Pamela Druckerman: From the Mouths of Babes

Pamela Druckerman is a 40 something American living in Paris, who has written some successful books about motherhood, parenting and living abroad. She performed in New York's Upright Citizen's Brigade, a sort of modest cousin of the Second City Review and Saturday Night Live. 

She also wrote a list of things she has learned, which for some reason the Phantom cannot put his finger on, resonated, this past Sunday.

To Wit:

1. "There are no grown ups. Everyone is winging it; some do it more confidently."  Well, that's not exactly true. Cardiovascular surgeons are not winging it. They know exactly each step of the procedure they are doing, but they do have to improvise sometimes. Even the blues or jazz player, who must improvise to do what he does, still knows exactly how to improvise, but the idea that, in some ways, we do not grow up, carries a kernel of truth. We may become unconsciously competent in many ways, and we can be confident of some of the things we do in life, if we are engineers, mechanics, surgeons, but on some level, we all suffer from arrested development.

2. There are no soul mates.  This is something young women learn earlier than men, who tend to continue to look for that "one made in Heaven" or some such stuff, until well into their thirties, until they realize: Fat chance.  I love her summary: "There will be unforgettable people with whom you have shared an excellent evening or a few days. Now they live in Hong Kong, and you will never see them again. That's just how life is."

3. "People's youthful quirks can harden into adult pathologies. What's adorable at 20 can be worrisome at 30 and dangerous at 40."  This is likely true. But, in the Phantom's case, he did not find the quirks adorable at 20. He thought the quirks were lame at 20 and went downhill from there. But he could see how that worked for women, who found certain types of men irresistible at 20 who the Phantom thought were simply puerile slackers. 

4. "You don't have to decide whether God exists. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. But when you're already worrying that the National Security Agency is reading your emails...it's better not to know whether yet another entity is watching you."  

5. "When you're wondering whether she's his daughter or his girlfriend, she's his girlfriend."

6. "Eight hours of continuous, unmedicated sleep is one of life's great pleasures. Actually, scratch the 'unmedicated.'"  The Phantom learned this during internship, when sleep occupied a much higher place on his list of pleasures than sex, conversation, good movies, good food, good drink  or good friends.  Now, in his degenerating years, sleep is again rising in importance. That one day a week, Saturday morning, when the Phantom has time to actually sleep as long as he wants, has become something of a sacred rite.

Where all this wisdom comes from in one so young, is hard to fathom. But it is there and that is that. Must be Paris. The French may actually have something to offer the world. Having suffered through five years of schoolboy French, the Phantom thought he had paid for all his sins in advance. But maybe the French, as opposed who teach the language, have something to offer.

For some reason the Phantom has never understood, it tends to be women, who can distill wisdom about the important things in life, much more often than men. There have been one or two men who seemed to have figured things out, but for the Phantom,  when he comes across some real insight, it often pops out of a woman. Like the woman at the New York Hospital, who explained the behavior of various nurses in whom the Phantom was interested, women who had boyfriends or husbands but seemed to be flirting seriously, tugging on the Phantom's chain. 

"Nobody's satisfied," she said. And that explained everything about everyone who had confused the Phantom. She was just so right.  She came from Kansas, from the heartland, where the Bible ruled and people were unsophisticated. But she was sophisticated, and harbored few illusions.  She wasn't happy about what she saw among the hormone driven young doctors and nurses who inhabited her world, but she could look around with merciless clarity.

"Nobody's satisfied," she said. 

Explained a lot.