- 11/19/2009 9:58:57 PMJourney into the land of confusionYesterday I wrote about Michael's big laundry day and the 25 pairs of underwear he washed. As it turns out, he was able to hang 7 of them on his little clothes line and the other 18 had to go outside on the big clothes line. They all hung over night and in the morning, the 7 inside pairs were still damp. Since the November nights in Wisconsin are very cold, the outside pairs were frozen stiff.
In the morning, Michael got up and had to change his underwear. When he went looking for a dry pair, there were none to be found. It was then that he decided to open his "Russian" drawer which is filled with the clothes he brought with him from Russia. He is not to touch those things much less be wearing them. They are a special keepsake for him - a reminder, and they are not to be mixed in with his other regular clothes.
James reminded Michael of this and an argument followed. Michael said he was going to ask Mom about wearing them since he didn't have any dry underwear. I do not believe Michael had any intent of asking Mom about anything and had James not been there to stop him, he would have put them on without mentioning anything to Mom. There is no way to verify this, but based on past behavior - it is more likely than not. Is this a Federal crime? No, it isn't. It is simply a house hold rule. "Leave the Russian clothes alone". Period.
The arguing woke Mom up. Everything was re-hashed and discussed all over again which is not the sort of thing that anyone wants to do in the morning. The underwear hung all day and by evening they were all still a little damp. Michael wanted to put them away in his dresser but Mom told him not to because the moisture would cause mold to grow. Michael decided to put them away anyway.
When Mom went upstairs and found that only two pairs of damp underwear were on the clothes line, she looked in his drawer and found the other 23 pairs. She took them out and hung them back on the line to dry and then discussed the principles of damp clothing and mold growth with Michael again.
At bed time, I brushed Michael's teeth for him and he went upstairs. Once again, Michael determined that the damp clothes were dry enough to go into the drawer so he put them away. When Mom came up to bed, she checked his clothes line and again found two pairs of damp underwear hanging and the dresser filled with other damp pairs.
Once again, the damp underwear was taken out and hung. This time, Mom pulled out the dresser drawer and brought into our bedroom so that Michael might put 2 and 2 together and hopefully realize that he shouldn't be putting damp clothing into his dresser.
In the morning, Michael got up and I had a chance to talk with him about this and about writing "his" story. "You asked if I ever wrote anything good", I said. I recalled the details of the wet laundry and his dresser. Then I asked him, "how would you write this story?"
"I wouldn't", he answered.
This is a good point. What - if anything - should be remembered and written about, much less written in a format for the entire world to see? This is "his" story and he has demonstrated an entrenched thinking pattern that seems to believe that anything older than yesterday is ancient history. Anything between yesterday and two minutes ago is frequently ignored or forgotten. And further more, tomorrow never comes and neither to the consequences that will happen then.
Progress is made where progress is measured. Having said that, if you don't have some kind of baseline, how can you know if you have improved? We're not talking about industrial manufacturing, math scores or a spelling list here. This is a measurement of human behavior which is fraught with subjective observations. It is not an exact "science". This blog, much like a diary, is a record of progress.
Michael and I covered the details of his wet underwear again.
"Why did you put them in your dresser?", I asked.
"I thought they were dry", he said.
"Why do you think Mom pulled them out?", I asked.
"I don't know", he answered"
I handed Michael the clean pair of dry socks that I was going to wear to work and I asked him, "Did they feel dry like these?"
"A little bit.", he answered.
"If they felt - a little bit - like these... does that mean that they were a little bit wet too?", I asked.
Michael gives me the blank deer in the headlights stare.
I drew a number line on some paper that looked like the following
Soaking Wet |<----------------|------------------>| Bone Dry
I asked him to point to where he thought "a little bit dry" was.
"Well they felt dry", he continued.
"Why did you think they felt dry?", I asked.
"They were all stiff and hard", he answered.
"Why were they stiff and hard?", I asked.
"Because they were frozen.", he answered.
"What was frozen?", I asked.
"The ice", he answered.
"What is ice?", I asked.
"Frozen water.", he answered.
"What happens to ice when it warms up?", I asked.
Michael looked at me for a brief moment and then said, "that depends on how warm it is."
"Aaaahhh.... very crafty of you, young grasshopper", I thought.
"How about warming the ice up to the temperature in the house?", I asked.
"It would melt and be wet.", he answered.
