Fearless Moral Inventory
Fortunately I can't top the revelation in the last post: I never did anything that horrible again, but I certainly learned what I was capable of, and I certainly lost my ability to feel total moral superiority to anybody, concentration camp guards included.
But as I plunge onward in my Al-Anon 4th Step--my fearless moral inventory--that is far from the end of the story.
Let's just deal with one thing tonight: snobbery.
I may very well be the worst snob you have ever met. This is simply true and I am not looking for anybody to say no, no, not true. I realize that by sharing this sin I am also practicing it. So don't say you haven't been warned.
My snobbery of course is born of an all-encompassing and often crippling envy but we'll get to envy next because envy really is the big one. I'm starting with the effect and then getting to the cause.
If you have met me more than twice I will without fail have found a way to work the conversation around to my world-class education. There's no question that you've heard of the place I went to college and grad school. And I'll make sure you know that I went there. And know it. And know it. See? I just did.
And my travels? Oh you'll hear about it. Can't get to the third time meeting me without intimate remembrances of at least three European and/or Asian capitals entering the conversation. I make myself puke with this stuff. But I can't stop myself either. It "just happens."
Then there's the reverse snobbery--worst of all. I live on the East side of Los Angeles--theoretically hipper, more bohemian, more of a melting pot than the all-white West. Oh listen to Mr. Boho's contempt for those whitebread soulless Westsiders! Listen to him brag how much more a Man of the People he is, because he has Armenian neighbors and shops at a Thai grocery! And oh, those soulless Westsiders, when they travel, they stay in cookie-cutter luxury hotels while our Working Class Hero stays at rustic eco-lodges that can only be reached by boats piloted by picturesque natives with whom he is soon conversing on a first-name basis! Watch Tom reach out to the noble savage! Watch Tom eat their humble native foods!
Let's not even get started on the famous and semi-famous friends thing. Let's, just, not.
And the way I conspire to make sure people see the car I pull up in? Sometimes I think that's worse than torturing rats.
On the plus side, I will say that the awareness that is leading me to share all this is a healing thing, and on a good day I may not be as bad as I once was. But can I accept a challenge to simply leave the fact of where I went to college out of my conversation entirely for a six month period? And park my car around the corner where nobody will see it for the same length of time? And make not one mention of any trip I have ever taken? And express not one word of contempt for my wealthy neighbors to the west who know not the joys of the get-down Guatemalan joint on the corner? Maybe I should try it, as a kind of moral sobriety pledge.
I'm not going to stop there tonight. I'm going to share one really really bad thing I did in regard to all this.
When my daughter was applying to college I put on a whole Eastsider act of hey, it doesn't matter where you go, as long as you're happy. Yeah, so why did I take her on a little trip to visit my college, and lead her through the august Gothic halls in which I had passed my own, if truth be told, miserable undergraduate years, and take her to afternoon tea at my, you know, club, and get all teary-eyed at the grand tradition of it all, and end with her feeling that she had to get into this school or else? This was all particularly cruel on my part because while she was a good student she really didn't have the grades or scores for it: it was a stretch. So she applied. And got waiting listed--I think as a courtesy to a legacy, not with any intention that they would accept her. That was rejection number one. Then she didn't, of course, get in off the waiting list, which was rejection number two. She did get into a good school only slightly outside the top-ten glow, but one which afforded me scant-to-zero bragging rights. Then she took a year off (just because she wanted to), and, at my passive-aggressive urging, reapplied to my alma mater, this time for early decision, with new essays and another A or two and some more data on the resume. On this round she got "deferred" and put back into the big applicant pool for spring decision. That was rejection number three. Then I "encouraged" her to get teachers to write additional letters of recommendation etc., which she wanted to do like she wanted to drill a hole in her own skull (one teacher emailed back and said "what do you want to go to that overrated place for?"), and in the end she got the skinny envelope in the spring. So, in essence, I made sure that she got rejected not once but four times from the school I went to.
When I get to making my amends--the 9th Step--the first call is to my daughter. Because that was baaaaad.
But as I plunge onward in my Al-Anon 4th Step--my fearless moral inventory--that is far from the end of the story.
Let's just deal with one thing tonight: snobbery.
