Dr. Bernard F. Natelson

Some childhood memories still remain vivid in my mind. One happy one that I recall reminds me of that wonderful opening scene in the film, Citizen Kane. If you have never seen this movie and do not want to know how it concludes, then please do not go on reading this blog because it will be a spoiler. I am quite sure the movie is readily available inasmuch as it is a classic, directed by the young and talented Orson Welles, who also starred in it. My recommendation: If you haven’t seen it, see it and then come back and read this blog.

The opening scene shows Kane on his back, dying, with his last breath uttering the word, Rosebud. In an effort to decipher the origin of this word, a reporter interviews several of Kane’s close acquaintances in flashbacks that provide the picture’s material. The film portrays the development of Kane’s life from a young striving individual to a newspaper magnate who wields great power. Although a fictional work, many compared Citizen Kane to the real-life newspaper mogul Randolph Hearst. There is a scene showing Kane as a boy frolicking in the snow that connects us with that last word uttered by Kane, Rosebud. Although the reporter cannot solve the meaning of this word, at the end of the film the audience sees a sled in a fireplace with the word Rosebud, on it, slowly disintegrating into flames.

I grew up in northern New Jersey in the ‘50’s where there was plenty of snow. When the blizzards brought snow, it was like manna from heaven insofar as the schools had to be closed allowing us kids to have a day off. Two close friends of mine had the good fortune to live at the top of their streets that were both long and steep, and due to the snow, blocked off from traffic. It was one of the natural delights as a child to take my sled to either of those locations and enjoy the thrill of sleigh riding down to the bottom of those streets.

But it was not a sled that I longed for as an adult. As I child my brothers and I would go down to Beach Haven, a pristine shore in New Jersey, every summer to spend a few weeks visiting the family of an old college friend of my father. It was there that as a child of 6 or 7, I discovered miniature golf and pinball with my brothers. I still remember the place we would go to: Beacon’s Golf and Amusement Arcade. The latter consisted of pinball games with the price per game being a whopping five cents. I became fascinated with one game, called Jalopy, when one day my younger brother and I were watching this other kid, a few years older than both of us, play and win 25 free games with the Kid, the driver of Jalopy number 6. I think he appreciated the awe and amazement we expressed when the games started ringing up to 25 as he offered me the chance to play one of his free games. His generous gesture began my career as a pinball player and my early infatuation with Jalopy. Each summer when I went with my family down the Jersey shore, I spent many a nickel playing Jalopy.

Since then I played a variety of pinball games and became fairly adept, with an almost reflexive knack for manipulating the flippers, an intrinsic part of the game. As an undergraduate at college there was a breakfast place on campus that had five or six machines with the same group of guys always playing the same games. I made some friends playing pinball perhaps related to both my enthusiasm and skill at the game. One of the games I excelled at was called: World Series. Because I was an avid baseball fan, I, especially, enjoyed playing it. However, as the years went by, many features of pinball were changing, one of which reduced the number of balls in a game from five to three, in addition to the inevitable raising of the price per game. In essence, what had happened is that now you had to pay more to play less per game. These changes along with others diminished my interest in pinball. Moreover, as pinball had become less popular with the next generation due to their greater fascination with video games, there were fewer places left to visit that housed pinball machines.

As the years went by, I thought about the fun I had in playing Jalopy. It had been over 50 years since I had first played that game. After searching for it on the internet for about a year, I finally found an owner of it that actually lived in Southern California about 50 miles from me. Upon going to his home, I discovered that he was a collector of pinball machines. When I told him of my interest in buying the game Jalopy, he said he would paint it and get it looking like new and, when I returned to buy it, it did indeed appear to be in mint condition. After playing a number of times, I decided to buy it.

