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Dysfunctional Kids: Nature or Nurture?

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How Do Spoiled Brats Come About?

How Do Spoiled Brats Come About?

We’ve all seen them. Today, at a CVS Pharmacy near work, I saw two of them. One little boy in his mother’s arms sobbing while complaining, “This is not very exciting.” The other, also a boy, was hanging on to his mother’s leg while she was desperately trying to run a credit card to pay for a prescription.

Because I have been sterile all my life, I have never had any children of my own. (And, no, I never did want to adopt anyone else’s children, either.) So I never was able to find out whether spoiled brats and other dysfunctional kids are born or just raised that way. Both my brother and I never fit into that category, if for no other reason than that my father ruled by terror, tempered with love.

Over my lifetime, I have seen both wonderful children and heinous brats come from the same families; and I knew the parents to be kind, loving people. Why does one child become a howling reincarnation of Satan, when all the others from the same brood are as gentle as can be? Did the parent spoil one of the children and clamp down on the others? I am truly perplexed by this phenomenon. I suspect that, if there is an answer, it may also provide an insight into troubled psychopaths such as Adam Lanza and other mass murderers.

We like to assign tags such as “mental health,” but we could just as easily use terms such as “evil” or “diabolically possessed.” If a child is so very troubled, it is sheer torture for the parents to continue raising that child. Do we punish them and society by insisting that it is all their fault and that they had better make the kid toe the line? Or do we take such children, give them a mallet and shovel, and have them clear mine fields, hoping that they set some of them off?

These are not trivial questions. Some of us think that anyone can be rehabilitated. Myself, I am not quite so confident that it is possible.

 

“Life Is a Battle”

Seneca

Seneca

Spite of all do you still chafe and complain, not understanding that, in all the evils to which you refer, there is really only one—the fact that you do chafe and complain? If you ask me, I think that for a man there is no misery unless there be something in the universe which he thinks miserable. I shall not endure myself on that day when I find anything unendurable.

I am ill; but that is a part of my lot. My slaves have fallen sick, my income has gone off, my house is rickety, I have been assailed by losses, accidents, toil, and fear; this is a common thing. Nay, that was an understatement; it was an inevitable thing. Such affairs come by order, and not by accident. If you will believe me, it is my inmost emotions that I am just now disclosing to you: when everything seems to go hard and uphill, I have trained myself not merely to obey God, but to agree with His decisions. I follow Him because my soul wills it, and not because I must. Nothing will ever happen to me that I shall receive with ill humour or with a wry face. I shall pay up all my taxes willingly. Now all the things which cause us to groan or recoil, are part of the tax of life—things, my dear Lucilius, which you should never hope and never seek to escape.

It was disease of the bladder that made you apprehensive; downcast letters came from you; you were continually getting worse; I will touch the truth more closely, and say that you feared for your life. But come, did you not know, when you prayed for long life, that this was what you were praying for? A long life includes all these troubles, just as a long journey includes dust and mud and rain. “But,” you cry, “I wished to live, and at the same time to be immune from all ills.” Such a womanish cry does no credit to a man. Consider in what attitude you shall receive this prayer of mine (I offer it not only in a good, but in a noble spirit): “May gods and goddesses alike forbid that Fortune keep you in luxury!” Ask yourself voluntarily which you would choose if some god gave you the choice—a life in a café or life in a camp.

And yet life, Lucilius, is really a battle. For this reason those who are tossed about at sea, who proceed uphill and downhill over toilsome crags and heights, who go on campaigns that bring the greatest danger, are heroes and front-rank fighters; but persons who live in rotten luxury and ease while others toil, are mere turtle-doves safe only because men despise them. Farewell.—Seneca, Letters

Happy 13.0.0.0.0!

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Nope, Not Quite the End of the World

Nope, Not Quite the End of the World

I hope you’re enjoying all the craziness about the upcoming end of the world on December 21, 2012—according to the (snicker) Mayan Calendar. On that day, Martine and I will be driving to Palm Springs, where we will stand in flowing white robes, holding hands, on top of Mount San Jacinto. No, wait, actually we’ll be spending time with my brother Dan and his family, who are renting a house in PS for the holidays.