I may very well be the worst snob you have ever met. This is simply true and I am not looking for anybody to say no, no, not true. I realize that by sharing this sin I am also practicing it. So don't say you haven't been warned.
My snobbery of course is born of an all-encompassing and often crippling envy but we'll get to envy next because envy really is the big one. I'm starting with the effect and then getting to the cause.
If you have met me more than twice I will without fail have found a way to work the conversation around to my world-class education. There's no question that you've heard of the place I went to college and grad school. And I'll make sure you know that I went there. And know it. And know it. See? I just did.
And my travels? Oh you'll hear about it. Can't get to the third time meeting me without intimate remembrances of at least three European and/or Asian capitals entering the conversation. I make myself puke with this stuff. But I can't stop myself either. It "just happens."
Then there's the reverse snobbery--worst of all. I live on the East side of Los Angeles--theoretically hipper, more bohemian, more of a melting pot than the all-white West. Oh listen to Mr. Boho's contempt for those whitebread soulless Westsiders! Listen to him brag how much more a Man of the People he is, because he has Armenian neighbors and shops at a Thai grocery! And oh, those soulless Westsiders, when they travel, they stay in cookie-cutter luxury hotels while our Working Class Hero stays at rustic eco-lodges that can only be reached by boats piloted by picturesque natives with whom he is soon conversing on a first-name basis! Watch Tom reach out to the noble savage! Watch Tom eat their humble native foods!
Let's not even get started on the famous and semi-famous friends thing. Let's, just, not.
And the way I conspire to make sure people see the car I pull up in? Sometimes I think that's worse than torturing rats.
On the plus side, I will say that the awareness that is leading me to share all this is a healing thing, and on a good day I may not be as bad as I once was. But can I accept a challenge to simply leave the fact of where I went to college out of my conversation entirely for a six month period? And park my car around the corner where nobody will see it for the same length of time? And make not one mention of any trip I have ever taken? And express not one word of contempt for my wealthy neighbors to the west who know not the joys of the get-down Guatemalan joint on the corner? Maybe I should try it, as a kind of moral sobriety pledge.
I'm not going to stop there tonight. I'm going to share one really really bad thing I did in regard to all this.
When my daughter was applying to college I put on a whole Eastsider act of hey, it doesn't matter where you go, as long as you're happy. Yeah, so why did I take her on a little trip to visit my college, and lead her through the august Gothic halls in which I had passed my own, if truth be told, miserable undergraduate years, and take her to afternoon tea at my, you know, club, and get all teary-eyed at the grand tradition of it all, and end with her feeling that she had to get into this school or else? This was all particularly cruel on my part because while she was a good student she really didn't have the grades or scores for it: it was a stretch. So she applied. And got waiting listed--I think as a courtesy to a legacy, not with any intention that they would accept her. That was rejection number one. Then she didn't, of course, get in off the waiting list, which was rejection number two. She did get into a good school only slightly outside the top-ten glow, but one which afforded me scant-to-zero bragging rights. Then she took a year off (just because she wanted to), and, at my passive-aggressive urging, reapplied to my alma mater, this time for early decision, with new essays and another A or two and some more data on the resume. On this round she got "deferred" and put back into the big applicant pool for spring decision. That was rejection number three. Then I "encouraged" her to get teachers to write additional letters of recommendation etc., which she wanted to do like she wanted to drill a hole in her own skull (one teacher emailed back and said "what do you want to go to that overrated place for?"), and in the end she got the skinny envelope in the spring. So, in essence, I made sure that she got rejected not once but four times from the school I went to.
When I get to making my amends--the 9th Step--the first call is to my daughter. Because that was baaaaad.
posted by Tom at 10:15 PM
4 Comments:
Very interesting reading. But now I've got a complex...I'm not good enough to read your blog.
You are pretty hard on yourself Tom
I can relate to your confession. I bet most of us can. A truly humble person must be incredibly secure in his own self-worth. I admire people like that, I truly do. I wish I was one of them.
I just went through this college admissions process, I understand every bit of what you write, I know all the same feelings, I know exactly why you did what you did and I did a lot of the same myself, but nevertheless, it is true, it was baaaaaaad and you really do owe your daughter an apology. I struggle with this all the time, but our kids really can't be the solutions to our own problems, they just cant.........
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