Two Entirely Different Things
I called Janet ealier tonight and asked her to tell me a story. She said "oh, I got a good one" — and she was right.
What follows is hers, transcribed off the call and lightly cleaned for reading. The tangents are load-bearing. They stay in. Where I couldn't keep my mouth shut, I'm marked.
🎙️ Janet tells it herself — 4:52. Everything below is this recording, transcribed.
Okay, all right, let me — oh, I got a good one. Okay, this is a good story.
Years and years and years ago — I don't know how many years ago, forty years ago, whatever it was. Anyhow, I had a good friend that I worked with at MacArthur. And Jennifer had gone to spend the weekend with her dad. She was probably eleven, twelve years old, something like that.
And my friend Cheryl called me. Her husband had a little MG convertible, and it was fall, and it was just beautiful. So she called me on Friday night and said, "Is Jennifer gone this weekend?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Well, Homer's gone and I've got his car. Let's drive down to Galveston tomorrow."
And I said, "Okay."
So I got up early, drove over to her house, and we got her little MG and we put the top down and we put our scarves on our heads and we just took off down 45 to Galveston. Oh, yeah. We felt like Thelma and Louise.
We just wandered up and down the seawall and here, there, and somewhere else, and we were just having the best time and laughing and acting like we were sixteen.
I don't know how, but we got on that road that leads to the ferry. We decided we weren't going to get on the ferry and go over to Bolivar, so we turned and went down through what looked to me like kind of a sketchy part of town. And I was kind of concerned, because I didn't see any people out walking — and there are two women in this car with no top on it.
So we were driving along, just looking and looking and looking, and we pulled up in front of this house. A big square building with a lot of windows.
And as we started to pull up, we saw this guy standing on the street corner. Oh, he was living rough. There was no doubt in my mind about that. He was living rough.
I was driving at that point. Cheryl had gotten in the passenger seat and I was driving, and she looked at me and she said, "Oh my God, Janet, get out of here."
And I said, "Oh God, yes."
She said, "Hurry, hurry, hurry."
And I said, "Okay, I'm going." So I shifted into first and I hauled ass.
Well, we went all about Galveston the whole rest of the day. We went to lunch, and then we got on the freeway and came back home. And I came home and that was the end of it.
Well — now, that was like in October. Somewhere around, I don't know, it must have been the winter, after Christmas. She decided to have a party. So she had a party at her house, bunch of people there, and we were all sitting around talking about this and that and something else.
And she brought up that trip to Galveston. And she said, "Well, that was just horrible."
She said, "I thought you would never get that car started and get us away from that man."
And I looked at her and I said, "What do you mean, get us away from that man?"
She said, "That horrible-looking man. Janet, don't you remember? I said, hurry, let's get away from him. And you said, oh good God yes, we've got to move now. Did you not remember seeing him?"
And I said, "You talking about that bum on the corner?"
I said, "I was talking about the naked man up on the second floor window."
Me: You were looking at that Johnson you were seeing — flying at you from the second story!
All these months, she's worried about the bum. And I was worried about the naked guy standing up there.
We were seeing two entirely different things — and they both were scary.
Me: Isn't it crazy, what a little bit of perspective gives you? A different interpretation of the same event, at the same time?
I used to tell that story to Jennifer and she would just laugh and laugh and laugh. She just thought that was fun. And it was.
And every time I'd see Cheryl, she'd say, "Seeing any more naked men lately?"
And I'd say, "Well, not lately. But then, I haven't been in a car with you either."
So there you are.
Why I'm posting this
Two people in the same car, on the same street, in the same second. Same danger, same adrenaline, same hurry hurry hurry — and completely different threat models. Neither one wrong. Neither one aware the other was solving a different problem. Same store, different receipts.
It took a party months later for the bug report to surface at all.
I spend my working life on systems where two components agree on the outcome and disagree entirely about why, and nobody finds out until something forces them into the same room. Janet found the general case forty years ago in a borrowed MG, and got a better punchline out of it than I ever have.
"Isn't it crazy, what a little bit of perspective gives you."
Thanks, Mama Janet. That's one of your favorites, was one of Jen's; Now it's one of mine. Long live the Queen. 👸🏻