Until yesterday, I had never been to Springfield, Oregon, the presumable namesake of the town in the Simpsons (the Oregon connection with the Simpsons has been a previous subject of interest for me, relating to Portland street names [1]). To be honest, I rather expected Springfield to be a little bit bigger, though so far I have been pleased with the city even if it is a rather small one, and even though I have not had the chance it a lot because of my somewhat busy work schedule. What I have seen of it, especially the lovely green hillsides to the east of the city, I find rather endearing, especially as I have not seen any evidence of hippiedowm yet.

My arrival in Springfield triggered a memeory in my mind that was particularly odd and unusual, and I’m not sure exactly how revealing it is of the course of my life, but it’s worthy of talking about at least a little bit. In the summer before I started the seventh grade, I had a particularly dramatic time in Western Pennsylvania, including a very serious and nearly fatal allergic reaction to poison ivy (generally speaking, any allergy that is serious enough to warrant my mention is going to be a serious one). During that summer, besides that most unpleasant result of an otherwise pleasant time spent playing whiffleball and the usual summer activities of an energetic twelve-year old, I happened to acquire a t-shirt at the local amusement park that had Bart Simpson on it saying, “Don’t have a cow, man!”

I was not a particularly cool kid, and one of the reasons for that lack of coolness was a decidedly downmarket sartorial sense born out of poverty and a lack of natural fashion sense and social skills. So, one can easily imagine that I was looking greatly forward to wearing my new shirt often. So, very quickly, I wore the shirt to school, only to find that the physical education instructor viewed the t-shirt as offensive and disrespectful of authority, one of the two t-shirts that had to be so treated. It was fairly easy for me to see how a classmate’s t-shirt from Beevis and Butthead was offensive, but it seemed odd that a t-shirt that urged a calm response to others would be judged as being disrespectful to authority. It was neither the first time nor the last time that my attitude was judged rather severely as being disrespectful in ways that left me feeling more than a little puzzled. After all, anyone who is willing to take the time to get to know me (which has admittedly been a fairly rare phenomenon among authroity figures) can easily recognize that while I tend to be even more anxious and restrained than usual around authority figures because my experience with them has often been rather negative, I’m not a person generally inclined to be rebellious, even though I do hold others to fairly high standards.

It is, nevertheless, striking and rather amusing for me to be considered as a laid back person, as I was today (as I overheard in a conversation that I was probably not entirely meant to overhear, but it happens). Perhaps I come across as being far more laid back than I really am (which is not a bad thing at all), but I wonder in what possible world someone like myself could be considered as laid back and relaxed. Perhaps the fact that I like to make myself comfortable before burying myself in productive but rather subtle computer work seasoned by friendly socializing tends to mask my intensity as far as work is concerned. Given the way that my intensity can seem to frighten others a bit too easily, perhaps any mask on that intensity is a good thing. Still, I find it striking (and also sometimes a bit worrisome) that of all the situations in my life where I would like to appear as if I am not working as hard as I am it should be work where I am able to appear more laid back than I am and not other situations where it would be more desirable to appear to disguise my anxious and hardworking tendencies. That, however, is a mystery for another time.

[1] http://www.examiner.com/article/portland-s-early-settlers-and-developers-influence-contemporary-culture