Compartments

Was watching yesterday the latest episode or installment or development in the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State/child-rape saga/reality TV segment, in which the charming Mr. Sandusky allowed himself to be interviewed and admitted that, yes, he would get into showers with kids after “workouts,” and, yes, he would touch their legs sometimes, but it was all just “horsing around,” nothing weird or perverted at all about a middle-aged guy engaging in that kind of behavior with pre-teen boys. “Innocent until proven guilty,” yes, I’m a believer in that. But when a now-late-middle-aged guy talks about romping naked in showers with 10-year-olds, I think that whole “benefit-of-the-doubt” thing kinda takes flight right out the window.

Jerry, Coach, whatever: Middle-aged guys do NOT shower with boys. Do the words “common sense” mean anything at all to you? Didn’t think so.

I wonder why Mr. Sandusky has not done “a Hemingway”--sat down, rested his forehead on the barrel(s) of a shotgun, and pulled the trigger.

A week or so ago, when the Sandusky/Penn State/etc. story broke, I used an anecdote about an unnamed relative and her reported treatment of her kids to illustrate the point that we never really know how we’re going to react in any given situation, no matter what we might like to imagine.

Anyway, after absorbing all that, I went to my current social media infatuation for a little respite from the Sandusky chaos, and found this post from the aforementioned relative‘s husband: i believe that our FC (foster care) lives are over, bull sh!t is gone no wonder their is a shortage....oh and by the way we are child abusers here so please keep your kids away lol.

I have no real idea what is going on up there, an hour’s drive away, but surmise that it is “really bad,” because in a later post the relative-in-law expresses hope that they won’t lose their jobs or kids (in that order). He also mentions that they may need “character witnesses.”

Hope they don’t ask ME to fill that position, not because of anything I “know” about them, but rather, because there is so much I DON’T know. I’m not around them all that much, and even if the relative in question is my “oldest and most favoritest,” I know nothing about what goes on in their house.

We all know so little about even those friends and family and coworkers, etc., whom we think we know so well.

It used to bug me, in my own case, that I seemed to be such a different person in each compartment of my life--home, family, work, friends, etc.--and in fact that if I could somehow meld or combine all those different “me’s” into one “whole” being, one Robert, only then would I truly begin to make my life mean whatever it was supposed to.

Years ago I read a very long book called “The Far Pavilions.” In it at one point, the main character, Ashton, was trying to explain the Christian Trinity to a Muslim friend who asked him how three distinct beings could be simultaneously one. Ash took a pan, placed three separate drops of water in it, pointing out each one individually to his friend. Then he tilted the pan so that the drops all ran together, forming one large drop. His friend nodded understanding.

In a way we are all like those drops of water run together: Our friends see one “drop,” our coworkers another, our family still another. There may be other “drops” unseen by others, as in my case there has always been the “writer” me or the “photographer” me or the “medical transcriptionist” (or whatever job I happened to be doing at the time) me, as well as another “me” or two that I will not describe here. But it is only a matter of focus, I suppose: Anyone around us COULD see those other water drops, if they looked, or, I suppose, if we allowed them to be seen.

At any given time, the people we encounter or spend most time with “need” only one specific “drop” of ourselves, and that’s the one we allow to be visible. The other drops are still there, of course, all wrapped up, however invisibly, in the “package” that we show our immediate world.

When a Jerry Sandusky’s (alleged) invisible “drops” come into view, or those of my unnamed “child-abuser” relative, people around them question themselves, wondering how they could have missed what must have been glaringly obvious “signs” or whatever. In a way, though, we are necessarily all social “chameleons,” subtly or dramatically altering our “appearance” so as to blend into our environment. This is not as insidious as it may sound. It’s more like picking a “costume” for a job interview versus one for a party or a camping trip, and it’s something we all do, every day of our lives, to one degree or another.