Jalopy became more than a memory for me than the sled had been to Citizen Kane. That is to say, the act of both finding and obtaining the pinball machine of my childhood, as a personal possession, reified the memory. What is most surprising is that when I currently play the game (of course for free though it does have the original nickel coin slot), I thoroughly enjoy it. I have thought about this. Jalopy, like practically all pinball machines, was hard to win free games simply because the proprietors wanted the customers to keep on pumping their money into them. Consequently, despite the fact that I have owned it for about fifteen years, and have played it countless times, I still find winning at Jalopy quite challenging. Winning at Jalopy is somewhat similar to winning at card games in which skilled players won’t always beat other players due to the fact that they may be unlucky in drawing poor hands. If Jalopy was a game of 100% skill, then eventually I would figure out ways of winning the game consistently. This does not happen due to the unpredictability of how the ball caroms off the side, what bumper it hits, where it will go in relation to the flippers and, then how I will react to all this uncertainty, some of which I can control, and some of which I cannot. In this sense, I would say that Jalopy is more like poker than say bridge, a much more complicated card game that involves some luck but a much greater degree of mastery and expertise than does poker.

The irony is that if the game no longer would demand attention to the prerequisite dexterity necessary to win free games, my enthusiasm for it would wane. That is what is fascinating about humans: Difficult situations stimulate us to work harder at the task that confronts us with the goal of improving our ability to overcome their challenge. When I invite friends and family to play, they are quite amazed at how hard it is to win a free game which makes sense inasmuch as they have not played it or practiced it as much as I have. Because of my familiarity with Jalopy, when I demonstrate my prowess at it, my friends and family can appreciate my performance even if I don’t win a free game on that attempt.

The perception of time differs during one’s childhood. As a child the time to play one game felt much longer than it is presently. When I enter my home office where I have Jalopy, I tell myself I will only play one game but before I know it, I may play three or four  more times in no more than five minutes. Since I have owned Jalopy, I have been able to relax but still try to outmaneuver the machine in an effort to win free games. It remains a source of great fun.

I am sitting at home, socially isolated like many Americans and people throughout the world, reading a thriller suspense novel, titled The Holdout by Graham Moore.  The opportunity to do this almost feels luxurious.  Life is cluttered with so many things to do that the chance to read a book for mere pleasure almost feels too good to be true.  Before the coronavirus turned the world upside down, I had read Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, my local book club’s choice of the month.

Those two fictional works differ, most conspicuously, by the length of the sentences of each book.  The sentences in Eliot’s wonderful book were so long that every once in a while, I would have to reread it so as to not miss the underlying point.  That is to say I had to focus and concentrate.   Sentences in Moore’s book are short, concise and to the point allowing me to put my mind in neutral as I glide through what has been a page turner.  As I read, my body quivers with an eerie sensation upon peering outside from my home and seeing the intense stillness surrounding me.  The reality and the fiction appear so entangled that we are having difficulty disengaging from our beliefs that are rooted in our anxieties.

Fortunately, rather than having to go to my office, the internet has provided me with more available time than I normally would have by allowing me to see clients online.  The idea of unlimited time sparks a memory from long ago when I was in my early teens.  It is Friday evening, 1958, and I am visiting a friend when these stars appear on the tele screen and a very myopic man with whiskey shot lenses is pondering his difficult life with a wife that won’t let him enjoy the reading he loves and a demeaning boss at the bank where he works. After Rod Serling comes on, my friend, Marc, who is the youngest of 12 children, tells me that this is a new show.  Because all of his siblings were older, he always seemed to know more about what was cool and groovy than the rest of us.  As soon as the program starts, neither Marc nor I say a word.  We sit entranced.

Burgess Meredith plays Henry Dimis a hen-pecked bank clerk who, following his boss’s demand, goes inside the vault to deposit money and is suddenly jarred by a sonic boom.  Rubble and debris cover him from a nuclear explosion in which he is the sole survivor on earth.  He does not know what or where to go and contemplates suicide until he discovers piles and piles of books, all of which are intact, in front of the dismantled library.  His mundane life that necessitated his carrying out the chores and duties that his wife and boss commanded of him did not allow him the time to read the classics that he has so wanted to peruse all his life.  As he joyously looks at these treasures, he is so happy that his glasses slip off from his face and in looking to retrieve them he steps on them cracking the lenses in several pieces.  As if an arrow had pierced his heart, Henry, face torn, looks up and says: ‘That’s not fair, not fair at all. I had time at last.’  My friend and I nod with the silent understanding that we have seen something very rarely captured on a TV program.

