2007 – Brooke Allen

Party Time

Have you ever held a party and had your first guest show up 45 minutes late? Did you have feelings of rejection and doubt? Perhaps nobody would come? Perhaps nobody likes you? Perhaps nobody ever did and they just got tired of being polite?

In some cultures, the feelings of others are more important than one’s own convenience.

John was a recent college graduate who was a member of my trading group when we moved from New York to Tokyo in 1992. The real estate market had recently crashed and with the housing budget provided by our employer, John was able to rent a three-bedroom apartment in Roppongi, the most desirable part of the city. Most Japanese “salarymen” could never aspire to live in such a place, even at the peak of their careers.

John decided to have a house warming party for himself.

He printed glossy invitations and handed them to everyone in the office. We were mostly Westerners and mostly male so, to balance the mix, he gave one to every beautiful young woman he ran across in Tokyo.

At 7:30 the doorbell rang. Fifty beautiful young women crowded the street in front of his apartment.

For more than an hour, John was the only male at his party and everyone felt a bit creepy, especially John. The women elected their best English speaker, “So, what is the deal? Is this party just all of us… and you?” John tried to explain that he’d invited lots of guys, but the ladies didn’t understand.

When the first male guest arrived after 9 PM he was greeted with a good deal of attention from the young women. By midnight, the sexes were fairly even and the party started to warm up. But John wasn’t having much fun because the females were shunning him.

In retrospect, John’s best tactic might have been to have a female friend play the role of host and for John to come to his own party at precisely 7:30. The women who arrived with him would not have viewed John not as creepy but rather as one of the rarest of all creatures: A Western male who was considerate of the feelings of others.

Arrive at the stated time. If you are the only one then you are either considerate or Japanese or both.

Mourning a Best Friend

The first time I saw my dad cry was when Tallulah died. She was named after Tallulah Bankhead, the actress, because of their similarity of voice and propensity to drink from inappropriate vessels.[1]

Just as the best therapy following a miscarriage or stillbirth is to work on a replacement, my folks went downtown immediately and picked up Pookie.

My sister and I loved Pookie. She had only one neurosis. While she was indifferent to cars, she hated motorcycles and whenever she would catch up with one, she would try to puncture its back tire with her teeth.

We buried her in the backyard. This time I cried.

Then there was Charlie Brown, as dumb as a coconut and if you knocked on the top of the head he sounded like one. It is ironic that we gave CB to some astrophysicists who moved to Colorado; you’d think they would want be around smarties.

Tramp walked into our lives from the woods in the back. He played dumb and he fooled us for a season. Minutes after you would walk away he’d be tangled in the rope around the tree. I caught him out one day by watching from inside the house instead of going to his rescue. After twenty minutes of pitiable whining and yelping he stopped abruptly and unwound himself. He spent the afternoon playing at the end of his tether. One day Tramp returned to the woods and we never saw him again. We probably weren’t smart enough for him. He should have been the one to go to Colorado.

My wife doesn’t feel the way I do about dogs. She will tell you that she likes your dog, but she is just being polite. She doesn’t mean that she will like your dog if you give it to her. You’ve got to walk them or they crap in the house. They don’t last forever so they eventually crap out on you completely.

Once we all went to see My Dog Skip, a wonderful movie about a young boy whose emotional life was rescued by a dog. At the end our sons and I were crying. Eve’s arms were crossed and her head was shaking, “We’re not getting a dog. We’re not getting a dog.”

I’m sorry that my sons never had a dog. Dogs love life and are genetically engineered to be your friend. They aren’t as durable as you so they are likely to kick off before you do.

You can learn a lot about living and dying from a dog.[2]

[1] Ms. Bankhead famously drank champagne from her slipper at the Ritz hotel in London.

[2] Thorton Wilder said it better, “Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”

Fire Was No Stranger to Tokyo

Just before noon on September 1^st, 1923, an earthquake struck Tokyo. Since so many people were using fire to cook their lunch, nearly the entire city was set ablaze. High winds (there was a typhoon just off the coast) spread the fires rapidly. More than half a million homes were destroyed and nearly two million people were left homeless. Over one hundred thousand perished.

During World War II, the 20^th and 21^st bomber commands repeatedly firebombed the city. On a single night (March 10, 1945) 279 B-29s Superfortress bombers destroyed 25% of the city and claimed another 100,000 lives.

