates. I said, “Oh really, who?” It turned out the dates were both girls I already knew. They would be going to a café with live music, and my friend enthused about the singer who would be performing. So, I asked if it would be okay with him if I came along ―with a date, of course.
“Uh, yeah sure, that would be okay,” he replied. Perhaps his hesitation meant that it really wasn’t okay, but I, being the fellow I was, with absolutely zero development in terms of being able to discern what people were really trying to communicate to me, went right ahead and called Evelyn. She consented, and I thought we had a good time, except for one thing: the other friend and his date did not show up. Was this because I horned in on the occasion?
Who knows, but if that interpretation is correct, then my friend must have had to call the other friend and explain that I was coming. Then the other friend must have backed out, and that would not have been what my friend wanted, not at all.
So, there’s a reasonable possibility that, because of my insensitivity, which was in turn because I had sought to avoid dating and other social contacts throughout most of my teenage years, I put my friend in a very uncomfortable position.
And if I put my friend in such a position, was I really behaving like a friend? After all, I had only to sense his hesitation. When I sensed it, I could have said, “Oh, you know, maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea after all. We’ll get together another time.”
At that point, if he truly wanted me to join him, he would have protested. Something like, “Oh no, there’s nothing wrong with it. Why don’t you see if you can get a date?”
Or, if he was relieved because he knew his other friend wouldn’t like it, he would have simply said, yes, another time.
Evelyn went to college at Michigan State, and, when I eventually ended up there, I would run across her on campus, every once in a while. Finally, at the end of the school year in my last year there, I called her up for another date, only not while we were at school. Rather, I called her in June (that would be 1976), between the spring and summer terms. She had graduated a few days earlier, and, because I had only one term to go, I was allowed into the Commencement ceremony too. Among the thousands leaving the ceremony (held in the 68,000-seat football stadium), we had – by chance – crossed paths outside, each with our parents there to congratulate us.
I had said I would call her, and so I did, when I got home from school, a few days later. The evening we went out was a Sunday, and all of the nightclubs were closed, so we ended up having dinner at a pizza joint.
I thought the date was a flop, and so I went back to school for my remaining term thinking that I wouldn’t see much more of her. Lo and behold, a couple of weeks later, sitting in the dining room of the small house I was renting with some friends, there came a knock at the screen door to the front porch. It was Evelyn of course, and she came in and sat with us for a few minutes. Her visit was one of the nicest things that had happened to me in a long time. I can’t say it was nice for her, though. She happened to arrive when I was having dinner with another woman I was seeing. So the few minutes that she stayed, with me introducing the two of them, were full of embarrassed silences.
And after that, I truly didn’t see her again. In December, I went away to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, and, while away, I learned in a letter from a friend that she had gotten married. It wasn’t until 1992, when I attended the 20th reunion of my high-school class, that I saw her.
As a footnote, that girl I was seeing when Evelyn came knocking at the door wanted to know everything about Evelyn. Why was she dropping by? How did I know her? How could I do such a thing as to ask her out when I was away from school?
Based on what I’ve said about using dating to make decisions about who are the better people to know, do you see a decision to be made here? Who would be better to know, the one with the courage to come calling at my door, or the one who reacts with jealousy?
You might ask, “Well, okay Edward, what decision did you see?” The answer, not surprisingly, is that, like your Grandpa, trying to placate his “girlfriends,” I ended up asking her to give me another chance. Soon after that, she stopped seeing me.
What if I had used her jealous reaction as the basis for a decision that Evelyn was the better person to make my friend? What if I had called Evelyn right away, after her visit? Hmmmmm ….
This one wouldn’t even make a “5” on your Cousin Amanda’s scale.
In my senior year, I used one of my electives to take Modern European History, because it was taught by Mr. Truro (the Communist).
As it so happened, many of my classmates, including at least a dozen close friends, made the same decision.
Among them was Evelyn Kane, whom I had been stealing glances at ever since my seventh-grade Block class. (“Block” was similar to your core group of Social Studies, Reading and Writing classes, except that it met every morning in the same room, with the same teacher handling all the subject matter.)
Actually, I had done more than just stare at Evelyn from afar ―but not much more. I had asked her to dance at the junior-high dances and even walked with her through the halls from time to time (but not “take possession” arm-around style). And there had been other classes when we had the opportunity to work together as part of a group.
In Truro’s class, since we were all Seniors, we were permitted more independence, such as going to the library on our own, to research an assignment. On these occasions, I would walk to the library with Evelyn, share a table, and do the same work. Sometimes, our group would be a threesome or foursome or more, and sometimes it would be just the two of us.
Since the assignments were not time-consuming, there was time to chat. In this way, I became acquainted with her in a way that was more like my relationships with my longtime (male) friends.