The Twilight Zone episodes had a universal appeal inasmuch as they spoke to many of the characteristics–that make us humans–coming up against that vast unknown space.  Who would have guessed that the whole world is experiencing something that no one really could have predicted only a few months ago?  Surreal but very much real.  It was always the pain and emotions that humans experienced throughout history that separated us from the immortal gods who never could have such sensations as pain or joy.  We are in this together but the manner in which we use the time it affords us, though it may be unbearable to some, will make the difference in the way each and every one of us come out of it when it ends.  Though it may feel that way, this is not the apocalypse.  Although some of us may not make it to the finish line, the great majority of us will survive and, if we all work together, it will take many fewer lives than if we forget what it means to be human.  In the meantime, at last there is time enough for me to go to my bookshelf, wipe off some of the dust that has accumulated on it and choose some books that I can enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

Globalization has increased trade in the world immensely in the last couple of decades.  Many countries now are involved in the supply chain, such as cars, that make them more affordable, worldwide, to consumers.  But global economic trade facilitates the spreading of pandemic disease that has no geographic boundaries when world travel is so prevalent.

We are currently facing a crisis of extreme proportion never before experienced in our lives.  What was most surprising is that the public was kept in the dark until it was too late to prepare ourselves for the most unpleasant consequences that a virulent virus brings with it. President Trump’s wish that the virus would pass over us and, we would be miraculously saved, though indeed not quite the same, has a similar ring to it as President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party reprimanding Dr. Li Wenliang for his warning about the emerging threat of the coronavirus.   The leaders in China and America did not want to admit the inherent danger of a deadly virus–delaying the immediate treatment of the problem–causing untoward consequences.

Now that it is clear that it is here it might be much harder for us to face than Asian countries that have a collectivist, as opposed to an individual value system, where the family, and not the individual, is primary.   Because Asians are not as likely to challenge authority as Americans, the Chinese leaders, once they stopped denying the existence of the coronavirus, were able to enforce a complete shutdown.  Strict adherence to this policy by the Chinese people kept the numbers and spread of the disease in abeyance.  The objective in controlling the spread of the disease is to get a flat curve where there are not too many cases reported on a daily basis.  The medical experts are saying that the way to achieve this is to minimize contact with other people in what has been called social distancing or minimizing social contact to just family members.  These social restraints have been put in place to contain a virus that might otherwise grow exponentially and create a shortage of medical supplies essential for treatment and care of the sick.

Because the virus is more likely to thrive in places where there is a greater density of people, the big cities, such as Los Angeles and New York City, where many of us find most desirable to reside, have reported the greatest incidence of the virus.  Like China, almost all work and leisure areas have been closed.  When people go food shopping, they are told to stay six feet apart while standing on line.  Older people are much more vulnerable to the illness regarding mortality rates than younger people and, so the latter, may not follow the guidelines as strictly as their parents or grandparents.  If young people become infected by the virus, they may be either asymptomatic completely or free of symptoms for 5 to 10 days during which time they can come in contact with a parent or older relative that may cause serious illness and possibly death to this elder.

No one really knows how long this will last.  The unpredictability of the duration of this virus increases our anxiety and is very much reflected in the stock market where a huge amount of money and resources has been lost.  The hope is that we, as a people, can adjust to whatever losses we experience, and follow the advice of medical experts by changing our life style.  The government has taken certain monetary and fiscal steps to ease the public pain.   However, the fact that there has been a vast shutdown of any type of travel and commerce goes beyond any palliative measures pushed by our leaders.

Hopefully, the new life styles imposed on us in conjunction with concomitant losses will not result in anger and irrational behavior.  In LA, I am told gun shops have sold out with customers afraid that their stores will be ransacked.  Unfortunately, unruly mob behavior will only exacerbate the problem by increasing the spreading of the virus.  This will counteract the good intentions of the rest of us and result in further turmoil.

There is a bright spot to all of this:  Now we will have time to contact through phone or the Internet many forgotten friends and acquaintances from the past.  Besides the Internet has allowed schools that are closed to supply Chrome computers to their students.  Moreover, as a psychologist, I am able to see clients online by accessing Skype.  Many employees are working from their home full time, in areas like the big cities mentioned above, that have gone Dark.  Even though we need to socially distance, we can communicate through the many online platforms accessible that are for free.  Imagine the losses that would have been sustained, not so long ago, when the Internet did not exist.

