All our Traumas

Perhaps the period of my youth that had the most lasting influence on me covered the ages 10-13, when my parents sent me to board for seven terms in a fee-paying school about 70 miles from where we lived at the time. Recently, I took the time to think about what made those years so memorable.

Many of the factors have nothing to do with the particular school. While our brains learn most quickly at even younger ages, 10-13 may be a sweet spot while we can still absorb things quickly and without inhibition yet we start to have more consciousness of that process. That applies to both academic and social learning.

Then the fact that this was boarding school must have magnified this. To be away from mum and dad, surviving in the wild without a safety net, learning so many new things so quickly under so much pressure yet with such freedom, can only have sharpened all my senses and reflexes.

Many people consider the practice of wealthy parents sending away their kids to be cruel and selfish, and perhaps they are right. It is certainly a peculiar British tradition. Today the UK inherited yet one more prime minister from that tradition, warts and all. I don’t blame my parents – I am sure there was no selfishness involved for them, especially since my mum did not go out to work. I think their motivation was to develop me in the way that they observed the practice of the class they aspired to be part of.

Maybe they were right. Boarding was clearly an accelerant in my maturity. When I see how other kids struggle to leave the nest at 18 I wonder if some earlier preparation might have benefited them, though it is certainly a tough form of love.

But then there are factors specific to Ascham, a middling prep school of the sort immortalised by Evelyn Waugh, a school that was struggling, and indeed closed down shortly after I left. Such an environment could be considered a perfect petri dish for trauma.

The head teacher was closet, and for sure had some sadism in his make up. The head of maths, the teacher who got closest to minor prodigy me and gave me lots of 1-1 coaching, was subsequently jailed for paedophilic abuse. He also led the scout pack, supported by a Scot who cycled to work in a kilt and reputedly loved the cane, perhaps receiving as well as giving. The head of languages was one of the best teachers I ever had and was surely responsible for many cohorts of great linguists, but was clearly closet and tormented by it. The chaplain was as creepy a character as I ever encountered and I would put no abuse beyond him; he had an unhealthy liking for me, though I have no specific memories of abuse. The science teacher shot himself; I guess closet, depressed and sexually repressed. One housemaster was idle, a failed military and sporting man, who taught us the same page of his geography text book five times in the same year, and who imposed canings and cold showers on his flock. There were alcoholics, depressives and weirdoes of every kind. I cannot think of a single teacher at that school who I would class as normal. If I was chairing a recruitment panel today for a boarding prep school, maybe only the linguist would make the cut and many of the others might end up being reported to authorities.

That was the teachers, and it will not come as a surprise to discover the prevailing culture and the behaviours of the pupils. It was survival of the fittest, combined with strong doses of sado-masochism as kids were discovering their bodies in a single-sex environment. Any diversity of any form was ruthlessly exposed and ridiculed. I was victim and perpetrator. I was smart and learned quickly, but was a target for physical weakness and perhaps for intelligence. Last week I read an article in 1843 about the curse of being a prodigy: many of the attributes described fitted my own recollection of how I was.

In summary, Ascham was a trauma factory. I have had a few traumas, some obvious and acknowledged, no doubt others still hidden even to me. Ascham will have been behind many of those.

My purpose in this recollection is not really about my own trauma. It is to suggest that we all have some likelihood of trauma. It is much less than it was. It is worse in certain types of activity, like scouts or religious situations or boarding schools or theatres. It is probably worse in less developed countries where hierarchies and dangerous traditions are stickier and protections weaker. But, essentially, it is everywhere. And accepting that should influence how humanity moves forward.

An example of what I feel is the wrong way was a long article in the Guardian Weekly recently about the boy scouts of the USA. There were stories about three or four abusers and six or eight victims, and of slow and inadequate responses by the scout’s organisation to discipline offenders, recompense victims and institute less risky ways of operation. The tone of the article was shocking, as if the failings uncovered were somehow exceptional and catastrophic.

I find this style of revelation to carry several risks. This sort of abuse is made out as rare when many of us know from experience that it is anything but, so the story immediately loses credibility. The worst aspect is about sympathy for the victims. Having been a victim, and found a way through, there is a small part of me thinking: “get over it”, which is unworthy but real. In reality, it is like 100 NFL stars suffering many concussions. Most will be OK but some will not. Similarly, some victims will not have the capacity to move on. But painting their suffering as exceptional does not help them or their cause.