I do not know why this did not immediately lead to a date, other than the usual reason of my lack of courage in such matters. The embarrassments of junior high that had made me swear off dating had finally worn off, at least enough so that, as a Senior, I began to date again, and to attend private parties thrown by my friends.
Perhaps it was a matter of already dating someone else that kept me from asking Evelyn out. That’s a shame, and for more than one reason. First, as the year wore on, my dating only seemed to lead to problems and a feeling of being pressured and, again, embarrassed. And second, of course, it kept me from truly getting to know Evelyn. (I should also mention that for a time Evelyn was dating a very close friend of mine.)
Looking back on these events from the far side of middle age, I can (finally) see a connection, or, more accurately, a disconnect, between “dating” and “getting to know someone.” In fact, in my mind, as a teenager (but also as an adult, since it takes me so long to learn these things), the two concepts are almost the opposite.
“Dating” was done as a means to an objective. The objective, as a teenager, can be summed up as “having a girlfriend.” Just exactly what all is entailed (and what acts committed) in having a girlfriend is something that varies from teenager to teenager. As an adult, dating continues to be associated with an objective (which might be termed “having a wife”).
“Getting to know someone” is not associated with an objective. One does not get to know someone for the sake of something else, one does it for its own sake; it is the objective.
And it could be the objective of dating. (Perhaps, in some advice books on how to bring up a teenager that are sitting on library shelves, vainly waiting for someone to read them, it is, at least officially, the objective of dating.)
What if getting to know people, rather than having a girlfriend, had been the objective of my dating? Would there have been less pressure? Would I have made better choices?
Perhaps I would not have passed up the opportunity to ask Evelyn out. If I had seen that the concept of having a girlfriend, with its attendant concept of loyalty to that person (implying you didn’t date someone else, which is, of course, called “two timing”), was less important than learning how to get to know other people (especially the challenge of getting to know members of the opposite sex), that might have made me less hesitant, wouldn’t it?
But I couldn’t see that. In fact, I wasn’t anywhere near that point as a high-school senior, as a college senior or even ten years after that.
What’s more, there’s a difference between “seeing it” and giving advice about it, as I am doing now, and actually acting upon it. Would I act upon it, if I were in your shoes, or is this just another respect in which I’m a hypocritical parent? As a test case, let us look at my father.
When my mother died, he seemed to have but one thought: find another companion. And yet, I am sure that when I was a teenager and he was middle aged, his advice would have been to date for the sake of getting to know people, not for the purpose of “having a girlfriend” (a companion).
So I freely acknowledge my hypocrisy. I don’t write these “stories” to show you that I know it all. I may know a thing or two, but am I able to put it into practice?
Rather, I write to illustrate possibilities for you. Just because everybody else, even your father and your grandfather, goes about dating as a means of having a companion doesn’t mean you are locked into the same fate. Escape is possible…
There’s another complication here: if “everybody else” does this, then whomever you are dating is likely to look at it as a boyfriend-girlfriend commitment. So how can you possibly buck a system like that?
I think I have something to offer in the way of an answer, now, in my late middle age, that I did not have before. It is that you can use this as a way to tell who is a better person to get to know.
What do I mean by that? After a date, you can think over the question of whether your date thinks it’s important to have some sort of commitment from you, or whether she thinks it’s more important that you get to know each other.
When I think back on the dating I did as a high-school senior, one of the dates was definitely expecting a commitment. That could have been a clue to me. I could have used that as a way to decide that it would be better to spend some time getting to know Evelyn.
What if, from the beginning of my teenage years, that had been the way that I had decided whom to date?
It would have been easier to date someone in the first place, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t have had to worry so much about it being interpreted as some sort of commitment. I would have been able to gain experience in “getting to know people” right through junior high and high school, instead of waiting until senior year.
Perhaps it would have made me place less importance on dating customs (such as walking around the halls together, or inviting someone to go to the movies) and more willing to make less conventional arrangements to socialize (such as meeting to study at the town library, or participating in a club).
I admit there is a potential problem with my suggestions: peer pressure. Anytime you do something unconventional, they start in on you, right? (Even if it’s behind your back.)
Sometimes I think that peer pressure had me so scared that it kept me from doing anything at all. I thought the only way to escape it was not to be seen, and so, for a while, I would take the bus straight home from school, talking to no one … what a waste of years that will never come back!
But you’ve heard a lot about peer pressure, or bullying, already. You know the advice for dealing with it. The key ingredient, which only you can supply, is courage.
I may not have had the courage to buck peer pressure, but that doesn’t mean you cannot rise above my standard.