In 1990 we moved from New York City to Tokyo. We had mixed feelings about finding a place near a Minato-ku firehouse. In New York, we had lived down the block from Engine Company # 5 where the friendly firefighters would let our children climb on their truck whenever we passed. On the other hand, we were frequently woken by their sirens.

Yet we never heard a single fire truck or even saw one on the streets of Tokyo for the nearly three years we lived there. To this day I can not tell you what one sounds like.

One night, we were having dinner at Tony Roma’s Place for Ribs (which is right next to the Hard Rock Café in Roppongi). At the adjacent table was an obviously American couple. We asked if they were tourists.

“Not exactly.”

“Are you on business?”

“Kind of.”

It turns out he was a fireman from Dallas, Texas. A philanthropist had paid for 50 firefighters (one from each State) to come to Tokyo to learn from the Japanese.

“How is it going?”

“Kind of weird.” On Sunday night they had had a cocktail reception. Monday morning they visited a firehouse where they discovered that Japanese fire trucks were just like American, only smaller.

That afternoon the firefighters were taken to the Tokyo headquarters. They had expected to find high-tech computers but instead they were shown something out of the 50’s; a map with push-pins.

From Monday afternoon until the day when we met them (Thursday), the 50 firefighters were treated to boring lectures by the Fire Chief for all of Tokyo. Eventually they couldn’t take it any more and one of them asked, “When can we go out on a call?”

The Fire Chief responded, “We will go out on a call as soon as we have one. We haven’t had a call all week.” Apparently, they hadn’t had one for many weeks.

Eve and I were as flabbergasted. “How do they do that?” we asked.

“We asked the same question?”

And the Fire Chief’s response: “That is what I have been telling you all week.”

“So,” we asked our man from Dallas, “What did he say?”

“We don’t know,” he answered, “None of us were listening.”

So, I can not tell you why they have so few fires in Tokyo these days, but I can tell you why we have dozens, even hundreds, of calls each night in our major cities.

We don’t listen.

If someone is trying to tell you something, you should try to listen.

Mr. Rieur

RieurIFM-1024x716LevelAdjusted — Mr. Rieur in 2007 at 89 in front of some of the 79,662 photos that he took on his world-wide travels that are now archived at the Consortium Library Library in Anchorage, Alaska.

You most want to be like the person you most admire. That is why, ever since 1963 when I had Mr. Rieur for the sixth grade I have wanted to be a teacher.

His classroom was unlike any other I’d seen before; across the inner wall were terrariums and fish tanks. In the back was a cabinet with his lab equipment and chemical supplies. The ledge by the window was lined with books.

He taught geography with slides and stories of his adventures visiting the places in our syllabus. We saw him standing at the Parthenon as it appeared in our book and then he showed us what Athens looked like from that spot. He taught how to live in the world and love its inhabitants.

We constructed the various types of fire extinguishers described in our science text. Then we used them to put out the fires we would set in the trash can behind the school. Our English assignment was to write a report about the experience.

It seemed like everything was connected to everything else and learning how things worked was fun; about the most fun you could imagine.

Since that time I’ve felt I couldn’t just live a life but I also had to pay attention; not because in the end there will be a test but because someday I’ll be called upon to teach others.

Those who can do, please teach.

P. S. On September 29, 2007, Mr. Rieur celebrates his 90^th birthday. Please wish him well.

Sally Would be Proud of Me

In 1993 I lost a job in Tokyo and returned to the States with a wife and two young children but no work.

Most of my contacts were no longer at the phone numbers in my book and many were unemployed. It appeared our economy was in a recession. A friend arranged for a courtesy interview at a brokerage firm I’d worked at years earlier.

Let’s call the interviewer “Bob”.

Bob began, “I hope we aren’t wasting your time but we have no jobs; there is a hiring freeze.”

“You have no work?”

“We have plenty of work, just no jobs. We can’t hire anyone except consultants on short-term contracts.”

“I would work as a consultant.”

“Are you incorporated?”

“No.”

Bob smiled, “Well then, I’m sorry but we can’t do anything. We only hire people who are incorporated. Thanks for coming in, but I have another meeting to attend to.”

“OK. How long will the meeting take?”

“About half an hour.”

“Well, I have nothing else to do today so perhaps we could talk some more when you get back. I’d be happy to help you if I can… no charge. In the meantime, may I use your phone?”

After he left, I called The Company Corporation, a firm that specializes in incorporating people in Delaware: Cost: $240 on a credit card.

