BRIAN LIBBY

Checkstands, Railroad Crossingsand the Left Hemisphere

Two incidents got me frustrated today, but as I've had time to think of both I wonder how much the problem is them and how much is me.

First, this morning I was at the grocery store and had a big cart full of stuff. There were two lanes with checkers: an express lane, which was empty, and a lane for any size which had one customer at the checkstand. Just before I got to the non-express lane, a woman with a small basket of items squeezed in front of me. The express lane was empty, and she had few enough items to qualify. So I said to her, "Excuse me, but I think the express lane is open." (Ours still had someone being helped.) But she casually said back to me, "Oh, no, I'm OK here, thanks." So even though I couldn't go to the empty checkstand and she could, she still occupied my lane and thus made me have to wait longer. I could tell this probably didn't occur to her, and I don't think she was being malicious. Or maybe she was completely aware of what was going on and just thought I was being too pushy. She hadn't taken any of the items out of her basket yet, but I suppose she might have found it heavy and didn't feel like hassling with a lane change just so I could be spared a minute or so of time. But at the time, I felt like Elmer Fudd in a Looney Tunes cartoon where his face gets so red somebody fries an egg on top of his scalp. Which one of us was right or wrong?

Then this afternoon I was in my car in the Central Eastside industrial area by the river and had just come off the Marquam Bridge and I-5 when the warning lights for an oncoming train started to flash. There's always about a ten second gap between when the lights first start to flash and when the arms of the railroad crossing barrier come down. There was a car in front of me began slowing down before the lights even started to flash. The driver must have heard the train a couple blocks down honking its horn. By the time the lights at our crossing were flashing, she already had her car at a complete stop. Meanwhile, I'd had to slow down because she had before the lights came on, and so I was forced to stop for a train when, had she not been there or even been there and simply acted without the extra-train perception like a normal driver, I would have easily got past without being halted by the crossing.

For a second time in one day, I was fuming at a situation where somebody else's slow pace affected my faster one. With the chance to look at it more calmly now that some time has passed, I realize I have no more claim to be able to go my speed than they do theirs. And of course in the case of the driver, she was being safe whereas I was planning to push things by hurrying past an oncoming train (albeit one slow as a tortoise). But in both cases, I was angered by how each person seemed to take that extra step that made me have to hit the brakes - both in a figurative and literal sense.

Had the express lane at the grocery store already been occupied with customers, I wouldn't have thought twice about the woman in front of me. If anything, I'd be thankful she had a small amount of groceries. But when a chance to do the most reasonable thing presented itself -- for her, as someone with 10 items or less to go to the express lane, both to serve herself by getting through more efficiently and also to avoid clogging the regular lane -- she willingly passed it up. But I, in obsessing over such an unimportant and infinitesimal amount of potentially saved time, am also revealing my own unfortunate lack of patience.

Yesterday I was going through a drawer and found an old printout I'd made from a website that provided an evaluation of how my brain works in terms of left-right hemispheres and visual-auditory perception. One of the last things the readout said was, "A possible barrier to using your talents to the fullest may be the excess attention that you can tend to give details in your day-to-day operations and learning. You can acknowledge the existence of the bigger picture but concentrate on the details and expect that the picture will emerge from the details themselves."

I feel torn about this. Part of me feels contrite, because I believe these criticisms are valid ones. I am way too hurried and impatient so much of the time in the everyday goings on of errands, work, and so on. But I'm also not completely willing to let go. Or maybe I'm not always equipped to do so. Maybe both my phantom adversaries from today were wrong, but I'm also a bit of a fool for allowing myself to get distracted by it.

Incidentally, that brain evaluation had some other interesting observations:

You strive towards goals and this, coupled with the active nature of your learning preference, creates a sense of you being driven. Your tolerance of ambiguity is, at times, in conflict with your preference for the straight path and directness in everything. You tend to be as impatient with yourself as you are with others.

You have enough auditory learning capability to somewhat balance your more natural chaotic learning style. It is likely that you slide into the more sequential auditory learning mode when you get frustrated with the amount of input to be processed.

You are strongly left-hemisphere dominant and show somewhat of a preference for visual learning, a positive combination of styles.

Your left-hemisphere dominance implies that you are strongly organized, logical and detail oriented. Visual preference indicates that you learn in an active, simultaneous multidimensional fashion.