The Book of Genesis, from the Bible, talked about how after the flood, the people wanted to build a Tower that would be high enough to avoid any future floods with the goal of reaching the Heavens.  God objected to this pompous act of humans resulting in their dispersion over the earth and the formation of many languages.  I view the Internet, not as a vertical structure aimed at the Heavens, but rather as a horizontal structure that has spread itself throughout the entire globe.  Although we are a people with many languages, the Internet manages to unite us and bring us closer to one another by sharing both our customs and culture.

To conclude, there are always heroes to be recognized in every crisis.  The workers at pharmacies, grocery stores and at gas stations are on the firing line as are our medical personnel.  They are still reporting to work as their jobs are a sine qua non for the maintenance and continuance of our lives.  I have noticed that the workers in grocery stores are by and large younger people and, certainly, that makes sense.  This, however, may not be true of some of our medical professionals that still are working.  It would make sense, if at all feasible, to give older professionals time off from what could be for them, a most dangerous and precarious environment.  My bet is many doctors and nurses still would choose to continue with their work rather than to withdraw.  Hats off to them.

 

 

 

 

With a sad irony there was a coming together of those that had any kind of connection with Kobe Bryant on both sides of the country.  The New York Times had as much to say about Kobe as the Los Angeles Times did.  The irony comes from the union of all colors, race and creed upon the death of a star.  Far too often death, and not life, is what precipitates a most humane reaction underscored by unity.

The day before Kobe died the LA Times Sports Section had revealed that LeBron James had just surpassed Koby’s point total for the Lakers with Koby calling and congratulating him.  Inasmuch as he did not allow his ego to obstruct his view of a fellow player’s greatness, this act by Koby, though small, showed his fullness of character.  The next morning, Sunday, in disbelief, I heard the tragic news of his death in a helicopter.

Although I very much enjoyed playing basketball when I was younger, I never was a particularly avid fan.  However, when I did watch Koby play with the Lakers, his unbridled enthusiasm and love of the game were apparent.  It is evident that this love of the game continued on in his relationship with his daughter, Gianna, and more generally, with women’s basketball.

To his credit, Kobe recovered from what could have been a very serious rape charge that occurred in 2003.  The case never made it to trial because the woman involved decided not to go through the arduous procedure of testifying.  The case was resolved, civilly, with Kobe paying her an undisclosed amount of money out of court.  Although he did apologize for his behavior, afterwards he still maintained that the sex he had had was consensual.

From there his marriage had its ups and downs, with a subsequent trial separation.   However, at the time of his death he and his wife, Vanessa, appeared to have worked through and resolved their marital difficulties.  Much of Kobe’s enthusiasm playing basketball had been transferred to developing the skills of his daughter and other young females’ intent on basketball.  Indeed, this was a constructive use of his energies.

One of the hardest challenges facing stars, whether they excel as athletes or in some other profession, is to maintain their loyalty to their wives and children.  Perhaps Kobe’s stable family of origin helped him overcome the temptation of wandering.  Certainly, love and marriage at such a young age as Kobe was, when he married, often does not bode well for any star who is in the limelight and the center of public attention.  Immediate wealth and fame can overcome the sensitivities of any young starlet, male or female.  Kobe was able to beat the devil of stardom, and from what we know now, become a devoted father, husband and family man.  Perhaps it is this latter characteristic of Kobe that has made his premature death that much more difficult to accept by both the public and those that knew him.

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The attention given to the late Mr. Rogers very much reflects the state of American culture and perhaps, more broadly, the state of the world. First, came Morgan Neville’s hit documentary about Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” This was followed by the very successful movie directed by Marielle Heller starring Tom Hanks, as Mr. Rogers, in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” It is a credit to both works that neither featured the violence and sex so often glamorized in today’s cinematic productions.

The enthusiasm for these two biopics hearkens back to 1968 when Simon and Garfunkel recorded the song, Mrs. Robinson, with the lyrics:

“Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio?

Our nation turns its lonely eyes on you.

What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson?

Jolting Joe has left and gone away.”

