The kind of people we are~

Kids figure things out by induction. Their picture of the world is so small, their experience episodic.  All they can do, really, is extrapolate from the things they observe in a tiny corner of reality.  And they categorize from the beginning: first categories?  Things that give them pleasure—things that, by absence, give them discomfort.

As kids figure out life, slapping themselves in the face with their own hands, watching people jump and run when they cry, noting changes in the voices around them, they build a picture of the structure of the world: this works; this doesn’t.

And gradually, they work out kinds.

I’m just thinking this through, because I’m pretty sure I’m still unwittingly seeing a lot of things from that basic lattice of understanding, built from the beginning.

I am the kind of kid who’s always the root of the trouble. The kind who is pretty smart, but not brilliant.  The kind who loves Halloween (in spite of the scratchy, flimsy fabrics and the musty smell of costumes), and Easter and tradition.  The kind who bonds with Christmas trees.  The reader.  The talker.  The horse lover.  The kind who always answers the questions in class – all the questions—but not (duh) the popular kind.  I am not the kind who ends up rich, buys “outfits,” wears make-up, cooks, drives a new car.

My sister was the kind of kid everybody loved.  The quiet kind.  The kind who takes care of things.

Our family: the kinds of people who speak French (except for mom – and my sister and brother).  Who don’t put up Christmas lights outside.  Who always pay the bills on time.  Who moved all over the country, and so were never close to family (vacation visits, yes).  We were the vacation kind—camping, mostly.  So, the camping kind.  But not the woodsy kind.

Middle-class.  Educated.  Philosophical.  Church-going, but far more intellectual than emotional about it.  Honest.  Straight-shooting.  Tea-totalling. Musical.  Practical.  We didn’t waste anything.  But we laughed a lot.  We were the laughing, singing, playing games kind.  The piano kind.  The grassy yard kind.  The handyman kind.  The capable kind.  Not the entertaining, quirky, fancy-at-all kind.  Or the brawling, yelling, name-calling kind.

My parents were definitely the plain, straight-forward, good, strong, dependable parent kind—with a shot of whimsy on my dad’s side.

How much of what we end up becoming is couched in those early self-concepts?  I remember, working for my dentist one year, how wowed I was when I found my parents’ ledger entry (wisdom teeth removed before I started working there – on my parents’ dime): not only were we the bill paying kind; they actually did pay their bills.  On time.  Cash on the barrel-head.  So we evidently were also the WYSIWYG kind.

That’s what my folks were.  That’s the slot I settled into.  That’s the kind I’ve been becoming—fulfilling my destiny?  Or just being true to those early self-concepts?  Is it built in to the wiring? Nature or nurture?  Am I limited by this?  Or made free to focus?  Did I choose it?  Would I—the me separate from my genes and my upbringing—choose it, all things being equal?  I think I would, but is that because I already have?

And how many of my emotional responses to other people are based on similar early assessments?  I think most of the “kinds” in my head have mostly to do with behavior.  I never had any skin color “kinds,” or ethnic or chauvinistic ones—until the huge race riot at my HS, back in the sixties—even having travelled in France, with all it’s reputation for unfriendliness to strangers.  But even then, all reassessments concerned behavior—the kind of people who beat up other people.  The kind of people who stay after school to scrub the paint off the walls.  The kind of people who will listen patiently to an idiot who cannot speak well enough to make herself understood.  I’ve had to fight some of my ‘60s assumptions about police and military—so I know that I’m revisiting things, at least often enough to be able to revise.  But I worry about what drawers I haven’t had reason to clean out.

She is the kind who takes food to sick neighbors.  She is the kind who gets her nails done to match her clothes.  She’s the kind who gets her hair done every week.  Or who gossips.  Or who calls and talks for hours.  Or who is the go-to woman.  Or who listens and never repeats.  The kind of person who drives the speed limit, or only exceeds it by five miles an hour, or who doesn’t give a hang as long as she gets where she’s going?

One of my grandmothers, who worked all the time I knew her, could run an office, but was silly beyond belief.  She was heavy and wore serious make-up (which is one reason I don’t wear it often), she wore dentures and a girdle, and she smoked all the time.  How many “kinds” are in my head because of my years sharing a house with her?  Or my other grandmother, the kind of woman who never learned to drive, never worked, to whom the country club was deeply important, who never went on vacation the entire time I knew her and wore proper, pressed housedresses, always with light socks and shoes.

There are patterns, aren’t there?  I think I see them.  I’m pretty sure they’re there.  And I’m pretty sure they are, at least to a measure, predictive.

So what kind of person are you?  The kind who puts lights on the house at Christmas?  One string?  Billions of strings?  I know we do choose some of it, because G and I are both definitely the kind who hang lights, even though both of us came from dark houses.

If you have kids—living with you, what kind will they see as themselves?

If you have friends, will they influence the kind you think you are?

If you had to put one phrase on yourself (which you can’t), what would it be:

I am the kind of person who . . .

Loves?  Hopes?  Explores?  Fights for?  Fights against? Breathes?  Flies?  Votes?  Travels?  Stands for something?

Or is there just no pat “kind” for you at all?

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