FirstPunch

  Once upon a time, when I was in my mid 20s, I had a close female friend who was cursed with an emotionally abusive sister. This sister was an utterly charming, charismatic extrovert who was outwardly the fun loving and confident life of every party and belle of every ball. But she also harbored a darkly manipulative side–she was completely self-absorbed and mendacious, bordering on the sociopathic. She would subtly use condescension, criticism, gaslighting, and humiliation on a routine basis to keep her victims continually off balance and questioning themselves. And she would fly into an accusatory rage to distract people from her acts of deceit when she was invariably caught in a lie. Coming from an upbringing where this was foreign to me, I could only watch stupefied as her anger and fear were deftly wielded as tactical weapons in her games of psychological warfare.   Like many of her toxic type that I’ve met throughout my social and work life since, my friend’s sister relied on th

A few years ago I was fascinated by all things zombie – movies, books, graphic novels, and TV series – I consumed them all. But the more I became enthralled by this peculiar genre, the more I came to realize that the primary allure was not the adrenaline pumping gore and violence, nor the excitement of survival in a post apocalyptic world free of the soul-crushing constraints of modern society. Rather, it was the simple, binary nature of their internal dynamics and the decisions made by their protagonists—fight or flight, kill or be killed, survive or perish, etc. And, as in most other American media, particularly within the horror genre, most characters were clearly either evil (Zombies and gangs) or good (typically the protagonist survivors) even when they were at times internally conflicted.  It struck me, then, that this simple binary world view is so alluring to our media-consuming culture because it has been the one that has driven all humans, our social interactions, and our soc

What is most perplexing to me at this moment in American history, when we are at our wealthiest, most secure, and technologically advanced, is how we seem to be so completely riven with fear and anxiety when we come face to face with fellow citizens who hold a different world-view, that we are now willing to contemplate (and create ex nihilo ) utterly apocalyptic scenarios, even to the point of picking up arms and dehumanizing our neighbors as if they were wartime enemies. We faced down real Nazis, Communists, and bloody dictators within the lifetimes of living Americans with dignity and without fear, yet now panic at false shadows of the same. I never bought the media hyperbole that my grandparents belonged to the “Greatest Generation,” which had the benefit of strong leaders who were able to enforce compliance among the recalcitrant when it came to rationing, wartime belt-tightening, and military service, and who actively coerced them to adopt a sense of common purpose. But I do be

The other day I was laid up hacking and coughing in bed with a nasty bout of the summer flu. I wasn't in the mood to reflexively pick up my iPhone a thousand times a day as I normally do and read about yet another wave of moral and political outrages among the deluge of recent such news on social media. I think we can all agree, regardless of political persuasion, that neither Facebook nor Twitter are particularly conducive to tranquility or healing, save perhaps for funny cat videos. So, completely bored and a bit groggy, I grabbed a random book from my nightstand and re-read a short vignette from one of my favorite novels, The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.   I paraphrase here: The leaders of two warlike species were facing off across a negotiating table on the brink of intergalactic war, when a wormhole suddenly opened up and an English phrase–which just happened to be a highly insulting comment towards one’s mother in their language–was carried from

When I was around three years old, I remember my mother showing me a picture in one of our family photo albums, which we occasionally perused together while curled up on the couch. It was a new picture, one that I hadn't seen before. "Look," mom said, pointing to the chubby baby in a stroller wearing a blue onesie and a red baseball cap that had two triangular white patches on the front that made it look like my favorite car, a Jaguar XKE. He also had a pair of oversized adult sunglasses perched stylishly on his nose. One cool dude. "Who is this cute little guy?" mom asked. Tracing my tiny finger around the face in the picture I immediately lit up with recognition and proclaimed, with a but-of-course look on my face, "it's me!" My mother chuckled and shook her blonde head in amusement, "no, honey, that's not you, that's Harold." My little brow immediately furrowed. Completely perplexed, I continued to star

In the early 1980s, my father, who was a career U.S. military officer, was stationed at the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chattenden Kent, located in the rural south of England. During those two years of discovery and new experiences abroad, my family lived in a small British military community surrounded by picturesque villages-a far cry from the more insular US Army bases where military families in Europe were typically posted. Officers from around the world, like my father, came to Chattenden to teach engineering to British troops and apparently drink and raucously party together like it was New Year's Eve year round. One of those military officers was from West Germany-I forget his name after so many years-but he had a sweet, introverted son named Marcus, whom I befriended. One afternoon Marcus came home from his first week in British middle school upset and confused. His classmates had harassed him nonstop, calling him a Nazi and goose stepping and shouting, &