Leveling the Playing Field

A couple of weeks ago, I was eavesdropping on some parents talking at one of my grandson's soccer games. (Let's call that being attentive to my surroundings as opposed to me being nosy, shall we?)  This particular conversation was about "participation" trophies.  It seems that parents are very divided on the subject of kids getting any type of reward whether it be a trophy, or a lesser token such as a medal or badge,  for just participating in some type of activity.

One of the parents mentioned that their child had received a medallion for being on a soccer team but the parent told the child not to accept it as it was sending a message that it was a reward for being a team player.  (NOTE: just for full disclosure these children are 1st and 2nd graders.)

"What does that have to do with anything?," you might ask.  Well....I was reading a blog over at The Boogie Man Is My Friend, where she mentioned an article about a Texas High School that doesn't allow the students that are affiliated with the National Honor Society to wear the National Honor Society insignia or pin on their graduation gowns. The high school in Plano, Texas has a rule that NO insignia, emblem, or regalia can be displayed on individual graduate's gown,  as it sets the student apart from other students.  (ANOTHER NOTE: Momma Fargo over at The Boogie Man is My Friend is an ex-cop that is very funny, smart and seems to always know what's going on in the world.)

Not all activities garner the same amount of notoriety.

SO...here we have two extremes but both doing the same thing.  It is leveling all the participants to be equally recognized or not recognized as the case may be,  no matter what their skill level is.   BUT aren't there times that when trying to make everyone feel equally recognized that it is really an inequitable act?

Here's the thing...in one breath we hear people telling us the virtues of being unique, we should strive to excel,  we should attempt to attain our individual best, we should be true to ourselves...but in other situations people want to make sure that everyone is recognized as absolute equals so no one feels ostracized,  glorified, violated or venerated...and gawd forbid "offended".

There have been plenty of times in my own life that I would have welcomed anonymity. Yes, there have been  times I have been offended and felt ostracized.  You might remember my post from a few weeks ago, Whacks and Whackadoos where I got off to an auspicious start in grade school by drawing on my fat-lined paper the first day before given permission but one thing I didn't mention is that I did it left handed.  In today's world that is no big deal but "not-so-much-good" old days it was, in fact, the equivalent of grade school insurrection. Conformity was the name of the game back then.  The whole idea of being right-handed or left-handed plagued me for a number of years. Depending on where I lived and who I lived with, dictated which hand I could use.  More times than not, I was asked to use my right hand which evidently made everyone else more comfortable. 

We can be thankful that Hester didn't have to explain the A to a six year old.

 
By rights, in that time frame, I should have been made to wear a big red L on my dress as a symbol of my deviant behavior.  Had I had any knowledge of Hester Prynne, I would of felt a certain kinship.

Today, of course, we have evolved in some ways.  In most cases, we recognize that singling out people because they are "different", especially in cases where a person would feel offended, inferior or victimized.... BUT...if we go the extra step to minimize the merits of others as to not offend, isn't that equally wrong?

Despite my infirmity of using the wrong hand, I did manage to become an excellent student.  And when I graduated I did graduate as a National Honor Student. In our school, I believe that we wore a gold tassel on our mortarboards but, frankly it's been so long ago that I hardly remember.  I do, however, remember when both of my children wore gold stoles on their college graduation gowns because they graduated with honors.

I doubt that my kids would of been angry if they were told that they couldn't of worn the stoles but I think I might of been upset.  They EARNED the right by putting in the work.

Do I think that there should be trophies for everyone on a team?  NO, I think everything can be over done, given a chance.  Patches, pins or certificates showing participation...sure why not?
Children can feel inclusion without it being raised to the status of being "rewarded". All people, young and old, have to learn the concept of winning and losing, achieving and failing...but removing all  forms of meritocracy surely would lead to mediocrity.

Maybe not everything needs to be rewarded but when someone excels in an particular endeavor, why not acknowledge it? Maybe just doing a job isn't cause for praise but maybe doing a job well does deserve some praise.

Friends By the Numbers

I was driving to the store the other morning and happened to hear on morning talk radio that there is a study that now claims that the human brain can only handle FIVE "best" friends and 10 "close" friends.  HMMM...In this particular study they did an analysis to determine how a person's brain size dictates the number of friends one can have at any given time. Mind you they aren't calculating things such as time constraints, organizational abilities, or the fact we may or may not be a nasty human being.

I, of course, like to think of myself as having at least a normal size brain and being a relatively nice person about 95 percent of the time. (depending on driving conditions and customer service issues that percentage may dip or spike a bit).

