Stop Being Polite

Remember when The Real World emerged back in the early 90s? A "soap opera" with no script, no actors, no story - just life. An idea so crazy it just might work! And, the "sell" (Stop being polite and start being real) may be the phrase that gave "reality" TV its now-ironic name.

That phrase has been in my mind this week, characterizing as it does two things: First, a jumble of people with no plot but their own lives in media res. Second, the end of preparation time and the beginning of the main event.


In class, we had our first tests. We had to identify 10 parts of a jointer, 8 parts of a planer and 13 parts of a table saw. It was scary! We adults are not often on the spot to quickly answer questions in an area far outside our expertise.


It was also illuminating (at least entertaining) to watch my classmates various approaches to the tests. Being back in school, as I've noted before, is like being an anthropologist studying your own past. The Ivy League baseball player was deliberate and unhurried, and intentionally turned his paper in last, in case one last correction should come to mind. The medical resident declined to take it at all until she had a chance to review the material and practice all over. The 19-year-old construction worker showed up 20 minutes late and rushed through it, then cheated. (Not that it matters, after all. This is continuing education, not the bar exam!)


I've never been in a group - through school or work or anything else - with such diversity. Not even MTV could come up with such a diverse and incompatible mix. I guess power tools are the great bond of humankind.


On Wednesday, I used the miter saw for the first time. I chopped the hell out of some 2x6's. (Sorry I failed to take pictures of my first work outputs.) I watched a demonstration of constructing table legs. I haven't reached the point where I honestly believe all this lumber going to turn into a piece of furniture, but I had better get faith soon, or all the money I spent at Lowe's is down the drain.


Michael and I also closed on our first house this week. On the one hand I keep thinking, "How did we end up here?!" Not just here, Durham, geographically - though that itself is a trick of fate. But here in our lives, two people with no biographical intersection before the day we met. What we share through coincidence and co-creation is awesome and improbable. Is this some kind of cosmic experiment? or joke? or mistake? Here we are, getting real!


And all our fantasies about a domestic life and becoming a family are crashing to earth in an alarming cascade of reality checks and good-enough compromises. If we want wainscoting, we are going to have to order it! Stair treads! Countertops! What's the budget for upstairs flooring? Appliances? Tuition? Family vacations?


The "reality" that New York City promised to the first housemates of The Real World was a condition of unmediated responsibility and risk. Everybody in carpentry class has a similar drive - to be free from paying contractors to build your shed, free from spending your life in front of a computer screen, free to get it all wrong, cut off your finger, and waste your own money. And, rounding out this three-way comparison, owning a home is all about a risky freedom, too - freedom to paint the walls a crazy color (or knock them down!) and win or lose when it comes time to sell. The process of getting a mortgage is very much a weeks-long test of one's maturity and capacity to handle all this freedom.


This weekend we'll be moving, and we have a team of parents, siblings, and friends to help. This is going to be a true story... of nine people.. tapped to box up our house ...work together and have their lives disrupted... and we are definitely going to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real!