Pride: It Goeth Before a Fall!

In drafting my post about cars, one of my dear old friends from law school, Sam, wrote back to admit that he was one of those car guys. I would never have suspected it as my impression of him in law school was of a conscientious, face-down in the books sort of fellow.

But he wrote that in high school he grew his wavy black locks long, owned an MG convertible, wore aviator shades, and thus gave his little sister endless cachet when he picked her up at middle school.

I also wouldn’t have picked Sam for being the kind of fellow to put on a show. Of course, this was high school Sam. He reports that anyway he’s always been a car freak, and he has owned any number of BMW’s, Hondas, Toyotas, Nissans, Porsches, and Jaguars. A Jaguar! Lately he’s settled into the BMW. Sam is humble, generous, kind, and slyly funny—not the kind of fellow whom I would expect to drive an MG convertible with aviator sunglasses. Or a BMW. Or a Jaguar!

A central tenet that I learned—or just absorbed—as a kid was that you didn’t make yourself vulnerable by risking anything in your appearance. It was a corollary to my basic understanding that pride goeth before a fall. Wear a fancy shirt to a dinner and call attention to yourself and you risk spilling something on it. Wear aviator sunglasses and someone will ask, “Why does he think he’s so cool?”

Yet in trying to remember my father, I see him doing exactly that. At West Virginia University, he played doubles tennis in front of a crowd with the athletic director, a coach, and a popular priest. He always dressed well. He taught for decades, and what better example is there of putting yourself out there? He appeared on television. He was otherwise a highly visible faculty member, happily involving himself in disputes.

But all of those examples can be explained away by his natural tendencies as a teacher and a competitor. We Jarecke men get emotionally involved, lose our tempers, bear grudges, and cause a scene.

Otherwise, he lived behind a shield. I can see him shaking hands with someone he’s just met and saying in a very stilted tone, “My pleasure, I’m sure.” He said that a thousand times, his head bobbing with each word. I know that stylized greeting had to have come from his having been a Polish kid with nothing but a need to ingratiate himself with people who had power over him.

He called it building rapport. You made small talk with people, asked them about themselves, and they might tend to look favorably on you. So I tried to emulate that.

This led to a cringe-worthy moment. I was maybe in 7th grade, and a theatre teacher from an upper grade came to our English class to, I don’t know, introduce us to theatre? He was a large, bug-eyed man with slicked back hair named, perhaps, Langenfuss. I sat in the front row, and I thought I was smiling and nodding appropriately. After class, my best friend Rick bearded me: “What were you doing, grinning and nodding at him? You looked like you were in love with him.” He imitated me, bugging his eyes out and grinning and looking like he might just take a bite out of poor old Langenfuss.

That confused me; but I was only doing what my father advised. At our 20th high school reunion, someone said about Rick, “He still looks like he has a stick up his ass.”

So there is that perspective.

Later, when I was leaving my teaching job at Auburn for law school, my boss, one of the best people of all time, Harry*, said to me, “Look, remember, you don’t have to be obsequious all the time.” So maybe it was all useless anyway, this trying to build rapport.

[*One day in the lunch room, during a spirited discussion of who knows what, Harry was kniving off pieces of cheese and feeding them into his mouth. Suddenly he looked at me, smiled over his thick reddish beard, and revealed under his hand that he had been carving a remarkably accurate likeness of a cheese dick and balls. I snorted loudly, drawing confused looks. Harry gave precisely zero fucks about much of anything except being a good person, a

great boss, and a wonderful teacher.]

The main lesson from my parents was to avoid showing off or doing anything else that would allow me to be criticized. I’ve always dressed very conservatively—dark suits when they were required, slacks, button down shirts. Oh, one exception: I bought a white Irish linen suit from J. Peterman. What a wow of a suit! It had comfy textured nubby threads. I always felt embarrassed when I wore it, apologized in advance by saying that it was my southern trial lawyer’s suit, and I was sorry not to have the requisite Panama hat. But at home I’d finger the cloth, amazed at myself for having been so forward, so risky.

I have never been one of those old men who make what I would consider to be a scene: a straw hat, lots of white facial hair, short sleeve shirts, and shorts. And white calf-length socks and blindingly white tennis shoes. No no no. That’s just asking to be snickered at. Double that if he’s driving a BMW convertible. And I’m afraid that there are more than one or two on the island like that. Oh, and of course he’s wearing sunglasses. Hey, old white men: why would you call attention to yourselves when you’re all such train wrecks? The time for that mid-life crisis is long past, and there’s no excuse for any of that silliness now.

Instead I aspired to look like my Uncle Walt—hell, to BE my Uncle Walt. He rose to be vice president of juvenile books at Random House and was Dr. Seuss’ and Richard Scarry’s editor, among others. While my university professor parents rose at six for breakfast and to drive off to teach their eight a.m. classes, Uncle Walt would appear at 7:30 in his robe, having walked two floors down in his Park Slope brownstone. You get the picture. It was a heavy, flannel plaid robe.

Once when he was retired, he took the train from New York to Wilmington to have dinner with us when his sister, my mother, was visiting. He wore a light grey suit, a button down striped blue shirt, and a dark blue tie with a quiet pattern. No hat. No facial hair. This was what old men should look like. Like, say, Vladimir Nabokov.

Alas, I can’t quite pull that off as I’m simply too rumpled. But I do what I can: for about every day since 1999 when we moved out here, I’ve worn the same thing: a button down shirt, slacks or jeans, and a sweater. I don’t even get bored. I could be a spy, I blend so well into a crowd. I’m invisible, and that’s the way it should be.

Vladimir Nabokov in a suit with natty sweater vest: too showy?