When Bob returned I gave him a piece paper with my Federal Tax ID, “I am now Bravo Alpha, Incorporated.”

“What? I thought you said you weren’t incorporated.”

“That was then. This is now.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because you said I needed to be incorporated.”

Bob smiled again, “Now I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time and your money. We won’t hire someone unless they are on our approved vendor list and that process takes months.”

I borrowed his phone again and called my friend at Galaxy Systems, an approved vendor. In a few minutes I was his sub-contractor.

Bob began to look worried, “We’re really backed up with work, but how do I know you can do it?”

I said, “That’s easy. I begin doing the work and you decide if I’m doing it as you want it done. At the end of the month, if you don’t think I am worth what I’ve billed, simply cross off my number and write in your own which can be any number including zero.”

Bob seemed shocked, “You would work for free?”

“Not exactly. If it turns out that what I am doing is not worth anything to you then I will ask you what I’m doing wrong. Learning what I am doing wrong is worth a month of my time.”

“How much do you want to make?”

“One hundred dollars per hour.”

Bob sighed, “That’s too bad because we are only allowed to pay a maximum of $87.50 per hour.”

“I would accept that.”

“But I thought you wanted to make $100 per hour.”

“I do. But I would accept $87.50. I would even accept $25 because I would rather work than not.”

Bob was incredulous, “OK, I guess I don’t see a reason not to hire you immediately except that it will take us weeks to get a contract written and approval isn’t certain.”

“No problem. I’m happy to start right away and bear the risk that you are never able pay me.”

I began work immediately. It sure felt better than being unemployed. The contract was approved and I was paid in full.

If someone says they want to do something, remove all their reasons for not doing it and they will see no other choice.

If you know you are worth something but an employer isn’t sure, then work on approval.

When you are stuck, think “What Would My Mentor Do?”

Learning How to Land a Job

A mentor is someone who stands out in your mind as a model for your own behavior. If you find yourself thinking “What Would Sally Do?” then Sally is a mentor. Here is the story of my Sally.

In 1979, my boss asked for my help in replacing a secretary. Rather than pay a fee to an agency, Ted hired a temp and then advertised in the New York Times. We were flooded with resumes and some of these candidates had amazing credentials. He asked for my help in organizing the interviews so that he could make sure of hiring the best person.

One could type 130 words per minute. Another couldn’t type quite that fast but took dictation. Many had Bachelors degrees and a few had their Masters. I created a standardized form on which to record each candidate’s skills.

One day Sally rang our bell. She told our temp she wanted to drop off her resume in person.

“While I’m here, may I introduce myself to the hiring manager?”

Ted agreed to see her and asked me to attend. I’m glad he did.

“Tell me about your education.”

“I graduated from high school last year and I’ve had six months at secretarial school.”

Ted was unimpressed. “How fast can you type?”

“I’m not sure; perhaps 40 words per minute.”

“Hmmm. We have candidates with graduate degrees in English who can type over 100 words per minute.”

“Do you need me to have a degree and type that fast?”

“I don’t know, but it can’t hurt. Can you take dictation?”

“No. Do you give dictation?”

Ted stroked his chin. “Not yet, but some of these women can take dictation so I’m thinking about learning how to do it.”

“OK. If you want to learn how to give dictation, I’ll learn how to take it.”

Ted rose to say goodbye. I could tell that since he had not bothered to write anything in the skills survey he had no interest in her.

Sally stood, shook his hand and said, “May I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“That girl who let me in; is she the one who is leaving or is she a temp?”

“She’s a temp. My previous secretary has already left.”

Sally looked directly at Ted, “I can do what she is doing and that is the kind of work I want to do. Tell her not to come in tomorrow and I will do her job for free while we both continue our search.”

Ted pulled me aside, “Can you think of a reason I should not take her up on this?”

Sally arrived the next day. She helped organize all the candidates and found typing and dictation tests for Ted to administer. Perhaps a dozen candidates made it into Ted’s final round and every one of them was better educated with stronger skills than Sally. Even with so many choices, Ted still couldn’t decide.

In the meantime Sally did everything that Ted wanted done. She couldn’t type very fast but fast enough. She made plenty of mistakes but she recognized them herself and corrected them. If asked for something at quitting time she didn’t do it first thing in the morning; she stayed late and did it.

