Reflections of an Underachiever

My father came to visit me last week.

I’ve always admired my father.  He is what we in this corner of the blogosphere would call a natural alpha*, although significantly, I didn’t really appreciate this fact until I was well into adulthood.  But I did know that he succeeded wildly at a high-risk profession and as an entrepreneur (and at everything he tried, in fact, except, unfortunately, investing).  I knew that he owned fine houses and expensive foreign cars.  And I knew that he was in charge.

In short, he was everything I expected to be when I grew up.

What I didn’t know was how different we were.

I began succeeding at school much earlier than my father had, as well I should have:  my father climbed up from working-class mill family origins, whereas I always enjoyed high parental expectations.  I excelled at academic subjects of which he had no understanding; ergo, I was smarter.  By high school I could run farther and faster than he could, and by college I could swim faster too; ergo, I was more physically attractive.  It was simple math.

But although my father is only slightly taller than I am, he is much larger.  Imagine, for a moment, Don Draper and Pete Campbell standing next to each other.  I’m Pete Campbell.  A taller, more athletic Pete Campbell perhaps, but still:  Pete Campbell.  It took me until quite recently to understand how that might matter.

Looking back on it, there were plenty of signs.  Inside my father’s stories of his youthful hijinks was the message that he had a gang of friends that did stuff together.  Inside his stories of high-stakes gambling at pool and cards on the rough side of town was the message that he faced dangerous situations with confidence.  Inside his stories of conflict at work was the message that he was the master of his situation.  His was the life of someone who expected to succeed.  It was not the life of someone who’s daily objective was to get through the day without getting beat on, or made an object of ridicule.

Much of this began to sink in around the time I got married.  My father got married at age 25 to a woman not yet 20.  I loved my mother, but growing up it never occurred to me to compare her to anybody else.  I knew she was pretty, but I never stopped to think about what that meant.  Looking back on it, I guess I would say that I unconsciously saw her as the baseline of attractiveness.  I wasn’t, at that point, sure if women were worth the aggravation of being married to one, but I assumed that if I ever did get married that it would be to a woman who resembled my mother in certain salient respects.

It wasn’t until I was engaged myself that this was brought home to me.   I remember attending a party with mother and watching her across the back lawn of the house when it struck me that my mother wasn’t merely pretty.  She was, in fact, strikingly beautiful in an uncommon way.  She does not – or pretends to not – see herself in this light, so I had few cues that this was the case.  She does see herself as disciplined about diet and exercise, perhaps, but even here she fails to appreciate how, in practice, this physicality is not often willed into being among women.

And I realized then that my own success with women would never equal my father’s; despite having four extra years to work with, I was marrying a woman 15 months older than I was.  Don’t misunderstand me:  I did not want to marry my mother.  Nor even did I want to marry someone like my mother.  Mrs. Φ excels in the domestic arts in a way that my mother, an accomplished musician, never bothered, and she has proved her loyalty through circumstances with which I would definitely not test my mother.  But I could nonetheless grasp the difference between the position my mother occupied in the status hierarchy – her SMV, as it were – and the position that my bride-to-be occupied, and what this said about my father’s position relative to my own.

I’m not sure my father has reconciled himself to the fact that his son is, from his perspective, an underachiever.  He doesn’t know that my own adventure as the pointy-haired boss could be charitably characterized as mediocre.  He’s figured out that I’m not especially upwardly mobile with my lifelong employer, and that my houses don’t seem to be getting any bigger, but he doesn’t grasp that being a Company Man is about the extent of my realistic ambition.  He’s proud of the fact that I’ve worked my way to near completion on a PhD, but it’s also clear from his comments that he thinks, why hasn’t this kid struck out on his own?  Thought like a man who expects to succeed, rather than someone who tries to get through the day without getting beat on, or made an object of ridicule.

 

* Parenthetically, I should clarify here that my father has never indicated he is much motivated by sex.  On the contrary, his stories show him to be very much a straight arrow in this respect, straighter than me even, though he is not especially religious.  (This trait I inherited from my mother.)

Marginality, Reconsidered

Back in my undergraduate economics class, I was introduced to the idea of "marginal cost". The idea was that economic decisions occur at the margin: I will consume any good until the marginal utility of one more unit of the good falls below the marginal cost of that unit, and at that point consumption ceases. This was one of those blindingly obvious insights that made me wonder why I didn't think of it myself, and get my name in the textbook. But recently, as I reflected on my recent experience, I began to wonder if the psychology really works that way.

My employer puts great store in the physical fitness of its employees. (I think it's a deal they worked out with our health insurance company.) To this end, they have provided free gym memberships to all employees and our families as part of our compensation. But up until this year, the membership has not included swimming. Because I like to swim as part of a well-balanced exercise program, I had to shell out about $100 for a nine-month pass to our community indoor pool, and about $200 for a summer family pass.

Spending this money had an interesting psychological effect. As I blogged before, my forties have not been kind to my motivation to exercise. I used to work out six days a week without fail. Now? Well, some weeks are good, others are not so good. It's just frickin' hard getting old, and its hard summoning my former enthusiasm to get going (though once I get going, I usually do okay). However, as I contemplated the pass, I reasoned thusly: if I swim twice a week, then the average cost of a visit comes to about $1.50. Which is a reasonable cost. But if I don't swim twice a week, I drive up that average cost, potentially a lot. And since I didn't want to pay a high average cost, I darn well made it to the pool two times a week, and sometimes three!

But this year, the company added free pool access to the fitness plan. Some details here may be important. The pool they got us access to was on the other side of my morning commute instead of being on the way. And it's only open three days a week. Neither of these factors present much of a burden, but I should mention them anyway to help you evaluate what happened.

Now, keep in mind that the marginal cost of a pool visit in both cases is essentially zero. According to economic theory, the $100 pool pass constitutes a "sunk cost" that should have no effect on my decision to go swimming on any given day. But yet, it did have an effect. It made me think that I was "wasting money" if I didn't go. Yes, the waste was only retroactive, but it still impacted my behavior. And now that a pool visit is "free", I don't have any discretionary income invested in whether or not I swim. And the frequency of my swimming took a substantial dive; I may have only averaged one swim day a week this fall.

I'm actually contemplating buying another pass just to keep me motivated. Mrs. Φ likes a high thrust-to-weight ratio, so the exercise has got to get done.