Tag: questions

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Elementary, My Dear Auto

Leroy has us on the move at last.

Some of you may remember that our car came to an untimely end last month. That prompted a lot of research for a new vehicle – price, mileage, and all the other crucial factors that go into acquiring a new family chariot. And once we finally made that fateful choice, all our friends wanted to know the same thing.

“So, what are you going to name it?”

Ooh. The big questions.

As I’ve mentioned before, naming a car is not an insignificant decision. We’ve known several in our life from the Battered Blue Buick – christened after a major Kansas hail storm – to the E-Z Bake Oven, which was seemingly designed to magnify heat. Mozart was a Sonata whose life ended too soon, while Harvey Dent was hit in the driveway on its third day with us, temporarily giving it a polished look on one side and a mix of torn metal and a shattered turn signal on the other.

So there’s a bit of history involved. Which is why, as with certain baby naming traditions, we took several days deciding.

It was Mom who put us on the right track, shortly after we’d clarified to a friend that the car was dark brown and not black.

“Well, all I can think of right now is Encyclopedia Brown references because of the color,” she said.

And that’s when it clicked.

Hello, Leroy.

Like all the best names, “Leroy Brown” has multiple meanings. In an odd way, it has a tie to when I first started driving in the early 1990s. One week, the local oldies station was even more predictable than usual, and would play Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” just after school let out, filling the speaker’s with that infectious rhythm.

But Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown is a tie to my childhood. Some of the first books I ever got under the Christmas tree involved the mysteries of Idaville’s greatest boy detective and his friend Sally Kimball. The pattern was always the same – a setup that took five minutes or less, a break at the crucial moment to see if you’d spotted the error or inconsistency that would unravel the case, and then a quick flip to the back of the book to check your answer.

In retrospect, maybe that’s how the seeds of a journalist got planted in my head in the first place. All the key questions were there: did the facts as presented make sense? What was the person really saying? And why did anyone trust Bugs Meany after all this time? (OK, maybe not that last one.)

Call it curiosity. Or skepticism. Or just thinking things through instead of taking them at face value.

By any name, it’s an attitude we still need.

Plenty of dubious claims get made every day, and they’re easier to spread than ever. Most of them are about as transparent as one of Bugs Meany’s schemes – if you bother to take 30 seconds to check. But many people don’t.

Maybe it’s because the person saying it has an important title and a famous name.

Maybe it’s because it was bundled with a cute infographic and a provocative headline.

Maybe it’s just because it seems to confirm what the person already believes – why check what you “know” to be true?

Always check. Always confirm. Even when – no, especially when the claim seems to boost your own side. It’s frustrating when you’re wrong. But it’s downright embarrassing when you’ve committed to it, and a lot harder to pull back from.

If a rolling brown Hyundai helps me keep that in mind, so much the better.

Just as long as it doesn’t end up like the other Leroy Brown.  You know, the one that looked like “a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.”

Let’s stick to cracking cases – OK?

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That is The Question

Every so often, the human race finds itself dealing with the Big Questions. “What is the greatest good?” “Paper or plastic?” “Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?”

Now, it looks like we get to add another one to the list: “Yanny or Laurel?”

Umm – can we get back to the chewing gum?

If you’ve missed the latest minor craze on social media, welcome back to Earth and I hope you’ll take me with you when you leave again. Yanny or Laurel is a brief sound clip that dares to ask “How long will you listen to a bad recording that didn’t hit No. 1 on Billboard?” You push Play to hear a garbled word, decide if the speaker is saying “Laurel” or “Yanny” and then share your findings online to begin a calm, reasoned discussion of the matter.

OK, just kidding. You pop online to join the cheering section for your word of choice, often with an enthusiasm for the “obvious” choice that could get you on nine out of 10 American game shows. (Come back to “Jeopardy!” when you’ve calmed down a bit.)

The thing is, it’s actually not that hard to find the answer. Besides the fact that “Yanny” isn’t even a word (unless you’re misspelling Greek New Age musicians), it only takes a little hunting on the Web to read an account from the teens who started all this. It began when they played an online vocabulary page for the word “laurel,” realized each of them were hearing different tones, and sent it out to the world.