Then there is the attitude to perpetrators and the institutions. Making this abuse out as highly unusual as well as evil suggests vilifying perpetrators rather than seeking out what made them that way and what therapy might help. If the emphasis is all on blame and retribution, there will be fewer whistle blowers and more cover-ups, with institutions fearful that any admission will lead down a long slope to bankruptcy.

Rather, accepting that this used to be everywhere and is still in many places indicates a different approach. It is clear which sort of environments are most susceptible: single-sex situations with lots of discipline and physical proximity, with a climate of deference and power imbalance or where sex appeal is part of the allure. Let us focus on the present, and make such environments less common and less toxic, without destroying the good that some of them can do by imposing impossible restrictions.

Let us also celebrate the positive aspect of this; that things are getting better. Ascham did not make it to 1980, women now have some power in Hollywood, and sergeant major shaming is being phased out. At the individual level, people can indulge their cravings more easily now thanks to the internet and the reduced role of churches, while understanding clear lines of unacceptability such as underage or power-based exploitation. We are going forwards.

I also wonder whether some sort of amnesty makes sense here, at least for some sins of many years ago, to help institutions come clean and draw a clean slate. Victims still deserve compensation and perpetrators and those covering up need sanctions such as having to reapply for jobs and perhaps therapy. Serious crimes, hypocrisy and excessive cover-ups cannot be excused. And institutions would have a fixed time window to declare all former wrongs (redacted), make amends and have new practices accepted. Miss the window or fail to disclose in full and penalties would be draconian.

I am not trying to gloss over bad behaviour, and I find my own impulse of “get over it” to be shameful. But I do think we would go forward more quickly if we accepted just how widespread abuse was in the past and how pervasive it might still be in some pockets, and accept that the underlying causes can be identified and treated without witch hunts and without destroying institutions doing valuable work. Actually, I even think that all those weirdoes at Ascham did me a lot more good than harm, on balance, and that the potential for that positive balance has only increased because many of the weirdoes would feel much more comfortable in the society of today.  

On Looking Older

I will be 59 this week. If asked to guess, I would estimate that most people who look at me would go for an age of 65-70. It has been like that for as long as I can remember, and I never really cared – until now.

I think the main factor in looking older than I am is my white/grey hair. My black hair turned white during my 30’s. My dad was the same, so I guess I inherited that from him. I started balding quite early too – for that one I think I have to thank my mum’s dad.

Perhaps there are other factors. Maybe I have what people call a lived-in face. There was a time, when I was travelling extensively with Shell, that I think I did wear out my body a bit more than most, and perhaps my mind too. And for many years I was married to somebody unfashionably older than me, and maybe we come to look like our partners in some way. At the time, I found it an asset, because there were fewer embarrassing questions for either of us to field about our age gap.

Lastly, I probably dress old. Certainly, I have never given a second’s thought to fashion, only to comfort (and price). Last week I selected new frames for reading glasses, and I stared at the wall and literally could not find an ounce of preference between any of the alternatives, so asked the assistant to choose (among the cheapest ones) for me.

Overall, I think this lack of interest in how I look has been a blessing, because I see so many people constantly stressed out about how they look, and giving themselves anxiety and emptier wallets as a result. Of course, this typically applies a lot more to women than to men, at least until the recent rise of metrosexual man. I can consider myself lucky that I’ve only been actively looking for a partner for a tiny fraction of my adult life. And somehow, looks seem to matter more to men seeking women than the other way around – just one of many injustices.

For a lot of my business career, looking older was actually quite an advantage, because with the assumption of age comes one of maturity, seniority, experience or reliability. I was always happy to play along with this. The turning point comes around 40, when those assumptions become coupled with other ones about resistance to change or lack of stamina. But, even in my forties, I was quite happy for people to make those assumptions, since they helped me meet my career goals of not having to move and being seen as some sort of wise mentor.

I might be wrong in my guess of how old I look, but I do have evidence. The first time somebody offered me a seat in the subway (actually, I think it was a tram), I was well under 50. I was barely over 50 when a cashier in a supermarket gave me a 10% senior discount without so much as asking me my age. Mainly, I have learned to accept such things and to embrace the advantages – who would not want a seat on a long subway ride?

