Dear Erin,
As we all
know, it's time for holiday gifts for teachers. Every year in my son's elementary
school the parents association takes a collection and divides the contributions
among the teachers. Last year, my friend told me that she no longer participates
in the collection, because she was giving very generously, and others were not,
and she felt that she wasn't getting credit for her contribution. So she now gives the teachers gifts directly.
This is one of those things that, as someone who also gives generously, I sort of
understand the desire to do. And yet,
never ever in a million years would I actually do it. Something about it seems totally against the
spirit and self serving. The point of the whole thing is to give
generously and show appreciation to the teachers, not to get credit. Am I wrong to be annoyed by this?
Signed,
Bugged in
Boston
Dear Bugged:
Did you ever find yourself annoyed
at George Costanza? I only ask, because
your friend is acting like him. Remember
the Seinfeld episode, the Big Salad? George buys a salad for Elaine. Then his girlfriend -- upon handing the salad
to Elaine – gets the thanks for it. George
protests the “false premises” under which Elaine thanked the wrong person. Elaine is annoyed. His girlfriend, naturally, can't stand him.
The problem with George – and his creator, Larry David – wasn’t that they
were always objectively wrong. You could understand their feelings. We all like to be thanked, when we go out of our way to help.
What made George/Larry annoying was their inappropriate responses to such perceived slights.
They could never rise above things, and be the bigger person. With a meaningless thing like a Big Salad, they couldn’t just get over
it. Forget about it. Focus on the value of friendship and kindness and togetherness with friends. Instead, they blew it
out of proportion. Annoyed their friends, alienated their partners. It's hard to be friends with people like that. But I have to think, it's far worse to be them.
Like you, I understand your friend’s
feelings. Her response would almost seem rational, in another context. Credit and kickbacks are
the way of the world. Private
philanthropies, arts organizations, and academic endowments recognize big
donors all the time. In Manhattan, if
you raise a lot of money for Dalton
or Brearley – say, by putting your family’s
summer home up for silent auction -- your kids get on a special list. Our
society rewards self-interested generosity.
Of course it does. It’s straight
up Adam Smith. It’s the hot molten core
of capitalism.
The problem with insisting on
recognition – and protesting the injustice of every perceived slight -- is that regular life is not a theoretical abstraction. In
the real world, if we want to get along with others -- better than George
Costanza and Larry David did, anyway – we have to temper our self-serving reactions and
interests by considering other perspectives and values too. Like,
say, the value of cooperation.
At our school, for example, some parents contribute in non-financial
ways. They volunteer, work in the book
room, go on field trips, run programs. Do these parents demand special credit? I
don’t know. But I doubt they spend much
time worrying about it. They’re too
busy copying papers, pulling on snow pants, and wiping exploded ketchup packets
off the lunchroom floor.
Even more important is the value of
inclusiveness. In preschool and elementary
schools, people often practice collective giving because they feel like all families
should be included -- whether their
parents are rich, or generous, or not. Honoring
the relationship between families and their beloved teachers is what makes elementary school
a little bit different from Manhattan’s power elite, or Harvard’s fundraising
machine. Kids have plenty of time to
learn how to keep score, and cut each other’s throats. But while they’re still young, shouldn't their parents try to
emphasize friendship and kindness over individual contributions and credit? And
really, what’s the personal cost of doing this? Is it
really so hard to part with twenty or thirty bucks, and not get personally thanked? It’s the cost of a Big Salad.
Ultimately, your friend is
choosing to act upon the perceived slight of others’ lesser generosity, rather
than a whole set of other positive social values, like community and inclusion. Frankly, it would be fine with me if your friend gave
her own gift in addition to the collective
one. In our family, we give in all
kinds of different ways to school –materially and not, collectively and not. But your friend is not addressing the
perceived injustice by being more
generous. She's being judgmental and self-serving. To put in terms George Costanza would understand, she’s vowing never to buy Elaine lunch again. And it's not surprising that, like George Costanza's petty behavior, her actions have already
started to annoy her friends.
Dear Erin,
For the past
month when I wake up to make coffee in the morning I can see my neighbor
walking around nude in his house. I think I've only noticed this recently
because the leaves on our trees are gone, and dark mornings call for turning on
the lights. I don't want to have to draw down our shades for the whole
winter as winter in Wisconsin already makes me feel like I live in a cave.
It would be too embarrassing to bring it up to him. Any
suggestions?
Signed,
Overexposed
Dear
Overexposed:
We had a naked neighbor in our last apartment
building in New York. Nothing unusual
there. City dwellers don’t necessarily have more aberrant lifestyles than the
rest of humanity, but their eccentricities are often more vividly on display. In our case, the naked man lived in the
apartment one floor down, and directly across the central courtyard from our
den. Perfect line of sight.
Technically, he was a half-naked
man. He often walked around wearing
nothing but a tee shirt. Particularly
when he went on late night feeding rampages in his kitchen. My husband and I found this exhibitionism
surprising, for a few different reasons.
For one thing, his girlfriend worked in my husband’s office. She didn’t share her boyfriend’s inclination
to undress. But neither did she share
our inclination to close the curtains.
Equally curious to us was why the naked man even bothered to wear a tee shirt.
Maybe I was hung up on an overly rigid
interpretation of the term, private parts.
But why not cover the bottom? Especially because the naked man’s most public appendage, by far, was his giant
scrotum.
For several months, we didn’t fully
appreciate the animal we were dealing with.
We caught glimpses of it here and there, but it was often partially
blocked by something. Like one of his
legs, or a party sized jar of mayonnaise.
Then one night – in his zeal to reach something in the back of the fridge
-- he bent completely over. Only then
did we appreciate the animal we were dealing with. It was an elephant. A pale, wrinkly elephant. With an average sized trunk. And two giant floppy ears.
Unfortunately for us, the naked man’s
elephantine organ raised more questions than it answered. Personally, I had to wonder about the sanity of
his girlfriend. As someone who cooked a lot, I was horrified at the thought of living with a guy who pressed
his bare manhood up against my cutting board every night. Wood has natural antibiotic properties, of course. But even wood blocks have their limits. I had to conclude that anyone who routinely engaged in
intimate acts with a sex organ of that caliber was probably accustomed to
having it show up in places it didn’t belong.
We also wondered about the naked man’s
motivations. If he wasn’t a bona fide
nudist, then why didn’t he ever think
to close the curtains? I found his indiscretion
especially irritating, in the presence of my kids. I often had to get up and
close my own curtains. It wouldn’t have
bothered me, just alone. But I didn’t want to
have to answer any premature and inappropriate questions about the Jungle Book. Ultimately, though, we just acclimated
to the spectacle.
When it comes to naked people and
their lack of discretion, there’s nothing you can do. If your kids see it, consider closing your
curtains. If it bothers you, try to look
away. Otherwise, try not to let him catch
you with binoculars. Try not to giggle at
the drug store, when you see him buying a razor for his back. And in the meantime - enjoy the winter Safari! I’ve heard the animals are really running
wild this time of year.
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