WELL as I was saying about this study..... it occurs to me that before starting the task of paring my friend list down to 5,  maybe I would research it a bit further.  Wouldn't want to be accused of being a friend hoarder or misclassify my pals into the inappropriate categories

I think in today's world, even determining the difference between acquaintances and friends is a bit of a dilemma. Wouldn't you agree that it's all gotten a bit confusing as to who our friends are?  The word is so overused at this point that it has become diluted.  Does the word "friend" even imply some type of actual emotional connection? Do the people you refer to as "friends" really make the cut in terms of being part of a support system for you or you for them?

Back in the early 1990s, a British anthropologist, Robin Dunbar did a major study on the number of people that could realistically be in an individual's social sphere.   His research was predicated on the idea that the size of a primate's brain (yes...we are talking monkey's brains here) and it's later evolved human brain dictated the number of people that could effectively be in a monkey/human's social group. That "supposed" number of people that one can call friends is around 150 which would become known as the Dunbar's Number.  Well..that used to be the number but I will be getting to that in a moment.

As studies go..this study was pretty dull reading (or in my case, pretty dull skimming over it). Dunbar used a bunch of algorithms to figure out how primates formed social groups and how that led to humans doing the same.  The primates depended pretty much on social "grooming" as a way to bond with other primates and become friends. Actually, I find this rather surprising that nowhere in the study was the idea that monkey sex, was used in forming social groups.  Of course,  maybe that comes after one gets de-flead and de-ticked.

Thankfully man evolved, talking became a thing, and we started collecting confidantes. Turns out talking smack about other people is far more satisfying that picking bugs and such off of them. Actually, Dunbar wrote a whole book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language  explaining his theory that speech evolved because early man was needing an easier way to bond with others beside using social grooming.  Makes you wonder, which came first, the social greeting like "UGH!" or some prehistoric pickup line that amounts to "you want some of this?"

BUT as I was saying...Dunbar and his cohorts had to re-visit the original study and start readjusting his results to allow for the digital impact on friendship.  Starting in 2007 they began tracking the data from 6 BILLION cellular phone calls by 35 million people to figure out the layers of "best friends" within the speculative 150 friends a person has. According to the study they tracked people that make between 10-40 non-business related  calls a day because the deemed that frequency of calls has something to do with the strength of the bond between the caller and the callee. (Far be it from me to think there are a few serial nutjobs in the group or some of those people were calling into 1-900 numbers--or is that considered a "business" call? ) 

To be fair, later in the study they did include Facebook as part of the research. In that portion it was noted that a lot of Facebook friends don't fit the criteria of being real friends. (OMG..I hope that didn't shock anyone)

Also, I can't help but be a bit disappointed that it didn't tell us in the results how many of the test participants lost their friends due to the extreme over usage of their cell phones. Forty phone calls a day seem a bit excessive but then again, maybe none of my friends think our friendship is "40 calls a day" worthy.

Matthew Brashears, assistant professor of sociology at Cornell University - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/16879-close-friends-decrease-today.html#sthash.B73otcOA.dpufAS FOR THE RESULTS...after crunching all the numbers over the last 9 years or so, it turns out that while we might have a 150 people that we "call" our friends, our human brain latches on to about 15ish people we really bond with....and 4 or 5 of those that are very close confidantes.

Me being the cynic I am, I am not sure how one would calculate the level of "closeness" assigned to an individual's friends nor take into account a extroverted person's numbers compared to an introverted person's numbers but I think it does bring up  an interesting conversation of  "who do you consider a true friend?" So you think 5 BEST friends is a reasonable number? Do you have a 150 people in your support group that you could honestly say are your friends and not just an acquaintance? AND if you are making 40 non-business related calls a day, do you have time to do anything else?

They Made Me That Way

Recently I passed a pet store that had a great big sign in front stating they sold "designer" puppies. Yes, that is a term now being used for puppies that are hybrids of two or more species of purebred dogs,  which by the way, make for ADORABLE puppies. While these "mixes" might have been called mutts in another time, that word is probably quite offensive to the canines of the world in this enlightened age. We, humans surely have evolved to the point we are watching what negative slurs we sling toward our doggy friends. The reason I am bringing this up is that I now will be referring to myself as a "designer human being".

This would be me in my native Sardinian dress.