When those words were written, America was still fighting a futile war– but being told differently–in Viet Nam. And, furthermore, a third-rate power like Viet Nam was in the process of conducting the Tet Offensive that was one of the largest and most successful campaigns against South Vietnam and the U.S.A. Joe Dimaggio represented an American hero long gone as Viet Nam turned into a nation’s disgrace.

Today the kindness of Fred Rogers is almost revered because there is such a dearth of that very same human quality.   If a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without undergoing any permanent change, then I would say Donald Trump is a human catalyst. Although he did not create it, President Trump has taken social media to its ultimate in “twittering” nastiness to all of his detractors. His enemies of which there are many have returned the favor of Mr. Trump with their own version of nastiness. The news media shrieking both loudly and mockingly from side to side with little hope for resolution catapults us into chaotic oblivion. We are now facing the moral bankruptcy so many of us felt in the ‘60’s. We view Mr. Rogers, though if he were alive, he would surely deny it, a hero amidst cowards that are afraid to step down from their pedestals and make peace with those of whom we disagree. This has resulted in a lack of civility felt by all. Such a lapse in good manners can erode the values for which this country believed in when it first came to be.

There is a deep need for the kindness and decency embodied by Fred Rogers. We want to believe, as Fred Rogers told us we could, that he was no more special than you and I and, that we all have the moral capacity to behave in a way that would better serve both our neighbors and ourselves.   People applauded these two movies about Mr. Rogers because he possessed that generosity of spirit that is so lacking in today’s society. Mr. Rogers touched a vital chord that we so painfully miss today.

 

 

It happened very late in my mother’s life and not so early in my own life when I was visiting her from California in her new home, a place that offered assisted care to seniors. My father had recently died so I would have been in my early 50’s and my mother in her early 80’s. So now many years later let me address a past ugly side of myself that took much time and inner pain to heal.

As a child growing up, I was in the middle of three boys during the early years of my childhood. Later, when I was 9, my older brother 13, and my younger brother 7, my baby brother was born, and with his birth I was no longer a same sex middle child. I remember being unhappy before he was born and really wanting my parents to have another child. How the mind of a child works. As a middle child I felt stifled, that is caught between my older more important brother and my younger more helpless one. A feeling of being left out, not being noticed for who or what I was, yet very much wanting to have another sibling, that if anything, might lead to even less attention. The more compelling need for an addition to the family was my strong desire to escape this dreaded sense of being stuck in the middle. The addition of another family member would create change and any change was more desirable than the status quo.

Perhaps it was simply jealousy toward my younger brother who was stealing my mother from me. Or perhaps it was my tortured sense of self that drove me to take out my frustrations–in growing up–on my younger brother. It may have been the implicit pain I felt as my older brother would be gaining accolades for scholastic achievement while I struggled very much in school to do well. To hear it from my parents, everything came the hard way for me in contrast to my older brother who had the capacity to learn things, simple or complex, much faster than I and most others.

Right or wrong I had this perception of being left out. I was the youngest only for a little more than two years before being replaced by my younger, and at that time, youngest brother. Suddenly, this younger brother was the cute one, the one that would get all the attention. Because he often dribbled, he was christened with the name “Dew Drops” that led to more attention as this unintentional habit of his came to be endeared by everyone in the family but me. Did I mean to be a bad child? I daresay not initially. In fact, in school I was well regarded by my teachers and peers. I had a desire to be friends with everyone, a trait that may have originated from my perceived lack of attention at home. No one at school would have believed that I carried this inner pall so different from my behavior among my peers.

And so, he the cute one, the youngest, and perhaps the neediest of the three of us, in receiving the attention that he did, I sadly admit, became a target for my aggression. The fights would come on of which I’m sure, I mostly initiated, resulting in my mother screaming at me. Unfortunately, much of the attention I received in my early years was of this negative sort. I had this obnoxious urge to hurt my younger brother that would result in a nasty pattern of behavior. Soon I found myself playing the role of a bullying brother that became reinforced by other family members seeing me as the “problem child.”

