Wisconsin + Christmas = Three Thoughts

There was no great adventure when I visited my immediate family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, Earth, last week. I did not get snowed in while in a layover in Kansas City. I did not meet any women from other countries. I did not nearly get into any fistfights.

There is no, therefore, opportunity to merely relate one story and hammer out a blog. Instead, I am gonna cobble three things together.

Agua

My brother has a son. (That makes me an uncle, for those scoring at home.) He's about 15 months old, and he's cute.

He walks nearly as quickly as I do (although I think I can take stairs faster (at least going up... he might be able to fall more quickly down them than I could because of his lower center of gravity)) and he's got a burgeoning vocabulary (I'm not going to bore you by saying he's about the cutest and smartest kid in the world; even though I think that, you don't want to hear it).

As part of his day care, he goes to a multi-lingual environment. I don't know specifics, but I believe it's to increase his chances to meet women from other countries later in life. In any case, he knows a smattering of French and Chinese and Spanish. And a smattering of English, of course.

I relate all of this because he has one other ability in addition to those two: the ability to grab things. If he were an action figure, it might be spring-loaded and called a "Lightning Strike Kung-fu Grip". He loves taking things off of tables and shelves and Christmas trees.

I saw all three of these wonderful skills come together in one moment when I was standing with him in the kitchen in my sister's home. I was getting myself water from the fridge and he was standing there, sort of wobbling but relatively stable, watching me. I looked at him and said, "Agua."

He did a sharp 360 and then pivoted to his left, where a short shelf had a cup sitting on it. He reached for it and said, as he pulled the cupful of water onto the floor:

"Agua."

Oops.

Who?

I have a fair number of phone numbers in my phone, but sometimes when I meet someone it doesn't "stick". Sometimes people change their number without telling me. Sometimes people who know I don't have their number txt me just to mess with me, it seems.

And sometimes something else happens.

Because of my night owled-ness and my Pacific Time Zone-osity, I was up considerably later than all of my family members. I was lying on the pull-out couch mattress with a laptop, cable television, and a book until the wee hours of the morning... chatting and reading and watching. And, occasionally, txting.

It was about 2:00 on Christmas morning when I got a txt that read, "merrry christmas!"

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "I do not know that person's number. I will have to investigate."

It was a 541 area code, which meant Oregon, USA, Earth. OK. Seems reasonable. Non-Portlanders use that area code. I know some non-Portlanders. But who was it?

I couldn't just txt back, "Who the f is this?" both because it would be rude and it would be surrendering. I wanted to be able to figure out who it was. I doubted it was a friend, because most of my friends use proper punctuation and only use two r's in "merry".

I scanned my memory banks for friends of friends that might have my number. I thought of women that I'd met and given my number to but not bothered to put theirs into my phone (does that make me evil? I prefer the term "inebriatedly selective"). I had a few potential answers, but they seemed remote possibilities.

So the next morning I txted back, "Merry Christmas. Sorry, but who is this?"

The response, within about 10 minutes, was a single word: "chancery".

Chancery? Huh? Is that a name? Is it a woman? Do I know a Chancery? Had I met a Chancery?

"Yes", "you heard me", "yes", "I think so", "no", and "not that I remember" were the answers to those questions that I was working from.

I went to Facebook. There can't be that many Chanceryses can there be?

Yes. Yes there can be. Over 500, none of whom are friends of my friends. Most of whom seemed to be non-local and dudes, to boot.

So I considered and decided to be ambiguous, hoping to learn more without asking for more. I txted back, "How have you been? You have a good holiday?"

"good yours?"

Nothing. So I decided to end this by txting, "Good. It's been a while. Hey, do you have Facebook?"

I hoped by getting Facebook access I would remember who the f this was. Shortly thereafter, he/she/it txted back, "no because i txted the wrong number. this isn't david"

Oh, Chancery. I never knew ye!


Emotional Equilibrium

I currently have two positions about the human condition. The first is the tension we all have between being a part of the group and being apart from the group.

The second one has to do with our ability to normalize. Flowers and TM2000 and I have discussed this at length (actually, over email, as is our INTJ wont) and I really think it's true: people get used to things.

Lose your arm? That sucks, it really does, but eventually you'll get over it and be pretty much where you were emotionally before the accident/donation.

Win the lottery? Badass, but with enough time you can be less happy than before (see: Hurley on Lost, because I'm pretty sure that it's based on a true story (except the sharks with the logos on them... give me a break!)

So I believe that the human brain has evolved to being SLIGHTLY dissatisfied. The people who got fat and happy tended to achieve less because of their happiness (including, but not limited to, achieving fewer babies and/or weapons to kill other peoples' babies). The people who gave up when the going got rough tended to be unproductive and their genes died.

Whatever. I think we all have the capacity to overcome bad things in our life... but also have the capacity (and tendency) to cause ourselves grief. We cause drama or second-guess or become bored by things.

I thought of this during my visit. It was so good, objectively. Fantastic food, lovely people that I care for deeply all around me. A night of karaoke and some interesting conversations with people who weren't even in Wisconsin spiced things up.

And yet I had feelings of stress. Of boredom. Of restlessness.

Hopefully these feelings weren't altogether obvious to my family; I really enjoyed my time with them and was sad to go, and I miss them tremendously already. But I'll probably get over it soon enough, right? Damn you, blessed human condition!