Yes, today I will be speaking of evolution.  Did I mention that hubby and I sent off our saliva to a company to get our DNA tested? No, we weren't trying to prove or disprove that our kids belong to both of us and verify they are the only two children either of us are responsible for.  I know this probably shouldn't have to be pointed out,  but judging by all the daytime programs that have cropped up to check out "who the baby daddy is or isn't", evidently this is a gray area for a lot of people.

As far as parentage goes...I seem to have a lot of unknowns. I didn't expect any major surprises in my DNA results but growing up I never had the opportunity to ask questions related to my heritage.  My poor unfortunate hubby got to go along for the bumpy ride of me tracking down my biological mother when I was in my early 20's.  That was before computers and I can't begin to tell you how difficult it is to track down a mother in particular.  Females by the very nature of how "surnames" work load the deck in a very negative way if you don't know what the heck their last name might be. Perhaps, at some point I will do a complete post about that process or the day I met her at the bus station only to realize, I had NO idea what she looked like.  HMMM..thousands of people milling around the bus terminal and yet no earthly idea what she looked like at her current age.  (I had a picture of her in her youth.) Obviously, luck was on my side and I figured it out.  The rest of the visit went downhill in a hurry. Ahh but another story for another day.

Anyway...as I was saying...We sent our saliva off to a company named 23 and Me for genetic testing. We figured it would be interesting and potentially give us more material to tease each other with.  I was fully prepared for this to give hubby the upper hand on "teasing material" as his family goes back multiple generations in the Netherlands.  Both of his parents were from the Netherlands and he still had family there when we got married. I, on the other hand, assumed I must be some sort of a descendant of Scottish and Irish heritage because of my maiden surname and my mother's maiden surname were Irish and Scottish respectively.  Past that...not a clue.

The results came in a couple of weeks ago and we are making our way through the reports. We added an extra layer to our reports because we sent the raw DNA data files to another company called Promethease.  Over at Promethease they take the raw data and further read about any variants you have in your DNA.  Without writing a whole thesis on genetics...which by-the-way, would be impossible as I am not a geneticist, I will tell you that basically that report will tell a person what medical conditions they might have "markers" for and how their DNA mutations might respond to various pharmaceuticals.

As for the results...My husband is 100 percent Western European. BUT, in fact, he is only 99.4 percent Dutch.  It did turn out that there was  a little British, French, German and Scandinavian in that .6 hanging out there.  It, also, comes to light that all of that assorted DNA came from his mother's side of the family. Guess someone went rogue out of the Netherlands way back when.  Surely they didn't understand how cool of place that was going to turn out to be. 

As far as my results go.... I am actually quite surprised to find that I am 99.2 percent Western European.  While some of it is just listed as "broadly" northwestern European, I can live with that. (like I get a choice)  Perhaps "my people" were so inbred that the DNA can't even be sorted more definitively than that. The actual report shows me as  40.2 percent British/Irish, 30 percent Broadly Northwestern Europe, 14.8 percent French and German, 10.5 Scandinavian,  2.9 Southern European, .7 West African, .1 Broadly Sub-Saharan African, .6 Iberian and .2 Sardinian.

As for my variants, I don't seem to be a carrier for much in the way a major health issues.  I carry a gene for fructose intolerance.  Yes, while others deal with having markers for horrible diseases such as cancer and heart disease,  I might give my descendants the inability to eat apples.  Nowhere on the report does it address my inability to drink alcohol due to alcohol intolerance so I am not clear if that has a genetic component...or maybe I haven't found the right tab on the report that talks about it yet.  I am sure at least some of my future family members will be hoping that isn't genetically transmitted. BUT...it does say that I have the genetic ability to smell asparagus in urine and taste a "bitter" taste in cilantro.  Good to know, huh?

Another little bit of a surprise was that the test came back that there are 290 variants in my DNA that have a link to Neanderthals from the Neanderthal Valley of Germany give or take about 50,000 years ago.   So now when I see pictures of some of the assorted "bits and pieces" that have been excavated,  I can say that just might be my great-great-great-great-great-great (times 250 or something like that) ...grandfather.

I see the family resemblance.

One of the other things that I can't blame my "genes" on...I don't seem to carry a gene for obesity so if I would ever gain weight it is strictly ON ME both figuratively and literally.

So there you have my little excursion into the genetic pool.  Do you know where your ancestors hailed from ?  Are you linked to kings or heroes...or ordinary cavemen that helped start a race of people that still are walking the earth millions of years later? If you came out of the Neanderthal Valley, maybe you and I are cousins 250 times removed.