Other evidence comes when people ask me what I do – always a difficult question in reality. Recently, there has been an assumption that I am comfortably retired, an assumption which increasingly represents the truth, but one which means people must place me well into my sixties at least. The first time I visited the old folks home as a volunteer, one of the residents asked me which floor my bedroom was on! And my most extreme example was when we were once having dinner with a (admittedly rather old) couple and the man asked me, in all seriousness, what I did during the war! He must have placed me in my 80’s!

But now I have a little confession to make. Every time somebody makes an assumption that I am 65 or over, a part of me hurts a little bit. I think it always did, but hardly enough to register, and the pain is still tiny, but it is there. So I have to work out why that might be.

I think one part is about an unstated project as part of my retiring at fifty. I retired then because I felt that work at Shell would not be fulfilling in my 50’s, because I thought I could be a better family person as a retiree, and because I guessed that life might have a lot to offer somebody who did not have a large part of their waking agenda mapped out for them. I also had a goal of being fit at 55 and a sneaking suspicion that long working hours and lugging computers around and sitting in cramped departure lounges were not the best way to achieve that. It was a bold move, one that few have the blessing to even contemplate, and to an extent that move has defined me for the last ten years.

By all realistic measures the move has succeeded. I haven’t gone broke, I have never once been bored or missed corporate life, I believe I have indeed become a better family person, and life really has offered up wonderful experiences. And actually, I reckon the fitness part has turned out right too: my joints felt better immediately, I have had few scares, last week I climbed a mountain more comfortably than I could have ten years ago, and I feel sprightly physically and mentally.

So I guess part of the niggling annoyance about my looks is that I might have hoped that the success of my retirement choice would become obvious to the world in my looks. I could look 60 at 50 and still look 60 at 60 and maybe even at 70! Well, that hasn’t happened. Maybe my looks have only aged eight years during the last ten, but at that rate I’ll have to wait until I’m 100 to look no older than my age.

Then there is a darker worry. Do people who look older really die younger? Is how old you look really a good indicator for how healthy you are and how close you are to the end? I suppose this darker thought comes through as a natural consequence of reaching an age when some peers become sick or even die and I start getting a few diagnoses myself. Then I hear my mum’s voice in my ear when I told her I was retiring at 50, dismissive and claiming that idle minds have shorter life expectancy. If there is one person in my whole life I have always want to prove wrong, about anything at all, it is my mum!

So I suppose I have to confess to fighting a small secret fight, the beginning of the (God willing) long fight against slow decline that we all have to face eventually. In my case, the fight is magnified by the secret wish to prove to myself, and to the world, that the brave decision I took was a smart one.

I think such a confession is a good thing. Those assumptions about my age can do less damage if I am ready for them and can anticipate their impact. I can build up the counter story: I feel great, even to the extent of climbing mountains and overtaking everybody at the swimming pool; I believe that if I was actually just entering my last full year at Shell I would feel a lot worse physically; and I know that in that scenario I would have missed out on so much in my 50’s. That counter story will only become more important as 59 becomes 69 or 79, no matter what my appearance may betray.

And the realisation has given me one extra chance to be kind to others. When I meet people now after a gap, I look at their appearance more closely than I ever did before. I don’t lie, but if they seem to me not to have aged, I go out of my way to tell them so. I’ve started noticing some very gratified looks in return.

Our ZipCar Experiment

In March, our car died. It was a Volvo estate that we had bought in 2012 when we arrived in the US, already a veteran of nine years and 90,000 miles. After seven more years and 60,000 more miles, it gave up the ghost. Once the abundant smoke became blue rather than white, our friendly car shop quietly advised me to drive the old beast, very slowly and carefully, to collect $350 for the metal from a scrapyard in Brooklyn.

I had no complaints. Indeed, our local car shop, The Tire Place off Cooper Avenue, had been magnificent in managing the steady decline of our Volvo. For several years, works had been deferred with the instruction “just drive it”. They kept the show on the road without major bills, until the day of the blue smoke.

Once we were carless, we decided to embark on an experiment of living without a car for at least three months. In Manhattan, few have cars, because the subway is everywhere and parking is impossible. On Long Island, nobody could even conceive of a life without a car. Our part of Queens lies between the two extremes. The subway reaches us, so do trains and busses, but they are not convenient for every journey. Parking is a pain, but manageable. And nowadays there are Uber and there are ZipCars.

For the duration of the experiment, we decided that we would not change our lifestyle – if we would have gone somewhere before with the Volvo, we would find a way to go there rather than forego the experience.

