#169. Hide and Seek (Saturday, July 31, 2010)
What was your best day…of helping others even when things weren’t going well yourself?
For the first eight months of 2010, I was not in a good place. Save for a brief reprieve via a successful driving test (#42, followed by a fun New York trip) a month earlier, that summer term from May to August—where I was back home without a job or anything with purpose to do—was an unmitigated disaster.
But just because the world is collapsing in your own head (and, in fairness, both of my parents’ as well), doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to contribute to the people around you.
It was the long weekend, and my family and three other families they were close to, had rented a giant cottage in Mont Tremblant for two nights. The three others all had sons my brother’s age (twelve): Alex Jiang, David Hou, and Jack Ming1, so it’s a legit pre-teen boy sleepover party for them—with big spacious room with two pairs of bunk beds, and everything. Though David is the bulliable (and youngest) out of all of them, so he bears the teasing and (harmless) pranks throughout the trip from my brother and David and Jack (not usually bullies, I think).
On Saturday, our group of twelve make the trip to the village and the main mountain. It’s (obviously) not ski season, but there’s still a lot to do. A chairlift up to the main area, streets full of shops that go up this steep hill to where the second set of chairlifts are, several hiking trails up that main mountain, and this spiraling luge track they’ve set up from halfway up the mountain. David somehow gets stuck in the middle of his ride, which—along with the very large gaudy sunhat with a long rim that extends vertically to the bottom of his neck (instead of a normal horizontal sunhat rim) that his mom has to forced him to wear—further contributes to the borderline bullying by the others.
We spend the afternoon swimming at a beach, and then it’s back to the cottage where the adults—not including me—prepare a giant feast of a Chinese food meal (which I usually detest, but I’m in such an oddly serene mood this weekend that I enjoy it fine). In the middle of dinner, a rerun Jeopardy! comes on TV, and Alex’s dad—a professor at Carleton—turns his attention fully on it. Turns out he’s a big nerd about these things like me (#113, #64). So we both watch and answer questions intently. Then, the final Jeopardy comes on, and from the words Pennsylvania and Environment Protection I know right that it’s Rachel Carson (whose magnum opus Silent Spring was all about the harmful effects of DDT). And only one of the three contestants get it, and Mr. Jiang expresses his how suitably impressed he is to the table.2
Shortly after this, Mr. Jiang also suggests that Stanford would be a good place to go for graduate school. Even though my poor (math) grades and absence of any work/experience make such a place the furthest thing from my mind, just the game he said so with full seriousness made me somehow believe it was possible. And that irrationality does create a small added confidence that stays within me past this weekend.3
So evening comes. The four younger boys are deep into their shenanigans, while I’m alternating between the balcony (with a beautiful mountain view) and the large living room / dining space, deep into reading the three books I brought along: Baseball Between the Numbers, The Elements of Style, and a book dissecting the philosophy from the TV show The Office. My reading is especially productive this evening, as I finish the first two books and have just started the third when I hear loud crying and shouting from the second floor of the cottage.
Turns out the David-bullying has gone too far, because my brother and them put wet paper towels all over David’s bunk-bed—causing him to get unexpectedly soaked when he lies down. My brother, Alex, and Jack think it’s hilarious, but David is pissed. Legitimately pissed. He throws a major tantrum, his mom and the other moms and me run upstairs, and David cries at his mom that he hates the other three and doesn’t want to share a room or be friends with them anymore. This conflict goes on for quite a while, and even with sincere apologies from the other three and a scare in the middle where David’s mom slips and collapses onto the floor (and has to get helped up by my mom and Jack’s mom) isn’t enough to change David’s mind. He is absolutely done with the three of them.
As I witness this, all I can think about is how much of a shame this has happened. These boys had the perfect sleepover setting, the type of setting I never had with kids my age at any point in my childhood… and my brother (likely the initiator of the wet paper towels) had to be a total idiot and ruin it for everyone. I can’t let this go.
So I go up, and over-excitedly tell them that this Mont Tremblant cottage is way too massive to stay stuck in a room upset, and it’s time to play hide-and-seek. And despite being twice their size, I volunteer to be the first hider. I have do really up the enthusiasm a few times before the four boys—who, besides the inconsolable David, are all pretty despondent—agree to play.
And this cottage is actually really, really good for hide-and-seek. There are closets in unexpected places in each room, beds large enough to hide under, small alcoves on both floors that one could slip by unnoticed, and a few study rooms with bookshelves and boxes with papers stacked all over. I find a nice spot in a side closet (I think) and it takes them a good amount of deduction to locate me—and right before they do, I see them starting to talk to each other like non-enemies again.
We each take our turns, and soon enough everyone is back on speaking (and friendly terms). It all goes beautifully for the hour or so—except for when my brother takes his second turn, and hides so well that we can’t find him for fifteen minutes. At which point my mom hears about it and starts searching with us, and we still can’t find him for ten minutes and my mom starts legitimately panicking and soon starts yelling at my brother to come out. (It’s gotten to the point where I’ve started yelling too, when we finally locate him crouched in a corner of a study behind an inconspicuous arrangement of file boxes.)
And after my brother comes out from his top-tier hiding spot and my mom calms down and returns to playing cards with the other adults, my brother comes up to me says, very simply, “Thanks for making us friends again.”
- Whose parents, but not him, had gone on that Banff trip with us in #38.
- For some reason I had always remembered it as none of the three getting it correct. But a dive into J! Archive for Final Jeopardies around that time reveals that I was mistaken.
- And may or may not have had a contributing role, between everything else, in be ultimately getting into Duke (#5) for my Master’s. The next summer after this, Mr. Jiang also helps me get my first research assistant job with a friend of his at Loyola Maryland (#145).