10.27.07

Story time

Posted by Varies at 9:40 am in Helsinki

It’s not that we were intimidated by him. The five of us could have taken him for sure, but, to me at least, it wouldn’t have been worth the trouble. For one, I really had no desire to seize the controller and play the game. Even as a child, I enjoyed the art of observation. The others, though, were a different story. Their growing impatience was palpable, and as the oldest one in the room, I felt a certain responsibility in keeping the peace. What I used to do in those situations was make suggestions. I’d suggest that the person playing could give someone else a chance. That was usually enough, and sharing would commence without need for further intervention. This guy was different though, and we all knew it. No one wanted to say it, but we all could have told you that he was selfish – super selfish. With him, a suggestion was a cue for others to jump in. It was permission to demand what perhaps should have been theirs naturally.

So I’d make the suggestion. Something to the effect of: “You’ve been playing for half-an-hour now… Let’s let LARRY play; he hasn’t had a chance yet.” LARRY would always agree. It’s easier to speak your feelings when you see that someone else has your back. Still, we were at the mercy of his whims (for the sake of discussion, let’s call the selfish kid BARRY). Sometimes Barry would ignore us completely, giving us the sense that he was pretending not to hear us. Other times, Barry would apparently be feeling socially well-adapted, and he’d pass the controller along. It never seemed like he was entirely willing to, but maybe that’s just the impression that we got from the lack of general cooperation.

We’d learned a long time ago that it wasn’t worth involving the parents in the negotiation. They didn’t like dealing with his behaviour any more than we did. Plus, he’d give them the same silent treatment that he gave us. When the time would come for these family parties to end, he’d drag it out into a long and painful affair. One of the things he would do at first is ignore the “It’s time to go home” calls from the parents. They’d stand around by the door at the front of the house calling for him and his brother to come downstairs, but he wouldn’t budge or even respond. It should be noted that his brother would usually go ahead and do what they asked him. Anyway, while ignoring their calls, Barry would often start up a game of some sort — the kind of game that takes a while to play. The kind where you can say, “Hold on, just let me finish this level,” and you’d hope that your parents would say, “Oh, alright.” He’d do just that, in fact, and, for some reason, they’d indulge him many-a-time. Eventually though, they’d have had enough, and it wasn’t uncommon for his parents (long after all the other families had left) to have to come up and (figuratively) drag him down the stairs. At this point, as if to spite them one last time, he’d say that he was thirsty and demand a drink of water before leaving. I can’t say that it was particularly fun to be caught in the middle of this sort of thing. For one, it was usually late by that time, and I wanted just to go to bed. Additionally, it wasn’t all that enjoyable watching him play games that I had no vested interest in.

Speaking of the games, it might have helped if he had cared enough to explain them or introduce them to us. My brother and I never had a game console prior to the N64, so in the early days, we rarely had the opportunity to see games. When Barry came over, he’d usually bring his SNES, but he wouldn’t bother trying to get us interested in what he was doing. I was far more interested in drawing the characters from Kirby or Donkey Kong than I was actually playing the games (or, in this case, watching Barry play them). One of the other kids at the family gatherings, whom I will refer to as Larry, was actually a lot more agreeable and fun to be with.

See, Larry was more sociable. To this day, that part is still evident. Larry was easy to talk to because you could seemingly interest him in anything. Not only that, he was a lot more interested in getting you involved in what he was doing. Whereas Barry wouldn’t bother explaining a new game to you, Larry would walk you through it. Larry would even willingly hand you the controller and offer to let you play! Games aside, Larry would go along with you if you wanted to draw, go outside, or tell stories. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t that great at drawing or that he didn’t have great stories to tell. In general, Larry was just a lot more agreeable. To this day, it’s easier to summon enthusiasm when talking to him than it is when you’re talking to someone like Barry. Haha, perhaps I should have realised this sooner.

More to the point, I think I’ve set things up enough to stop talking about things that happened ten years ago. The other day, I started thinking about how these childhood interactions have impacted me. I didn’t get too far along before remembering that I consider psychoanalysis to be a joke. I’m a psych major, but that doesn’t mean that I believe in dream analysis and Freudian nonsense. Still, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to say that having to deal with Barry made me into a more patient individual? Wouldn’t it be convenient to say that the responsibilities that parents place on you when you’re the oldest kid in the group instills within you a sense of responsibility?

I think that all of us look back at our lives and try to figure out how we got to where we are. But at the same time, a lot of people just sort of accept everything when it might be more prudent to try to make adjustments. I get calls here all the time from people who blame their past for their problems. Heck, I’ve been blamed for making someone hate the world, when the reality is that no one else I’ve talked to extensively has turned out that way. It’s obviously nice to go back and try to correlate your past experiences with your current realities. However, anyone who knows anything about statistics can tell you that correlation does not imply causation. It’s ultimately up to the individual to do what he or she has to do, and it’s no use blaming people for whatever went wrong in your life. I mean, whose fault was it that Barry acted the way that he did? What could we, the other kids in the room, have done to change it? There’s absolutely no reason to have expected us to change the way we dealt with him, yet I suppose that you could retroactively assign blame to us for letting him do as he pleased without complaint.

Anyway, it’s nice to look back at your memories and get a kick out of the past, but I would be careful about using one’s memories to explain things. Our memories are limited, and our histories easily retconned.

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