After Sally had been working for two weeks, Ted pulled me into his office. “Can you think of a reason I should not give this job to Sally. After all, she’s already doing it.”

Ted hired her and gave her back pay from the day she first walked through our door.

I think that young woman taught me more about how to find work than anyone else.

Things I learned from Sally:

Don’t do the interview; do the job.

If you don’t like rejection, make offers that are hard to refuse.

Attitude trumps skill.

The best person for a job is the appropriate person for the job.

Work first and you shall receive.

Past Love

I won’t tell you her name, but I will tell you when and where it hit me. It was in Latin class during the spring semester of the eighth grade.

She was beautiful and smart. What a wonderful smile. What a cheerful laugh. Blonde… blonde doesn’t hurt. Poised. Friendly. And smart… did I mention that.

We shared three other classes: Advanced Math, Science and History. How could I have not noticed her before?

At night, as I would go to sleep I could imagine our future life. We would study together. Tell jokes. Hold hands. Kiss, even.

She would be in a car accident and I would take care of her until she recovered.

I would develop a terrible disease and she would stay by my side in the hospital, holding my hand and crying. I’d pull through and we would swear to each other never to be apart.

We would marry.

Our love developed like this from the fall through the winter.

She must have noticed that I was staring at her.

One day she followed me to my locker.

She said, “Hi.”

I was mortified… struck dumb. “I… I…” I stammered, “I can’t talk to you right now. I’m very busy.”

I slammed my locker and ran down the hall. I’d hoped she thought I was needed somewhere in a hurry and that she would not think I was running from her.

That night I could not sleep. What was wrong with me? I was an idiot. Was that any way to treat your lover? She would never speak to me again.

I was right; she never did.

Any wonder? I had treated her badly. I avoided her path; her eyes.

My torture lasted through the summer. I don’t remember when it stopped. Mourning doesn’t end abruptly… it fades away.

I hoped she would never get over me and that she knew that I would one day become her one true love. I hoped she would see that right now I was needed elsewhere for a secret and extremely important assignment and she would wait for me.

So that is how I spent my eighth grade; the first half in the future and the second half in the past.

What a hell is immature love.

Love is found in the now, not in the then or the when.

Science Takes a Look at Love

In June of 2006 I had dinner with a young newlywed couple in London, England. They had just read my story, How Grandmother Won Granddad in a Beauty Contest, in the May issue of International Family Magazine.

The young bride asked me, “How do you know that you’ve met that one person out there who is just perfect for you?”

I don’t know the answer, but I find the question very disturbing since it implies that there is only one perfect person; yet it is likely that if you’re going to be married for any length of time there will be plenty of opportunity to uncover your mate’s imperfections and convince yourself that you’ve stopped looking too early.

This March I was again in London and again I had dinner with another newly married young couple. They too had read the story of my grandparents. She was beautiful and literate. He was handsome and charming. They held hands, snuggled and kissed a lot

Like my grandparents, they had married within weeks of first meeting.
Isn’t it romantic?

I think so.

But also scary.

I couldn’t put my finger on it until I read the book, The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. The book discusses the science of happiness. In his chapter Love and Attachments he explains that long-term relationships must be based on companionship, not passion. You just aren’t physiologically capable of extended bouts of passionate love; you’ll develop tolerance to the dopamine you’re producing.

Thinking back, my grandparents never talked about youthful passion. They talked about the great adventures they had together and they talked about how lonely they were before they met.

But passion?

Nope.

For a love to last a long time you must be long time companions, not just lovers.

Advice for Grandchildren

After my dad died, I went through his hard drive and found this in a folder named: adviceforgrandchildren

Title: Boys and Girls

Until about 2 years old

I have noticed that children at this age carry on soundless interested communication sometimes pointing and laughing and crying from their strollers regardless of whatever color (blue or pink) they are wearing

3 and 4 years of age

Very friendly to all their peers regardless of age sex or economic level. Not very intellectual communication except for world shaking statements, like ” Why?” and “If people believe in God and all the people die; What happens to God?”

5 to 12 years of age

A great age of discovery about boys and girls by boys and girls. Boys feel sorry for girls because they don’t have one. Both have long hair some times. Some boys notice older girls have bumps on their chest. Boys don’t like girls and girls don’t like boys. Sometimes they have separate school gangs or social clubs. Girls sometimes wear dresses but boys never do, except in Scotland and Greece. Both use separate toilets except in some countries that usually have a cement hole in the ground with two foot prints in the cement.

