📍Martha & Bro’s Coffee Co., San Francisco, CA
For as long as I can remember, my answer to the question “What is your biggest fear?” has always been: “That I don’t know enough.”
“Can you be more specific?” one might ask. “Know enough about… what?”
“Of all sorts of things. Of anything,” I’d answer unhelpfully with a shrug and a smile and a dopey sort of nod.
This said, there is one particular, hazy memory that I have, the earliest I recall feeling shame around not knowing enough. It was back in that narrow window of time when you’re old enough to babysit but not quite old enough to drive. I was babysitting for a pair of trusting parents who left me in charge of their five-and-a-half-year-old son. The couple returned home at a reasonable hour after their date night, pleased to see that their tyke hadn’t asphyxiated on any of his Hot Wheels. It was time for me to blow that diaper joint.1
Because I was thirteen-ish, they kindly offered to drive me home after the “gig.” Naturally, in preparation to do so, they inquired of me: “Do you know your way home?” Shoot, I thought. I don’t. Like, not even a little bit. Am I supposed to? Where even am I??? So I answered in the negative. We all trooped into the family office, and, in those pre-smart phone days, they printed MapQuest directions from theirs to mine. God, I think I may have even had to call my parents to verify I’d remembered our home address correctly. I think so. I don’t really know.
The day after, I brought the issue to my middle school posse. I asked them if they knew how to get to their place from the school yard. But I didn’t want them to see the real purpose of the thirteen-year-old research scheme, for them to know I was sussing to see if their visuospatial memories were as puny as mine. So I asked them very casual-like. How do you get to your house from here… again? And — oh — did they have answers for me. These pre-teen-navigation-cats hit me with streets and cross streets, underpasses and overpasses, and punctuated it all with helpful landmark references in case I wasn’t familiar enough with their neighborhoods. In short, they did know their respective ways home. I was devastated. Why couldn’t I do that? Why couldn’t I know my way home?
The insecurity didn’t stop there. All throughout my school years, the gulf between me and my peers seemed to grow larger and larger. It felt like I was hiding something dirty, really down-playing how little I actually knew about… well, everything. Historical events (particularly American history, oof) and pop culture (music, celebrities, sports, etc.) not to mention all the ongoing, current events that needed constant keeping on top of. None of the knowledge seemed to fit together in my head, to thread together into some useable web of knowing. It was all made so much worse by the fact that I was an “above-average” student — I was even a high school valedictorian.2 So I’d get A’s on tests and papers, but then I’d have nothing to talk about at parties.3 It felt like everything I learned would spill out of my head and on to a Scantron, getting me that grade but running straight through my fingers whenever I’d try to scoop it all up again, pour it back in to my ears.
Some might point out, given my traditional academic success, I was just suffering from a flavor of inferiority complex, of “imposter syndrome.” There may have been some truth to that. If so, I made a helluva good imposter. A real imposter’s imposter.
Imposter syndrome or not, at one time I felt so bad about it all I prayed I’d get referred to a neurologist who would discover some kind of anatomical anomaly in my brain — something, ANYTHING, to not let it be my fault.
Question: What does trying to “know things” feel like?
Answer: For Me… A bit like going fishing in the La Brea tar pits.4 I’ll throw a line out— a prompt — in to this dark, sticky place. The hook will sink. Then I’ll pull. Sometimes it’ll come back with something on the end (I’m picturing the memory equivalent of a stereotypical brown leather boot or piece of tire tread). But oftentimes it doesn’t come back at all. And I step in after it. And I’m stuck, stuck in this falling place — never quite back from my fishing trip. One foot in, one foot out. For this reason, I’ve often been described as “spacey,” all these threads perpetually cast into nothingness.
Answer: For My Trivia-Loving Husband… He describes his recall being more tactile, like a cluttered desk. Gazing at the scattered items on its surface, he’s confident the item he’s looking for is there, somewhere mixed in the jumble. If you ask him something like “what did you eat yesterday morning?” he’d sift through the items of yesterday, honing in on the AM, pushing aside mind-objects, closer, closer, until he comes up with “bacon-goat-cheese frittata!”
In conjunction with the table analogy, he uses countless other visual anchor points to help draw out sought-after facts. As an example, he describes a dinner mat from his youth that had a timeline of significant dates in American history decorating its perimeter. This mat sometimes serves as one such anchor point for him, providing a birds-eye view of our nation’s history.
…What the actual eff?! Y’ALLLLL. Where’s my mind-table, hmm??? My historical fact-laden dinner mat?!
Okay, look. Obviously, I don’t actually know nothing. That would be impossible, given my relentless ability to quote Spongebob Squarepants. Still, it remains that I feel lacking enough in general knowledge, pop culture, and current events that it interferes with my ability to create and connect deeply with people — old friends and new.
“You lose so much if you are not obsessed. Obsession is a great advantage.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
When I got over blaming myself, I blamed my American education for my lack of knowing things (with all the venom and vitriol my pre-legal-drinking-age self could muster). Now, I’ve come to understand that it’s probably some combination of both — me and my education. It’s a difficult thing for me to admit. Painful, but necessary.
Selfishly, it’s the big reason I returned to Substack, as both a writer and reader. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to be curious — to allow myself to be obsessed. I got a little lost.
More than anything, I think that’s all I really want. To be an obsessively curious, connected, human being. To know my way home. (And maybe you, too?)
So let’s keep exploring.
Questions, suggestions, free biscuits? Hit me up at: writerinprogress@substack.com.
That’s not fair. The kid was definitely potty trained. And he ate fried eggplant for dinner without fuss. That dual skillset already puts him leagues above the average adult American male.
Though I *no joke* misspelled “valedictorian” very prominently on one of my college applications. I put down “valedictor-ion,” like I was spitballing a name for a high-achieving automaton. I was heartbroken at the time, particularly because I applied there with the hopes of following some guy. In hindsight, it was a lucky error. Plus it’s just the most hilarious thing ever.
Resulting in my frequent employment of two of the most effective conversational tools known to humankind: smiling and nodding. They work exceedingly well and, I might add, for much longer than you think.
Don’t knock it ‘till you try it.