tuckova

We had some Drama and Hurt Feelings this weekend. Apparently his
friends' visit on Friday was not all that and a bag of chips. They were
to come over and play cards and look at his photos from vacation, of
which there were maybe a hundred, plus video footage. And the friends
were not very interested. They were talking about other stuff while they
were looking and sometimes they weren't looking at all.  I mean, I have
to say: more than 20 photographs and you have to really love the
photographer. On the other hand, your two best friends? On the first
hand, the photos aren't all that good, since for example he views the
whole "Don't photograph against a window using flash" as nothing more
than superstition. But back to the other hand: who are they, art
critics? It takes like 20 minutes to look at the pictures and be
interested in them, or pretend to be interested because you care about
the person who took them.

So
we had this talk, with his long legs draped across my lap because he is
too old to sit in my lap unless it's really, really bad. This talk that
involved prolonged staring at the ceiling because he is too old to cry
about just hurt feelings. This talk where I explained that being an only
child means that you're used to having people who care about you pay
full focused attention to you, and you're even used to paying full
focused attention to the people you care about, but that other kids may
not see this kind of attention as a kind of caring. Even some adults
don't see it that way. That because you were brought up by adults who
were pretty interested in your stories, that may give you the idea that
the stories are interesting, and some of them are, but some of them are
only interesting to the people who can make time for them. Which two
adults who only have one child can make time for a whole host of
stories, particularly when they think that the one child is going to be
paying attention to their stories, but some adults don't act that way,
and a 13-year-old peer might not feel that way. That it can happen
through the course of your life that no matter how interesting your
stories are, no matter how interesting you are, some people will never
be able to pay full attention to you. And I think one of the important
things about you is that because you know how important it feels to be
heard, you are a very good listener. And this is a blessing and a curse,
to be able to fully listen to people and hear their stories and
the stories behind them, and to remember them, but there is nothing but sadness if you expect
other people to have this gift, or even think of it as a good thing,
because many people don't.

I said it may for example happen that you are in the middle of what
you perceive as a pretty awful time, and you will be asked to pay
attention to someone else's story about how one time somebody was maybe
looking at them funny in line. And you will feel both like you need to
hear this story because you are vitally interested in other people and
obliged to listen to them besides, and you will feel hurt because they
haven't asked about you. I said it may happen that somebody gives you
eighty percent of their attention, ninety percent, and you won't feel
happy because you wanted a hundred. A hundred and ten. You could live
like this until you're forty. Purely hypothetically I'm saying.

But what you need to know is that most people don't think of things
this way. Most people are thinking of themselves, and they seem to live
in the doors of trams, in the grocery store lines. But many people,
people who are worth knowing, devote the amount of attention that they
can. So you can choose to be angry because people don't pay what you consider to be enough attention,
and go through life lonely; or you can hold out this measuring cup and
be hurt when you find it empty or only half full; or you can focus on
finding people who are worth your attention, and hope that they will pay
attention to you in their own way, even if it's different. In any case:
I'm not kidding about photographing against the glass. Seriously, that
has to stop.