But that would be too easy. Like the “blue dress/gold dress” Facebook photo before this, Yanny or Laurel isn’t about learning the right answer. It’s about knowing what you heard and insisting on its rightness to the world.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

A lot of politics – heck, a lot of what passes for online discussion these days – seems to be a longer game of Yanny or Laurel. It doesn’t matter if facts can be found and myths can be busted in less time than it takes to ruin the Colorado Rockies’ pennant chances. What matters is picking your team, shouting your slogan, and remaining impervious to any attempts at reason or compromise.

Sure, it’s annoying – but only when those guys do it. It’s easy to fall into the same trap. Studies suggest that the wiring of our brains makes us want to fit in rather than break with the crowd – it’s easier and more satisfying to simply join the crowd of people who believe the same things we want to believe, than it is to examine those beliefs and see if they hold up.

It’s not inevitable. But like running marathons instead of watching six hours of YouTube, changing the habit takes work that’s usually uncomfortable and sometimes acutely painful. It takes curiosity and a willingness to ask the next question. Even with something that seems obvious. Especially then.

More than once, I’ve quoted the distinguished philosophers Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel: “Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” When we can beat that reflex, any question can become interesting. Even “Yanny or Laurel?” can start a long discussion on why some people hear certain tones, or whether we all experience the same reality.

It’s worthwhile. But it takes effort.

You can’t just rest on your Laurels.

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In Just a Moment

“I don’t care what you’re working on, get home now,” Heather said on the phone. Then came the words that shattered everything.

Melanie was gone.

Melanie was my wife’s 21-year-old cousin, kind and sassy, stubborn and compassionate, a night owl full of conversation on any topic or none at all. For the last 14 months, she had been staying with us as she put her life back together from a number of challenges and became a full and vivacious member of the household. She swapped stories, played games, helped around the house, even began to crochet a blanket in Hogwarts colors for Missy, our disabled ward.

All that ended on Friday, Jan. 26, 2018.

We thought Mel was sleeping late. She often did.

She was still in bed. But this time she wasn’t waking up.

 

There are moments that the words don’t reach,

There is suffering too terrible to name …

— “It’s Quiet Uptown” from Hamilton

There are a lot of questions that chase through your head when someone dies so young. “Why? How?” are the obvious ones and sometimes the easiest – those are the ones that at least have a chance of being answered with patient work. (Eventually, that is; we’re still learning those answers ourselves.)

But the most pernicious ones, the most painful and useless questions of all, are the ones that begin “What if?” You know the litany, I’m sure:

“What if we’d taken her to the hospital when she came home feeling sick?”

“What if I’d checked on her sooner?”

“What if I’d said something different … done something different … been more concerned about this … paid more attention to that … ?”

It’s self-torture, running in place on a treadmill made of knives. You get nowhere except to hurt yourself worse than before. But we all keep getting on.

If we’re not careful, we can drown out the question that really matters. “What next?”

It’s a question that Mel was an expert at.

 

Every day, you fight like you’re running out of time …

— “Non-Stop,” from Hamilton

Melanie seemed to fill every moment she had. Sometimes drawing or writing. Sometimes making a friendship bracelet or a brightly-colored rice bag for someone she cared about. Sometimes chatting in the kitchen or over Skype until well past midnight.

None of it was easy. Mel had severe Crohn’s disease and the autoimmune complications that often come from that. Mel had many other struggles and the repercussions that often come from those. But she faced it all with a quirky sense of humor and a heart that could never be anything but genuine.

This is the woman who kept photos of her latest colonoscopy in her wallet, where baby pictures would normally go.

This is the little girl who, when told by her granddad to stop opening and closing the back door as she and her friends raced in and out, simply left it open. “Well, you said …”

This is the friend who had plans to work in a veterinary clinic, and was genuinely excited to receive an animal anatomy coloring book for Christmas.