Finally, there’s a reason for dating to “get to know” someone that is so valuable that I think it outweighs all the other considerations and makes it important to act now.
By making an effort to get to know people, which includes deciding, after you’ve gotten to know them a little bit, which people are better people to know, you develop a skill that is at least as valuable as all of the knowledge from all of the classes you are taking, no matter what subject.
The “skill” is that you will get better and better at these decisions. You’ll get to the point where you can spot people who just aren’t going to listen and know they’re the ones to stay away from.
You’ll get better at getting people to listen to you, and that could not only mean a better kind of dating in your teenage years but a better kind of job later on. (To get a job, say, as a research scientist, it helps to pass your science courses with high grades, and to get a degree in an appropriate subject from a prestigious college, but it’s still a question of convincing the people running the research lab to hire you, and that takes skills of getting people to listen to you.)
Back to my “story.” (I freely admit that my “teenager stories” are ninety-percent lecture and only ten-percent story.)
It so happens that I did date Evelyn, but not until after we graduated, in the summer of ’72.
It was a double date. After baseball practice, I asked a friend if he wanted to get together that evening. He said that he and another friend were taking out dates. I said, “Oh really, who?” It turned out the dates were both girls I already knew. They would be going to a café with live music, and my friend enthused about the singer who would be performing. So, I asked if it would be okay with him if I came along ―with a date, of course.
“Uh, yeah sure, that would be okay,” he replied. Perhaps his hesitation meant that it really wasn’t okay, but I, being the fellow I was, with absolutely zero development in terms of being able to discern what people were really trying to communicate to me, went right ahead and called Evelyn. She consented, and I thought we had a good time, except for one thing: the other friend and his date did not show up. Was this because I horned in on the occasion?
Who knows, but if that interpretation is correct, then my friend must have had to call the other friend and explain that I was coming. Then the other friend must have backed out, and that would not have been what my friend wanted, not at all.
So, there’s a reasonable possibility that, because of my insensitivity, which was in turn because I had sought to avoid dating and other social contacts throughout most of my teenage years, I put my friend in a very uncomfortable position.
And if I put my friend in such a position, was I really behaving like a friend? After all, I had only to sense his hesitation. When I sensed it, I could have said, “Oh, you know, maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea after all. We’ll get together another time.”
At that point, if he truly wanted me to join him, he would have protested. Something like, “Oh no, there’s nothing wrong with it. Why don’t you see if you can get a date?”
Or, if he was relieved because he knew his other friend wouldn’t like it, he would have simply said, yes, another time.
Evelyn went to college at Michigan State, and, when I eventually ended up there, I would run across her on campus, every once in a while. Finally, at the end of the school year in my last year there, I called her up for another date, only not while we were at school. Rather, I called her in June (that would be 1976), between the spring and summer terms. She had graduated a few days earlier, and, because I had only one term to go, I was allowed into the Commencement ceremony too. Among the thousands leaving the ceremony (held in the 68,000-seat football stadium), we had – by chance – crossed paths outside, each with our parents there to congratulate us.
I had said I would call her, and so I did, when I got home from school, a few days later. The evening we went out was a Sunday, and all of the nightclubs were closed, so we ended up having dinner at a pizza joint.
I thought the date was a flop, and so I went back to school for my remaining term thinking that I wouldn’t see much more of her. Lo and behold, a couple of weeks later, sitting in the dining room of the small house I was renting with some friends, there came a knock at the screen door to the front porch. It was Evelyn of course, and she came in and sat with us for a few minutes. Her visit was one of the nicest things that had happened to me in a long time. I can’t say it was nice for her, though. She happened to arrive when I was having dinner with another woman I was seeing. So the few minutes that she stayed, with me introducing the two of them, were full of embarrassed silences.
And after that, I truly didn’t see her again. In December, I went away to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, and, while away, I learned in a letter from a friend that she had gotten married. It wasn’t until 1992, when I attended the 20th reunion of my high-school class, that I saw her.
As a footnote, that girl I was seeing when Evelyn came knocking at the door wanted to know everything about Evelyn. Why was she dropping by? How did I know her? How could I do such a thing as to ask her out when I was away from school?
Based on what I’ve said about using dating to make decisions about who are the better people to know, do you see a decision to be made here? Who would be better to know, the one with the courage to come calling at my door, or the one who reacts with jealousy?
You might ask, “Well, okay Edward, what decision did you see?” The answer, not surprisingly, is that, like your Grandpa, trying to placate his “girlfriends,” I ended up asking her to give me another chance. Soon after that, she stopped seeing me.
What if I had used her jealous reaction as the basis for a decision that Evelyn was the better person to make my friend? What if I had called Evelyn right away, after her visit? Hmmmmm ….
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home