After my extensive travels to the Mayan area between 1975 and 1992—about eight trips in all—I managed to learn something about the Mayans and their calendar. The most important thing to note is that it recycles at the end of every 5,125-year cycle. According to some interpretations, one of those periods ends on Friday, though there is widespread disagreement among archaeologists on correlating the date to our own calendar.

The Mayans have already gone through a good deal more than twelve of those cycles, which they call baktuns. There are even longer cycles, called piktuns. The next piktun ends around October 13, 4772. There are even larger cycles called kalabtuns, kinchiltuns, and alautuns, which stretch millions of years into the future.

It looks to me as if the Mayans were planning to be around for a long, long time. A good deal longer than the morons who think the whole shooting match is over.

So let me be the first to wish you a happy 13th baktun of the current piktun. I hope all of you have a great 13.0.0.0.0.

You can read more about the Mayan calendar at Wikipedia (here and here) and at Tikalpark.Com. Just remember that this is just another Moronic Divergence, or should I say Harmonic Convergence?

 

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Says Farewell

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If for a moment God were to forget that I am a rag doll and granted me a piece of life, I probably wouldn’t say everything that I think; rather, I would think about everything that I say.

I would value things, not for their worth but for what they mean. I would sleep less, dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes, we lose sixty seconds of light.

I would walk when others hold back, I would wake when others sleep, I would listen when others talk.

And how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream!

If God were to give me a piece of life, I would dress simply, throw myself face first into the sun, baring not only my body but also my soul.

My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show. Over the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream a Benedetti poem, and a Serrat song would be the serenade I’d offer to the moon.

I would water roses with my tears, to feel the pain of their thorns and the red kiss of their petals… My God, if I had a piece of life… I wouldn’t let a single day pass without telling the people I love that I love them.

I would convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and I would live in love with love.

I would show men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when they cease to be in love!

To a child I shall give wings, but I shall let him learn to fly on his own. I would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but with forgetting.

So much have I learned from you, oh men … I have learned that everyone wants to live at the top of the mountain, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is scaled.

I have learned that when a newborn child first squeezes his father’s finger in his tiny fist, he has him trapped forever.

I have learned that a man has the right to look down on another only when he has to help the other get to his feet.

From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won’t be of much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying.—Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Farewell Letter After Learning of His Lymphatic Cancer

“You Are Here to Risk Your Heart”

Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.—Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

Not Learned in School

Classroom

Classroom

I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.—Neil Gaiman, The Sandman

Tuscany on the Pacific

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Erin Hill’s Painting of Montalcino in Tuscany

Erin Hill’s Painting of Montalcino in Tuscany

When I first moved to Los Angeles during the last Ice Age, everything that was classy had a French name: The restaurants, the big real estate developments, and so on. Sometime over the last twenty years, suddenly Tuscany became the measure of all things ritzy. Although it is still filled with empty storefronts with “For Lease” signs, I can see the developers trying to turn it into a little Tuscany.

I can’t think of Italian food in Southern California as being so rarefied if for no other reason than it tends to be pretty mediocre. Take meatballs, for instance: If one is a gourmet chef, one doesn’t make meatballs that are nothing but differently-shaped hamburger patties. It is necessary to mince onion, garlic, parsley, and perhaps a few herbs into the ground meat mixture first. Even my Hungarian Mom knew that when she made hamburgers. But in L.A. that never happens.

I remember a huge meatball at a Buca di Beppo in the San Fernando Valley that was nothing but a large hamburger hockey puck.

So I don’t take Los Angeles’s Tuscan dreams with anything but a grain of salt, and perhaps some minced onion, garlic, parsley, and perhaps a few herbs.

The painting above is from the Erin Hill studio website. It’s quite pretty and a steal at $220.00. Maybe my hijacking the JPG file will make you want to buy the painting.

Why I Don’t Text

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One Can Pick and Choose Which Technologies to Adopt

Is it because I’m older than dirt? Hmm, maybe, but it wouldn’t be the exact reason. The real reason is that I faced a major struggle to learn how to speak and write correct English.

It all started at Harvey Rice Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio in January 1951. The school was at that time right in the middle of the largest Hungarian neighborhood in the United States. My parents and great grandmother did not speak English at home, so I was raised speaking Hungarian. (We didn’t have a television set until later.)