Once I had established my reputation as the initiator of all evil, I could not resist the temptation of maintaining my position. I may have become more and more sensitive to being overlooked further evidenced by my constantly having to hear my family and relatives lauding over how cute my younger brother was. Soon it became much easier to perform the behaviors expected me rather than to alter my conduct. When you have an established reputation, change becomes incredibly difficult. Once my parents more and more expected me to behave in a certain manner, it became extremely difficult not to fulfill my duties. I now was locked into a cycle of jealousy and hostility that actually caused me to have a deep sense of guilt and regret. When the perception of blame became reified in my mind, my role in the family as bullying brother became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My more humane side emerged when I entered high school. When I was a senior in high school and my brother a sophomore, I remember defending my brother when he was being criticized at a group meeting that, at the time, I led. The teacher in charge of the group acknowledged what I had done and complimented me. Perhaps I was beginning to feel more comfortable in my own skin as my older brother had gone to college so I was now the oldest brother at home. It now may have felt more natural to be the responsible helpful one with my older brother out of the picture.

But it took many years for my younger brother to stop reminding me of the way I had treated him when we were younger. Furthermore, he would make sure to remind my mother how I had treated him, almost blind to the effort I had put forth in changing our relationship.

After I had completed my first year in graduate school at Purdue University, this same brother and I arranged to meet one another at Purdue with the intention of us both driving to California. Before we left, my mother, as had been customary in earlier times, became protective of my brother by pleading with me not to hurt him in anyway. Although my mother and brother would not let the memory go, I refused to get caught in the morass. I handled it as maturely as I could by telling her not to worry inasmuch as several years had passed since I had behaved cruelly toward him. Needless to say, it took many years of my behaving like a “good brother,” never relapsing into former behaviors, to alter the reputation I had as a child. I would not allow myself to fall back into the pattern of behavior that had haunted me for many years during my childhood.

Then the surprise came. My mother, in recalling her early parenting years and my childhood, told me that she realized how difficult it must have been for me to be in the middle of two brothers. She said that my younger brother had been regarded as the weakest of all of us and had a tendency toward victimhood. She recognized that I was not entirely at fault in the way I treated him insofar as his personality had triggered much of my behavior. Wow, I said to myself, after all these years perhaps my behavior was not really as bad as I had imagined it was as a child.

As a therapist, I have learned that negative patterns of behavior become strongly embedded in family and/or marriages. Once the pattern or cycle is identified the objective is to change the way members within that system interrelate. In doing this, the problem is not the individual within the family or marriage, but rather the toxic cycle that all members of the system create. The pain I experienced as the “bad child” may have been alleviated much earlier in my life by a competent family therapist who could have taken me away from my role as “identified patient” and reframed the problem in a more holistic fashion.

One of the great thrills of life is reading a book that resonates with life, in general, and my life, in particular. I experienced this as I read Julian Barnes’ book. In looking back at his life, Tony Webster, Barnes’ protagonist, recalls the impact of his first relationship with such vivid detail that this memory is etched in his mind. Are we not so impressionable when we are young, thereby making memories weigh more heavily on our minds than when we have become adults? Changes occurring in a long-term relationship, such as marriage, are much less likely to affect us than the changes we experience when we are young.

The difference in the way one behaves when one is growing up as opposed to being “grown-up” is pivotal in The Sense of an Ending. Thus, Tony discusses in detail his first meaningful relationship with a woman, Veronica, as it is occurring, and forty years later, when he receives a mysterious bequest from, the recently deceased, Mrs. Sara Ford, Veronica’s mother. Suddenly, Tony now feels compelled to deal with the past and his relationship with Veronica and Adrian, who had been a close friend until he started seeing Veronica. After he receives the note about the bequest, we learn of a letter that Tony had written to Veronica and Adrian upon hearing that the two of them were currently dating. The letter had a most vindictive angry tone to it. Because the letter serves as a focal point in the novel, with the reader becoming aware of it forty years later in Tony’s life, the author is able to create a greater sense of suspense and mystery. This very much adds to both the pleasure and poignance of this short novel.

Barnes speaks to the different way we experience youth and adulthood when Tony says:

When you’re young you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and make a new reality. Later, I think you want them to do something more practical: You want them to support your life as it is and has become.

And so, the novel centers on a very strong emotion felt by Tony resulting in the letter he wrote to both Veronica and Adrian. The bequest he receives brings him back to that memory when he surmises:

When we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most sensitive….My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what the self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being.