13 to 18 years of age

Boys voices change and they start (hopefully) growing beards, develop into couch potatoes with pot bellies and are slobs. Girls become attractive by taking care of themselves, working out and learning how to make up. Girls make better grades than boys. All are an absolute trial for parents – usually – but not always. Some teenagers are nicer than their parents were at the same age. At first, for boys and girls, is confusion then fascination or extreme dislike of either themselves or the opposite sex. Hormones almost take over completely, but not quite. There is school sex education but that is series of biology lessons and common knowledge which is usually incorrect.

What one must do is learn how to be a lover. This simply means making sure the other person is happier or more satisfied than you are. An adjunct to learning this is how to be a friend to boys and girls without a sexual meaning.

If you learn these lessons you will be happy or create happiness for the rest of your life.

19 to 22 years of age

A time to learn ‘HOW TO’:

How to think with and without the influence of your hormones.
How to get to know the opposite sex.
How to find out what you want to like.
How to court the person of your attention.
How to make a living so that you can support yourself and the result of all those hormones and frantic attention to the opposite sex.

23 to 60 years of age

Your internal clock goes off !

And you did not even know you had one.

It is called parenthood.

You will have to find your own way. There are some things you will find out all by yourself. We are all individuals – even our loved ones.

Some observations are classical and catholic:

Birds make much better parents than people; they know when to kick the chick out of the nest, after together knocking themselves out taking care of each other and the chicks.

Children cause one to appreciate one’s own parent.

Adulthood means accepting responsibility regardless of how you feel or resent it.

61 to 70 years of age

Freedom!

You can set your own schedule.

You can not get fired because you are retired.

You have little or no sex.

You can speak you mind, but few listen.

You realize how much you love your mate as they pretend to listen.

After 70 years of age

I have noticed that grown people this age carry on loud uninteresting communication sometimes pointing and laughing and crying from their wheelchairs and canes regardless of whatever sex or color their hair is.

Hoping for death with dignity.

Love,

Your granddad Tom.

If someone is not ready to hear what you have to say, write a memo.

The Magical Power of Imagination

As an undergraduate I went on a date to see a famous “mentalist”. I find magicians entertaining. My date was eager to show me proof of the supernatural. I was entertained and she found her evidence.

His first feat was to control the minds of two volunteers. He had asked the promoters to provide a selection of decks of cards. Two volunteers each chose a deck and shuffled them. The volunteers sat at desks a few feet apart, each with a face-down deck.

The mentalist then remembered that the effect was difficult if the decks contained any jokers so he quickly removed them.

Each volunteer was asked to cut the deck about a third of the way into the pack and turn those cards over, placing them face up on top of the rest of the deck. Then they were to repeat the process, cutting past the face-up cards and turn them over again.

Finally, he used his mind to command the volunteers to remove the face-up cards so as to find the first face-down card.

Amazingly, they both had found the eight of clubs.

“See,” said she.

“I see,” said I.

He asked the audience to think of a number between one and one hundred, both digits odd but not the same. For example, 15 and 91 would be OK but 55 was not. We all thought of a number.

“I can sense many of you are thinking of 37… or perhaps 73. Raise your hand if I am right?”

Many hands went up. Not all, but certainly more than one percent.

She was thinking of 37. I was thinking of 88. She was much better than me at following instructions..

“Do the math,” she said.

“I have,” I said.

I left amused. She left with a renewed faith.

While in graduate school I saw an act called the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society featuring two magicians who would later work together as Penn and Teller. They claimed to be no more than entertainers. They were very entertaining.

In 2005, thirty years after first seeing him on stage, I heard Penn Jillette’s essay on National Public Radio entitled “There is no God.”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557

Like many people, he and I believe there is no God.

But I do believe in providence even though one definition is: “a manifestation of God’s foresightful care for his creatures.”

In high school, I imagined I would find something in college that would excite my passions. Three years later I did.

I imagined I could make a living at it, and for thirty years I have.

I imagined I would find a woman to love and ten years later I did.

We imagined having wonderful children and we have.

I imagined writing stories for them and I have.

I imagined that someone would be interested in publishing some of those stories and at Sea-Tac airport I met Catherine Wayland and she did. Here they are.

If you imagine that there is a foresightful God looking out for you, you will find ample evidence that there is. Even if there isn’t.

You don’t need to believe in God to trust in providence.