This is the relative who would trade silly Snapchat photos with her mom and little brother, seeing who could turn each other into the most ridiculous image.

All of which means this is the friend whose absence leaves a hole. A silence. A gap in the story that aches to be filled.

And, perhaps, a reminder.

 

And when my time is up, have I done enough?

Will they tell my story?

— “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?” from Hamilton

All of us work to a limited clock. None of us are promised tomorrow. Most of the time, we’re good about not thinking about that.

But when a loved one leaves too soon, it hits you right in the face.

You look at the choices that you made and that you didn’t make. The things you’ve tried and the things you were too scared to do. A different sort of “what if,” perhaps, but one that looks forward instead of backward.

“What have I not done that I should have done? That I still could do?”

I use the word “choice” and it starts that way. But the funny thing is, the mind and the soul have a muscle memory, too. The more you choose an action, the more reflexive it becomes. That can be the start of a lot of bad habits – but it’s also where things like bravery, diligence, kindness and generosity come from. You do the right thing often enough, and eventually it leaves conscious thought. It just becomes what you do.

When time is short, those reflexes matter. And time is always short. Train them. Sharpen them. Reach out. Welcome in.

Melanie did.

And in her absence, I hope we all can, too.

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The Oddest Corners

The record of human brilliance stretches across centuries, with numerous landmarks to light its way. The invention of the wheel. The discovery of the smallpox vaccine. Ideas that helped us unlock the structure of genetics, the movements of the heavens, and the creation of computer games that keep you up until 3 in the morning. (Ahem.)

And then – there are the other achievements.

Like the brassiere that converts into a pair of protective face masks.

Or the use of live crocodiles to encourage or discourage gamblers.

Or the recipe to partially un-boil an egg.

For this sort of thing, you want the Ig Nobel Prizes, given out since 1991 for unlikely discoveries that “make people laugh and then make them think,” according to the organizers. Some of the awards have been tongue-in-cheek, such as the ones given to Dan Quayle for demonstrating the need for better science education, or to Volkswagen for their, uh, creative approach to the problem of reducing vehicle emissions. But most reflect actual study or achievement, even if the project is a bit … unlikely? Bizarre? Even silly?

I love this kind of stuff.

Mind you, I have nothing against awards for excellence – I’ve won a few and written about many more. But as anyone who’s watched a four-hour Oscar ceremony knows, the concept can get a little over-the-top. (Especially in years when you go on for four hours and then give out the wrong Oscar, but, hey, I’m sure that’ll only be remembered for two or three centuries.)

So we get things like the Razzies, honoring the worst movies ever made. Or the Darwins, recognizing those who improved the gene pool by leaving it. Distinctions that present a cautionary tale and a reason to laugh at ourselves.

By itself, that might be enough justification for the Ig Nobels. Heaven knows we need all the laughter we can get in today’s world. But I especially like the Igs (can I call them Igs? Thank you.) because of a larger concept they illustrate – that ANYTHING can be thought about in a scientific way.

Science encourages questions, even about the seemingly obvious. In that, it has a lot in common with my old field of journalism, where one of the fundamental maxims is “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Ask, explore, discover, and ask again.

But as a species, we are horrible at questioning ourselves. Five minutes on any social media platform will show how quickly we grow defensive and how rarely we listen. Even in the offline world, conversations often become less about exchanging ideas and experiences, and more about waiting for an opening to grab the microphone. Our assumptions become positions to defend and hills to die on, rather than invitations to actually learn.

And so, I treasure anything that encourages asking questions. Even silly ones. After all, if we get practice in asking the odd questions, how much more likely do the reasonable ones become?

And sometimes, even the odd questions yield something useful. It turns out that playing a digeridoo actually can help sleep apnea a little bit (breathing exercises are breathing exercises), that roller coasters may help some symptoms of asthma, and that looking at pretty pictures might affect how much pain you feel while being shot in the hand with a laser.

OK, so that last one may not be all that useful except to Luke Skywalker. But give it time.  And in that time, keep asking more questions.

It’s a noble pursuit. Or even an Ig Nobel one.