As I read those words, I recalled a  memory I had in my adolescence. I was very much attracted to a woman that I met when I was a sophomore in high school and, she was in 8^th grade. Not wanting to reveal her identity I will call her Mandy. I found her absolutely striking. As I clumsily attempted to engage in conversation with her,  I had the good fortune of having her mother on my side who couldn’t resist talking to me by asking general questions about my life. I felt a sense of relief talking to her mother while at the same time experiencing a sense of frustration at my inept efforts to have Mandy show some interest in me. After all, I was not seeking a date with her mother.

This same frustration that I experienced on my first encounter with Mandy continued throughout my high school years. Though I dated other girls, she was constantly on my mind those years. I recall double dating with a friend and the girl he brought to a high school dance with the result being my father, our chauffeur, doing practically all the talking.   I remember seeing Mandy as an ice queen that I so badly wanted to break through. Tony’s wife Margaret had told him that “there were two sorts of women: those with clear edges to them, and those who implied mystery.” Mandy was the latter.

When I went to college, the fantasy of being with this girl continued. I recall persisting but never really getting anywhere with her. But her mother was ever so inviting almost clueing me into what seemed an interminable torture. Then it happened: During my sophomore year at college on Christmas break, I called her and she agreed to go on a date with me. I thought and thought about where I would take her and decided why not the movies as there was a James Bond film playing in town. She liked the idea thereby temporarily alleviating my anticipatory fears of how I might conduct myself during the evening.

I remember quite clearly when she accepted the date my having a frantic anxiety accompanied by a joy that it was finally coming to be. My body felt like an electric wire charged by emotions almost paralyzing me. But wow, it felt wonderful. When the big date arrived, Mandy’s mother was as always, amiable as can be. Her father, more like Mandy, was his typical stand-offish self staring at me through his thick whiskey shot lenses. Walking to the car, I eagerly opened the door for her showing her the gentleman I was, and then got into the driver’s seat. What came next threw my ecstasy into a panic. She immediately propositioned me by saying something to the effect: “let’s go to a hotel.   My mother told me it’s okay.” I had never kissed her let alone held her hand, and yet, here she was now inviting me to have sex with her in a hotel.

Suffice it to say, I have no recollection of what happened that evening making it likely that my shock froze me insofar as I never ventured to ask her out again.   Perhaps her mother had convinced her that I was the right person to experiment with because I was quite sure she was a virgin. My plan had been if we were hitting it off to start making out with her and see how that would go. She was proposing what appeared to me to be the opposite: sex with little passion. I imagine I was turned off by the idea inasmuch as what I had initially found so stimulating was this mysterious ice queen quality that she had forever, until that moment, exuded.

Years later, in my mid ‘20’s, I visited my old ally, her mother, and she told me that she could not understand what had happened between her daughter and me. I  remember her telling me Mandy really liked me. I simply told her I was immature, that to be sure, in some sense, was true.

The story does not quite end there. In the age of technology and google, long lost connections can be revived through the internet. I googled her name and discovered that her sister was her guardian and had pleaded her civil case in court because some of her medical expenses had been denied. What struck me most, however, was the fact that in reading the brief of the case it mentioned that Mandy was incapacitated. Her resident address was listed in Manhattan, New York.

As I often visit a brother who lives in Manhattan, I set out with dogged determination to see what had become of my ice queen. I went with my wife, who Barnes, thank goodness for me, would most likely classify as having clear edges, to see if, in fact, Mandy was still living there. Upon arriving at her address in Manhattan, I asked the doorman if she was still living there. Surprised, he asked me how I knew her. When I told him, he said she had never been married and one evening had been running around outside naked resulting in her being taken away a few years earlier.  Since that time, he had neither heard nor seen her.

The realness of the memories that Tony had had at an earlier stage helped elicit some of my own very private and sensitive memories during my adolescence. We cannot assign a price tag to memories that we cherish and that remain with us throughout the course of our lives. They are invaluable. It is these memories that we reflect upon so dearly as we pass through the milestones of life from birth onto death. That a novel could spark this chain of memories within me is the essence of how the magic of an author’s word can touch a reader.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The summary article, The Dawn of Social Robots, published in the Monitor on Psychology on January 2018 and written by Kirsten Weir, recalls the fictional use of robots reflected in the 100th episode of the Twilight Zone. In this episode, a female robot functions as a parent surrogate for children that lack a real parent. The robot has all the qualities of a human and is shown to be tearful like a mother would be when the children grow up and leave the “nest.” Weir points out robots are now being used to help develop social skills in children who are autistic. These robots can “analyze and adapt to each child’s behavior, tailoring their interactions to suit the child’s abilities, preferences and behavioral goals.”

