my response

Posted by Corey on August 18, 1999 at 19:26:20:

In Reply to: hmmm....yep!! posted by Cali on August 18, 1999 at 19:22:53:

Thanks for your thoughts.

I remember a professor saying that a word or phrase that child produces during standardized testing may have little or nothing to with what he produces in a natural context such as spontaneous conversation. Hal's right. Responses to hypothetical situations would be hard to score, but I think they are revelatory. I just picked a couple of moments from my morning.

Here's my own responses:
1. As I approached the clerk, I immediately became aware of my own appearance. I was wearing a bland 3-year old JC Penny shirt that didn't match my shorts and a pair of old sneakers. I was pale, no tan. I was not particularly fit. In short, I looked totally devoid of art or artifice. I thought I looked like my very conventional E6 ISTJ uncle, like Archie Bunker. I felt like I was automatically at odds with this person and that I was obliged to bridge or at least understand the gap between us. I speculated about the message he was trying to send the world, whether he felt disenfranchized from mainstream culture and why. He seemed sullen and unhappy. I wondered it was because he was homosexual, impoverished, the victim of abuse, a stutterer, a bad dancer, who knows. I wondered if in rejecting conventional dress, whether he also rejected conventional notions of goodness. Did his witch symbol mean he was some sort of Satan worshipper who had a quota of customers to track down and torment? I was careful to sound polite and kept my eyes averted. I remembered a complete idiot I grew up with who dressed wildly for no reason, without any depth or character. I decided I was being paranoid. I completed the transaction and left. I felt guilty for not being more friendly.

2. I gave the girls my standard script for panhandlers, "I'm sorry, I don't have any change." I hastily tried to cover the bulge of coins clinking in my left pocket as I walked past them. They saw what I did. It hit me in a few steps that children had asked me for help and that I had lied to them. I stopped and looked back. They were asking a 40 something guy the same thing. The girls were in danger. This guy, if he was so inclined, might have frightened them into a car. I looked around unsuccessfully for campus police. I waited for the man to walk past me and asked whether they had asked him for money. He said yes in broken English and kept walking. I followed him saying, "Don't you think that's dangerous?" I was looking for validation for getting involved. He nodded and kept walking. I continued across campus to my apartment, muttering that the police were never there when you needed them. It struck me as funny that I would be saying this. When I got to my apartment I called campus police and told them about the girls. I seriously doubt they were still there. I felt guilty I did not do more, but I was scared that I would be mistaken for some sort of sexual predator.

Follow Ups:

Post a Followup