Now I know what you're thinking... You're thinking that I've just led Michael out of the land of confusion and into the promised land of logic and reason. I wish that were the case. We went around and around with this same interchange and he honestly believes that his conclusion of icy and stiff clothing means that they are dry. Either that, or he knows he was wrong won't admit it. Perhaps if he sticks to his story long enough, the laws of physics will change and somehow it will be shown that he was right.
What I haven't said previously is that the underwear had been in the house for some time and that by the time he got around to putting them away, they were no longer icy and stiff but simply wet.
Realizing that he was now backed into a corner, Michael introduced a new aspect to his argument. "Well it was night time and it was dark".
I had him close his eyes and I then gave him the dry socks to feel again. "Did they feel like this?", I asked.
"A little bit." he answered.
We went around the logical circle a few more times again.
"Michael, you're so close to the answer. Why don't you admit that you knew they were wet and you wanted to put them away anyway?", I asked. "Why do you keep clinging to saying that you thought they were dry when you obviously knew they were not?"
Is this really a confusing issue for him, or is he intentionally trying to introduce irrelevant information or change the subject so that he doesn't have to go down the path where the only conclusion is that he chose to do what he wanted and it was wrong? Michael has expressed in the past that he wants to be "right". He seems to live for the day when he can say, "See! I told you so! I was right!". Unfortunately for him, he will never get there by "doing what he wants". He needs to figure out what "right" is, and go there regardless if it is what he wants or not. This is a source of mental conflict for him.
Just by going down this path of reasoning, it would seem to suggest that he thinks there is the potential that I am dumb enough to believe it. Interactions with him are filled with subtle nuances of deception. Sometimes they are not subtle but are quite blatant. For example, he said he couldn't tell if the underwear was wet or dry because it was dark. Perhaps he forgot that while it was indeed night and it was dark - the darkness was on the outside of the house. In his bedroom, it was light because he had the light turned on.
All of this led to Michael making the claim that he sometimes lies because other people push him into lying. I exclaimed, "What!?"
"Yes Dad. It does happen sometimes!", Michael said firmly and with an "as a matter of fact tone".
What Michael doesn't know is how true this is, but not for the reasons he thinks. I do believe that Michael increases the amount of his lies simply because I ask him about them and he answers by covering one lie with another. Had I not asked him about his lie in the first place and ignored him, the fertile ground of deception would not have existed for other lies to be planted. However, the initial lie which was done of his own choosing would still stand without any explanation.
Not letting on my own thoughts, I asked him to explain what he meant. Michael presented his case and started talking about the mysterious "lighter" incident. A few months ago, we found a cigarette lighter in a laundry pile. Michael's clothing was picked up off the ground to be put in the washing machine and a lighter fell out of the clothes from somewhere. Since this incident, Michael has stuck to the claim that he doesn't know anything about the lighter.
No one in our house is a smoker. We do have lighters in the house for burning trash or starting the grill, but none of them are like this one. It is clearly not something that originated from our home. To be fair, we had some repair men over working on our furnace. It is quite possible that one of them is the owner of the lighter and dropped it or left it behind on accident. However, since they finished their work, the laundry area had been cleaned up, all clothes washed, and new piles of dirty laundry brought down. This is when the lighter showed up.
I told Michael that I knew what his story was on this incident and I asked him to tell me about the lie he was pushed into saying.
"I said that I saw the lighter in the basement before mom found it", he answered.
"Well, did you actually see the lighter in the basement before mom found it?", I asked.
"Yes.", he answered.
Hmmmmm...???? I guess I was expecting him to give me the "corrected version" of his story. Instead, he just simply said the same thing he was always saying. Nothing in his story has changed. He is still holding to the notion that while he did "see" the lighter in the basement before mom found it in his clothing, he doesn't know how it might have gotten from where he saw it into his clothes.
"I'm confused.", I said. "What part is the lie?"
More of the deer in the headlights look. Sometimes when he is like this, I swear I can hear the faint sound of electrical sparks shooting across a shorted circuit. Bzzzzt Bzzzzt Crackle Bzzzzt Pop! A little poof of smoke when the circuit blows - then the overwhelming smell of sulfur. Yup. Too much for the brain. Now it's cooked.
This is what I get by following Michael down into a rat-hole of confusion. I should have known better. Somehow, I left the real world and entered crazy-world - a strange land where nothing makes sense.
What is a person to conclude from all of this? Is he trying to play the blame game by saying that it's someone else's fault that he tells lies and does bizarre things like putting wet underwear into his drawer?
I asked him one last question. "If you were going to write this part of the story of your life, how would you do it?"
"I don't know", he said.