The article continues to show how robots are currently used for comfort and companionship with elders.  PARO, a robotic harp seal developed by Wendy Moyle and colleagues, has been found to offer older adults with dementia a higher level of pleasure and quality of life as compared to a control group. This study recalls the famous Harry Harlow investigations in the ‘50’s on monkeys: He and his team found that infant rhesus monkeys preferred to spend more time with the “terry cloth monkeys” rather than the “wire monkeys” even when the wire made monkeys had the feeding bottle. One conclusion drawn from this study was that animals preferred the comfort of the touch or feel of the terry cloth mother as compared to that of the hard wire surrogate.
The article continues on the above theme to say that one day humanlike robots may provide companionship to older adults.

Another wonderful Twilight Zone episode showed a man compelled to live in exile, as a prisoner, on a neighboring asteroid from earth. There a humanlike robot with all of the emotions of a human being lived with him. The point of the episode was that the man stranded all on his own had developed a romantic love interest in the robot. Because of this love attachment the prisoner had formed with the robot, the stranded human had been able to survive the isolation of living all alone.

The studies mentioned in the above are beginning to demonstrate the interface between fiction and the technological advances in artificial intelligence that is occurring today. Scientists are now beginning to fathom what is needed to give robots a moral system that will help them in reacting to situations in which humans often encounter difficulty. These robots of the future will have to learn to understand the values and morals of the society they will be placed in to function in an autonomous manner as opposed to the factory robots that were developed in the past. For the sake of an enduring humanity, let us hope that future experts in technology employ artificial intelligence in a way that will benefit humankind. Mary Shelley’s prescient work, Frankenstein, is a reminder of the harmful consequences that can result from the misapplication of artificial intelligence.

 

Dear Penn Applicants,

I found it a pleasure interviewing you all and, indeed, I was quite impressed with both your level of maturity and motivation. If I had my druthers, the admissions committee would accept you all. But, unfortunately, that is not a high likelihood given the low ratio of accepted applicants to total applicants. Penn is a lot harder to get into now than it was when I applied back in 1963 for a number of reasons, two of which are: 1) Since the time I applied, the number of people applying to college has increased significantly and 2) Over the years, for a variety of reasons, Penn has become more popular resulting in a large increase in applicants.

Whether you are accepted to Penn or not, I believe each of you have the foundation to achieve success in the future. Let me offer a few suggestions that you may find helpful in guiding you through the next stage of your life’s journey. As you begin to develop a value system, keep an open mind on opinions that you may find difficult to accept. You may even consider befriending classmates that come from backgrounds that you have not experienced and, accordingly, think very differently than you do on the issues of the day. Unfortunately, our current leaders, on both sides of the fence, are not good role models regarding their ability to listen and empathize with the other side.
Try not to fall into the trap of holding fast to an idea without understanding the other side on a deeper level, where in fact, one’s background may play an important part. This is becoming harder and harder for young people like yourself to do due to the massive amount of information offered by the Internet, much of which can be of false origin. Hopefully, whichever college you choose to attend, you will feel comfortable listening to and expressing your ideas. I very much agree with what Former UC President Clark Kerr said about the University: “We are here not to make ideas safe for students but to make students safe for ideas.” This type of academic atmosphere allows the free exchange of ideas you or others may find either agreeable or disagreeable.

You will meet your obstacles, roadblocks, disappointments and failures. It is part of the human condition that none of us can avoid. If you do fail at a task such as not getting accepted to Penn, view it merely as a task and nothing more. That is to say you are not a failure for failing on a task. I promise you will face many more challenges in the future, great if you succeed on any one of them, but if you don’t succeed, not the end of the world.

Please feel free to let me know where you have chosen to go when you do receive word, I believe sometime in April, from the colleges you have applied and best of luck in all of your futures.

Warm regards,

Dr. Natelson