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Idell, sent me home with a note pinned to my shirt saying “What language is this child speaking? Is there something wrong with him?” Duh! Mrs. Idell was teaching in the middle of a Hungarian neighborhood and had no idea of what Hungarian sounded like. How 1950s is that!

I wonder whether that was the main reason we moved to the suburbs in 1951 after my brother Dan was born.There, I attended St. Henry Elementary School on Harvard Avenue where I made fairly rapid strides in learning what was for me a new language. Where, in kindergarten, I was thought to be something of a retard, by Fifth Grade and onwards I was getting all As—particularly, I might add, in English. In fact, by the Eighth Grade, I was the only person in my class who could diagram complicated sentences by parts of speech. And I got a scholarship to Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio (now called St. Peter Chanel).

With this background, I do not accept the abbreviations forced on texters, such as OMG, LOL, IMHO, YATFM, and wkewl. My idea of language is not a branch of shorthand: It is a medium for communication that attempts to be exact and even, whenever possible, elegant. I like varying my sentence architecture and even using words that might not be all that common. But I always search for the mot juste. And abbreviations and shorthand don’t qualify. I love Martine dearly, but I will not confuse her by saying 143 to her. Incidentally, it’s not the technology: it’s all the shortcuts I hate. I never even used any smileys in my e-mails, though I was e-mailing before many texters were even born.

At the risk of being thought an old fool (which imputation I will not necessarily dispute), I will continue to eschew technologies that vitiate the hard-won battles of my past life.

 

Run Like Hell: The Holidays Are Here!

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Thanksgiving: Gobble Until You Wobble

The end of the year tends to be something of a blur for me. The holidays come one right after the other, starting with Halloween and continuing with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day. I am of two minds about these holidays. On one hand, I feel I am required to be in a festive mood and follow certain “family” traditions that were, in fact, never a part of my own family. On the other hand, while I appreciate the time off from work, I would rather pick my own holidays and spend the time going someplace interesting, such as Peru, Siberia, American National Parks, or Australia.

Still, for those of you who feel they have to be uplifted by celebrating our holidays in a traditional manner, my heart goes out to you. Just remember that your holidays do not define or delimit you in any way. You are a unique person with needs which other people might at times find off-putting. Never you mind! Just put on a happy face and grit your teeth. But whatever you do, remember to pay homage to your own daemons, once the needs of your loved ones have been taken care of.

I recognize that I am a little strange at times. But so are we all! There is a certain safety in being conventional, but that safety is an illusion. Any day of the year, I would rather read a good book than watch a football game; eat a pork tamale with a fiery salsa picante rather than turkey; give gifts because I want to, not because it is a social obligation.

Tomorrow, Martine and I will go to the Getty Villa to look at ancient Greek and Roman art. We will pointedly not join the throngs at the malls looking for Black Friday bargains. We would rather have a restful Friday looking at works of art which have survived for two or more milllennia that were created by people who were much like us.

 

The Life After Death

Samuel Butler

That there is such a life is as palpable as that there is a life before death. See the influence that the dead have over us. But this life is no more eternal than our present life. Shakespeare and Homer may live long, but they will die, that is to say, become unknown as direct and efficient causes—some day.

Even so God himself dies, for to die is to change and to change is to die to what has gone before. If the units change the total must do so also.

As no one can say which egg or seed shall come to visible life and in its turn leave issue, so no one can say which of the millions of now visible lives shall enter into the afterlife on death, and which have but so little lifeas practically not to count. For most seeds end as seeds or as food for some alien being, and so with lives, by far the greater number are sterile, except in so far as they can be devoured as the food of some stronger life. The Handels and Shakespeares are the few seeds that grow—and even these die.

And the same uncertainty attaches to posthumous life as to pre-lethal. As no one can say how long another shall live, so no one can say how long or how short a reputation shall live. The most unpromising weakly-looking creatures sometimes live to ninety while strong robust men are carried off in their prime. And no one can say what a man shall enter into life for having done. Roughly, there is a sort of moral government whereby those who have done the best work live most enduringly, but it is subject to such exceptions that no one can say whether or no there shall not be an exception in his own case either in his favour or against him.—Samuel Butler, Notebooks