You see, we were talking about the parlous nature of our past relationship.
And I said, “I’m fifty-effing-seven years old.”* By this I imagined that I was indirectly sending the message that I no longer have the energy or the inclination to go all intense just to jack up my norepinephrine levels.
I don’t know what my friend’s internal interpretation of my statement was. We are two very different people.
The external interpretation was in the response given to my statement. This response suggested that my claim to being well aged and mellow (like Laphroig) wasn’t a legitimate guarantee that my relational performance in the future would be of sufficient difference from that of the past. (Yes, dear interpersonal communication students, I am NOT a perfect practitioner of all I teach. I understand the concepts. I just can’t always do the skills both efficiently and effectively.)
My friend’s response was, “(Inside?) We’re still 12 years old” in a “gestural” vocal tone accompanied by a sweep of the arm.
While I could not see my own face, I think it may have been registering confusion or disagreement because after a couple of beats of silence this phrase was added: “Well, 13 years old.”
What does it mean to be a 12 years old thought pattern inside of a 57 year old body?
How was I at 12? I was in 7th grade which means that I hadn’t yet learned and then purposefully unlearned how to use John Kennedy’s assassination, just two year’s passed, to make myself cry. That year I spent several months talking in a faux-Liverpudlian accent that went with the three cheap plastic rings I wore on each hand. My two girlfriends, Robin and Julie, pretended to be Paul and John. I don’t think we had anyone to play George.
Were we crazy or simply 7th graders in the throes of the hormonal disruption of adolescence?
Also, by the age of 12, I had flunked and continued to flunk the gender test.
Oh yes. One of the games kids played in 6th grade was to ask someone to do some common behavior: “look at your fingernails” or “sit down and cross your legs.” And then, whatever you did, they explained it as either a “girl” or “boy” behavior. And if you responded as the wrong sex, of course you got picked on. Yeah, yeah. Not as rotten as kids today have it and . . . HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF OF MY LAWN! Dag nabbit!
Anyway. Oh, yes. Well, of course you must have guessed as soon as I learned what the list for “boy,” was, I performed THOSE, not the “girl behaviors.” I looked at my nails with the palm curved inward, facing me. As soon as I got into pants each day, I sat with my ankle crossed at the knee. Those are the only two tests I remember but I’m sure there were more.
Now, what was my motivation? To be different? To BE a boy? To show that there was no difference between boys and girls? To annoy the living Bjeezuz out of my Mom?
Whatever answer I give at this age and this point in time has a lot more to do with the audience who is in front of me and what I think they need to get from the story than with any accessible “truth.”
So, was I interested in boys at thirteen? Thirteen was eighth grade, when most of my girly excitement was taken up with following the careers of Bobby Kennedy and Ilya Kuryakin I had a chance to see the former on the University of Santa Clara campus in a smallish theatre and acted (with the other 8th grade girls) much as though he were a Beatle – our cheers too much like screams. I joined the latter’s fan club.**
So. What was my friend’s experience at age 12? Deep interest in politics and government? Excessive hormonal discharge resulting in parasocial relationships? Looking forward to serving our country? An interest in becoming rather than being with the opposite sex? And what about at age 13? ***
All sensemaking is retrospective. We give explanations after we do what we do. I know that whatever story I’m giving must by its nature be an attempt at audience adaptation.
Unless of course, Kenneth Burke was right that that it’s possible, it’s conceivable, that people may sometimes, though far more rarely than we imagine, speak expressively rather than rhetorically, to the universe instead of to (an) Other(s)
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*Note to new VPI: I don’t use profane or obscene language in front of my students (unless it’s the focus of part of a lesson or a comment to be published in The Broadside) but the blogosphere does, I believe, have different standards of speech than the classroom.
** And have thought about the actor David McCallum’s aging often since becoming a fan of NCIS and catching the episode of Madmen in which he was Sally Draper’s pre-teen heart throb.
*** Speaking of Thirteen, aren’t you glad she came back to House? I know I am.