In practice, we found a routine quite easily. We would typically take a ZipCar for a 24-hour period during the weekend. Midweek trips would either be by public transit or Uber. And for any need longer than 24 hours we hired a car.

This pattern was partly determined by economics, and contains the first thing I learned, or rather re-learned. In the US, nothing costs what it says it costs. This is so infuriating, and must be a disaster for anybody on a tight budget. If I had the power to change three things in the US, one of them would be to impose a law in which a quoted price has to be a true price, not a price before tax and after asterisks. One of the other two would be to fund education per pupil, so that needy kids got more rather than less (today most school funding is local via property taxes, so rich districts get more). I’ll think of my third wish another day.

So we learned that ZipCars were like everything else. They advertise a price of say $9 per hour (or $80 per day). But, lo and behold, upon logging in and choosing a time and place, the cheapest available car has suddenly gone up to say $12 per hour. So, you shrug your shoulders and press the button to book it, whereupon $12 has become $15.

That makes ZipCars quite expensive, only economic for single driving trips or whole days. Hence the hire car option, which, of course, is also not as cheap as advertised. And taking the hire car made me realise how excellent the rest of the ZipCar experience is, at least around Forest Hills. Each time I have hired a car from one of the airports, I have stood in line for over an hour while clerks perform checks that seem to me to be perfectly manageable by machines. By contrast, the ZipCar website is excellent, and I can pick the car up with no hassle from a place usually nearer to my apartment than I used to be able to find a parking space. Uber is equally wonderful operationally, so the combined ZipCar/Uber option would be tempting were it just a bit cheaper.

My other positive surprise from the experiment has been how much I’ve enjoyed travelling car-free. I’ve enjoyed plotting my way around strange parts of the borough and the city, taking busses and trains and subways to places I had never seen before. I’ve been on banker commuter lines and late-night party lines, and been the only white face on a crowded bus. Somehow I have been able to observe more because I’ve not been driving, though I’ve also had plenty of time to read.

I’ve learned that, despite its diversity, the city remains quite segregated. I also reminded myself how important mass transit is to many New Yorkers. Everyone should travel by bus from time to time. Busses have been reliable, but often very slow. Luckily, I am generally time rich so have been able to accept some long journeys, but for poorer citizens with unstable jobs, the time investment required to manage a life in the city must be exhausting.

The other experience that this experiment has given me is a feel for living with variable costs rather than fixed costs. Many of us have variable income too nowadays, including me from singing gigs. With a car, transport cost is heavy but is fixed, so you don’t really consider the marginal cost of any one journey. But if every journey is paid for directly, you really notice its cost. We have tried to live our lives as before, but you can’t help but notice if, for example, a trip to the volunteer home might cost $50 and four hours.

I am not sure if this is healthy or not. Probably it is. People on a budget who have made their costs variable can make choices in the moment and are less likely to be blindsided by large bills. But the risk is a sort of hibernation.

In any case, the experiment has now given us the data we need. We thought that the ZipCar and Uber route might work out well economically but be less convenient operationally, especially if services were unreliable. It has worked out the other way around. We have enjoyed the experience operationally, but found it more expensive than the alternatives.

So now I’ve been doing some more shopping, either for another used car like our old Volvo when we bought it, or for a lease on a new car. That has brought me into contact with another frustrating species of human, the car salesman. The funniest thing has been how many have directed me far, far away, assuming that I have a car. Why do they think that I am buying one? Oh, and they also all seem to think that I should buy a car on impulse the first time I enter their facility. Have they never heard of research?

Of course the lease deals quoted in TV adverts bear no relation to what actually has to be paid, after taxes, bank fees, registration and so on. No surprise there. So I have worked hard to work out the true cost, including insurance, which can be as much as the lease payments and could be a deciding factor – new lease cars cost more to insure than well-equipped older vehicles.

In the end, I think we will go for a lease anyway, because the car companies are so desperate to shift stock that they do make it quite affordable. One other joy from ZipCars has been to experience how cars have become safer over the last few years, with collision warnings and blind spot lights and so on. Even the most basic models feel safer and easier to drive than our old Volvo did, even before the constant need to check for smoke.

Still, I shall miss my long bus and train journeys. And I’ll also miss the fun of experimenting. Trying things out is often a good plan, since not only does it lead to better choices, it offers plenty of surprising lessons and new experiences. I have never felt more of a New Yorker, nor felt more in tune with typical fellow New Yorkers.