Stream of Consciousness MNF

A few thoughts from the laptop as I nurse a cold and watch football...

Instead of listening to the game, I have the TV muted and am instead have my iPod going. I happened to be listening to a guilty pleasure song, “Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears For Fears, as the game started. Which felt kind of funny, hearing this kind of flowery love song and watching all these pituitary cases running around pumping their fists.

The home team is the Philadelphia Eagles, and before the game they were showing Sylvester Stallone being introduced to the crowd from his luxury-box seat. Stallone was acknowledging the crowd by hoisting his arms in the air not unlike how he does in the original Rocky movie. You could see the Philly fans going wild, and it seemed like kind of a cute moment, albeit of course a cheesy one. But then I remembered Stallone is currently in the midst of promoting the latest Rocky sequel, and the moment was kind of ruined. No doubt it was all pre-arranged as part of the film’s promotion.

I miss that Monday Night Football no longer does the player introductions where each player is filmed saying his name and college. (This tradition has been carried over, however, to NBC’s new Sunday night telecast). Seeing the players with their helmets off and speaking humanizes them. Plus, even within those constraints of just saying your name and school, you could see players’ different personalities come out. The only problem was, ABC sometimes allowed players to get away with saying something other than their college name, such as the name of their high school or elementary school. Or other players would name some slangy variation on their college name, like “The U” for Miami, or “THE Ohio State University” for Ohio state. That stuff used to be a real pet peeve of mine, but only because I loved the format otherwise.

The Monday Night Football broadcast team this year is announcer Mike Terico, former quarterback Joe Thiesmann, and journalist Tony Kornheiser. I love the fact that they’re using a non-player as a commentator. When they did it with Dennis Miller a few years ago, it had mixed results. Miller could be really funny or insightful sometimes and embarrassingly forced and annoying others. I like the idea of a journalist doing the show, be it a print writer or TV guy. Kornheiser happens to be both, but he comes from the print world as a Washington Post columnist.

But the only problem is that Kornheiser is starting to drive me crazy. And what's particularly weird about it, considering I’m a journalist too, is that the annoyance comes precisely from his media instincts. He tends to really harp on whatever the biggest ongoing drama or storyline seems to be involving that night’s teams or players and return to it ad nauseum. With the Eagles playing tonight, for example, there’s no doubt in my mind he’ll be talking a great deal about Terrell Owens, the controversial wide receiver who used to play there. Sometimes listening to Kornheiser on MNF, I’ve wanted to scream, “Let it go!” Hence the iPod.

Speaking of which, I’ve found that if one has the regular sound on with football, it’s just astonishing how many commercials there are. For the last couple years as Valarie and I have got in the habit of watching English soccer, where entire 45-minute game halves go by without a single commercial, it’s really hard to sit through scores of commercials over a potentially 3-to-4-hour broadcast. Granted, getting rid of or significantly reducing commercials would surely mean that the advertising would simply be moved to the players’ jerseys, as it is in soccer. And with my love of sports uniforms, that would drive me crazy. (I’d love to have an Arsenal jersey or certain other ones, but you can’t get them without the advertisement, so I refuse to do it.)

Currently my favorite NFL team uniform is the Indianapolis Colts. I’m very old-school when it comes to uniforms. I’m reminded of a great Chuck Klosterman essay for ESPN in which he came to the horrific realization that despite being politically a liberal, he was a unequivocal conservative when it came to sports. I feel the same way, and uniforms are just one example. Other uniforms that I like are the Cowboys (although they’re traditionally my least favorite team), the Steelers (my longtime favorite team), the Cleveland Browns, and the Chicago Bears. I really hate the Seattle Seahawks uniforms. Or as my dad and I have called them since I was a kid, the “Seaturkeys”.

I just saw Steve Smith score the game’s first touchdown, but I hadn’t watched one play in the entire game because I was writing this. Speaking of Steve Smith, though, it’s good to see him scoring touchdowns and not throwing up into a garbage can, as the cameras showed a couple weeks ago when the Panthers were playing. Luckily I missed that one, though. But since I’m sick with a cold, I must admit that football is the ideal TV to watch. I can pay half attention and if there’s anything good I miss there’ll be several replays.

