This Isn't Our First Rodeo

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I was going to call this post “This Isn’t Our First Date.” That might be more accurate, but somehow “This Isn’t Our First Rodeo” felt better. Maybe more nuanced? I’ll let you decide.

Anyhow, this post springs from the fact that my bride thinks I am anti-social. Not in a bad “hiding in the basement” way, just as sort of a neutral descriptor. I, naturally, take exception. I would rather say that I am less social than she. She has been raised in that tidewater tradition of Southern gentility that enables her to skim over the surface of oft repeated conversations in which many words are spoken but nothing truly revealing is said. You see where that first date analogy might come in?

I, on the other hand, was raised in an academic home in which if you didn’t have something new and interesting to add to a conversation nobody paid any attention to you. Way past the first date. Which really brings me to the real point of why I spend hours of effort composing these Wall posts. The rationale is especially germane here in the midst of the pandemic when we may well have run out of interesting conversation material with the folks - over five years old anyhow - with whom we are sheltering. 

If you can think back to those first dates, the reason - hormones aside - that there were 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., dates was because that person was interesting, fascinating even. They made you think. They listened to your stories. Maybe they even made you laugh. You (and I use the singular Northern form as opposed to the collective Southern y’all, because when I write these posts I usually think of you as the other side of a two-person conversation) and I have, for the most part, been together for a long time. The Wall is pushing into its third decade, and some of you have been here that long. Others of you are still wondering what you have wandered into.

But regardless of your time on The Wall, each individual post/conversation is way past first date surface chatter. When I write to you I am unabashedly exercising the privilege that made university teaching such a delight for much of my career. I get to set the agenda. “Yes, the kids are fine. Wasn’t that cute? How about that Wolfpack? And now, what do you think about . .  .” And I take off from there to whatever I want to talk about.

Hopefully each Wall post allows me to ruminate on something interesting. In the classroom, or in the last decade, online, with my college students I often asked them to think about the relationship between their beliefs, attitudes and values and the important people in their lives. This was often an “invert your assumptions” moment for them. They were often under the illusion that their friends and celebrities of various stripes determined, or at least shared, their beliefs, attitudes and values. The reality, of course, is that each student’s beliefs, attitudes and values should determine who they choose as friends and whose careers they should support. For many of them that was their first intellectual rodeo.

But, as the title of this post indicates, you and I are way past that. We are hopefully at that quiet, feet propped up with a beverage in front of the fireplace, late in the evening, but strangely not tired place, when one of us says, “Have you ever wondered about . . .” We are at the place where interesting thoughts unfold. The place where hopefully we both come to better understand what it means to foster harmony, enable beauty, distill complexity and oppose harm.

I am really only beginning to realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have you there across the firelight from me. You see, unlike social media, you can’t sign up to be on the Wall. There aren’t any self-declared Friends or Followers. I have to put you on the Wall. And as a result everyone I truly care about is on the Wall, gazing at me through the flickering flames. That doesn’t mean that everyone on the Wall fits that unique category of someone I cherish. You see, I started the Wall about 25 years ago. And in the early days I would sometimes invite my students or folks I had met at art classes, galleries, etc., to give me their email addresses and I would put them on the Wall. As a result there are probably 70 or 80 addresses on the Wall list. No doubt a fair number of the “Here’s the link” messages zip off to addresses long since turned off as lives and careers shifted. However, and this is the wonderful part, still among those addresses are virtually everyone I truly care about. A couple still need help figuring out how to get the post up on their screen. But for the most part, there you are, sitting across the fire. Amazing.

So, am I anti-social? Not really. I do occasionally enjoy chatter and “first date” level interactions. But only in limited doses. Hence, in a way I guess I am a touch anti-social in the sense that I have trouble doing those “first date” conversations very often. I really prefer the fireplace, here on the page, just you and me.

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