Little-Big Matt

Last Saturday there was an engagement party for my old friend Matt, whom I originally got to know in first grade some 28 years ago. The party was thrown by his parents, Jim and Ruth - the latter of whom I was reminded that Matt gets his delightfully high-pitched cackle from. 

There are four of us who remain friends after meeting in first grade at Newby Elementary school in McMinnville: Matt, Paul, Ned and myself. But we weren't always pals, I'm afraid.

I remember in Ms. Watson’s second grade class having to resolve a tense, nearly-violent confrontation with Matt over an Avon neck chain. This was the end of the 1970s, and there were actually still Avon Ladies who came door to door selling cosmetics and jewelry. My mom had let the Avon Lady into the house a couple of times, and I became fixated on having this particular gold neck chain with an arrowhead pendant. But the problem was that Matt already had that very neck chain. Granted, my memory may be more melodramatic than reality, but I definitely recall of being held against the wall like a mafia shakedown, handfuls of my shirt clenched in Matt’s fists, and forced to promise not to get the same neck chain, or at least not the same pendant. (I think I’m writing this post just so I can write ‘neck chain’ as many times as possible.) I pondered many other possible pendant options, but none of them seemed quite right, so I ruled out the neck chain altogether and instead for Christmas asked for and received my first bottle of cologne, a line intended for boys called “Rookie”. My dad still kids me about wearing Avon Rookie cologne.

Later, in our fifth and sixth grade years, I remember Matt playing center on our school basketball team. Today he’s not exceptionally tall, only about 5’8”. But he was virtually that tall then and with big muscles. He was like the Shaq of McMinnville 12 year olds. I remember a kind of broken-record offense in our games, where Matt would shoot, miss, and get the rebound. Shoot, miss, get the rebound. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In junior high, I drifted apart from Matt and my old Newby Elementary friends. But in high school Matt, Paul, Ned and I were part of a larger group of friends that has stayed amazingly close and in touch over the years. Along with us Newby alumni there were Joel, Nathan and Pete from Adams Elementary, Rosie and Brooke from Columbus, as well as Brandi and Andrew from Memorial.

Saturday’s engagement party took place at Michelbook Country Club in McMinnville, which had an aura of exclusiveness when I was growing up, but whose worn oak, fluorescent lights and golf plaques seemed less intimidating today. It was actually kind of a dump. More importantly, though, it was fun too see old friends again, as well as to meet Jen, Matt’s fiancee. Driving home, I thought of our different paths, some longer than others but always tethered back to each other.

Paul and Joel are high school teachers, Joel married with two kids. Rosie is ascending her software company and a budding writer. She’s married to Paul, who is also an accomplished rock and jazz drummer when he's not preparing the young minds at our old alma mater. Nathan is an architect in Hawaii married with a kid on the way. Brandi works in sales and is married with an adorable new dog. Andrew’s now a dentist and kayak enthusiast living in McMinnville. Pete works in online tech support by day and is a budding theater/film composer by night. Ned similarly moonlights, working at a nonprofit educational research organization and in his spare time publishing and packaging his own CD and DVD archival collections of music, film and other pop culture. He also did the music for a short film that’s been accepted to Sundance. Brooke is an amazingly talented artist living in Albuquerque. And Matt is a successful pharmaceutical salesman in Orange County who races motorcycles competitively.

The motorcycles are just one indication of Matt’s thrill-seeking personality. We all have stories of car rides with Matt behind the wheel that put the fear of God in us, all to the soundtrack of his trademark cackle. In high school, we often acted out a kind of small town high school version of Animal House, and Matt was definitely the John Belushi character, ready to raise hell. Sometimes it’s still weird to see him so professional in his business casual wear, shaking hands respectfully. But the 18-year-old I remember standing drunk in his tidy-whitey briefs and a cowboy hat will always remain alive in spirit.

Reading what I've written so far, the missing part of the picture is how Matt can befriend anyone. I remember about 14 years ago I was taking a year off from college and living in Washington, DC with some members of a punk rock band. Matt flew out and stayed with us for a few days (while plotting to rendez-vous with a pretty young Pennsylvanian woman he'd met). The night we came in from the airport, my roommates were having a party in which every guest seemed to be dressed in black. Matt showed up in his cowboy boots and blazer with elbow patches, and proceeded to become the life of the party. For months after he left, my roommates would ask about him.