Identity Crisis

In psych speak, an identity crisis is a formal state of affairs, a period of uncertainty or confusion wherein you question who you are. Often associated with some life changing event, it can occur if you get fired from job or go through a divorce or experience a traumatic accident. More mundane happenings can also be a trigger: moving to a new place or even retirement can cause you to reevaluate your self-image. In reality it can occur at any time when events around you make you question what you thought you knew about yourself and the way you act and respond. 

Rarely does it happen when you walk into a hardware store. And yet that's where I found myself.

To be fair, it wasn't the big existential crisis as described above, the kind that made me question my place in the world, my life and career. No, this was a byproduct of the multiple identities we all have for tapping into the various worlds we inhabit in person and online, and involved not so much who we are inside, but how we identify ourselves to the outside. 

It used to be much simpler. You started with your name, which for most of us stayed the same while we walked this earth. You might gain a nickname, and if female, a surname change if you got married. But beyond that things were pretty stable. Sure, you might pick up some other identifiers along the way: aunt or cousin with your family, vice president or director at work. You might add a professional designation, be it doctor, professor or sergeant. But these were appendages to what your parents called you, not replacements, and so there was no doubt when someone was trying to get your attention.

But when I walked into the store to buy some screws, they cared about none of that: they wanted not my name, but my number. The problem is that I have several. At that store I have a membership number for their loyalty program: good luck remembering that. I offered up our home phone, as we've had that for 30 plus years, and was the default for anything in town. When that didn't work, I switched to my office number, but that also drew a blank. Finally, I tried my cell phone: bingo! With that, all my vitals came up on the terminal, and I got points for my $2.19 purchase.

The game was repeated at the drugstore, with much the same dance. All I wanted was a new travel bottle of shampoo. I started with my cell, but that produced crickets. Home was also a non-starter. This time it was my office that hit paydirt for $1.98. I moved down the road to the grocery store to get soda. Riffing through my stack, none of them made any bells ring. It was only after I remembered to use my wife's office line that I got my guilty pleasure of a 12-pack of A&W Diet Root Beer for $8.26.

Online it's even worse. We're not talking passwords, but that first box on screen which merely asks who you are. There I might be known by one of my several emails, my first and last name as a single word, or initial and last name. There's also a chance that I (like many of you) signed up to a site using something far more cryptic, something we would never want to be called in real life. Just look online at Twitter or Instagram or any message board. Do you know NotDeadYet, LoudDad or EndlessLover? What's worse, is it possible that GuitarGod4786 uses that name because there are 4785 others who feel that best sums who they are?

We do it that because naming something is the ultimate in personal expression. Outside of having a pet or a child, it's something we never get to do, especialy for ourselves. But occasionally, just as your parents did to you, you don't get a choice. When I signed up for an account at one specialty retailer, they gave me the next one in their queue, with no consultation or buy in. That's said, I confess I kind of like this one, and may consider using it more widely. So feel free to address me next time we get together as SquashedRhino089.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford never had a real nickname. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

State of Delay

The Oscar for Best Original Song in 1981 went to the theme to the movie "Arthur." Written by singer-songwriter Christopher Cross (who had a number one hit with it), it also listed composer Burt Bacharach and his then-wife Carole Bayer Sager as co-writers. A fourth credit when to Bayer Sager's ex-husband Peter Allen for a single line he penned, one he came up with while stuck in a holding pattern over JFK Airport: "When you get caught between the moon and New York City."

As a person who has gotten caught between the moon and Newark, LGA and yes, Kennedy, I can attest that you don't always take the song's advice in next line and fall in love. But it's a strange netherworld to inhabit, one where the normal rhythms of time and space seem bent if not suspended. Most recently my experience coming back from Denver on the ground and in the air did indeed freeze my spot in the cosmos, or so it felt.

It's not that there's anything materially different about the location when you are delayed, either on or off the plane. On the ground there are still multiple lines to stand in and overpriced food to be bought, uncomfortable seats to sit in and unintelligible announcements to decipher. In the air there are seatmates fighting for the armrest and miniscule tables on which to balance drinks and snacks. But when all is on schedule you calibrate your mental state and clock to lean into it all, and roll with the hand you are dealt. However, when that program goes to hell in a handbasket, well, behavioral vertigo kicks in.

At the terminal you practice some inner Zen to get you through the check-in process, security line, and navigation to the gate. Once there, if the delay is more than the 30 to 60 minutes pad you'd planned on, you go into a quasi-twilight zone measured in delay hours. Like dog years, they are still 60 minutes on the clock, but it meant that my stated 2-hour weather delay felt more like half a day.  

Rather than sitting down, I looped the concourse checking out the food options. Then I found a departure board, and compared my flight to others, making sure the misery was evenly shared, that somehow my plane wasn't being singled out and penalized. I scoped out a sitting area near my gate, the better to have power and space while still being able to keep at eye on the ticket counter. I looked at my watch: 20 minutes had passed though it felt at least twice that.

I pulled out my computer and caught up on some work. I read the news, checked the weather for the fourth time, then signed into the airline web site to confirm the updated delay information. Ten minutes. I pulled out my book, sent a few texts, watched people approach the gate agent and turn away unhappy. Ten more minutes. I was approaching my original 60 minute pad, and was preparing to get back into the normal pre-flight state of mind when, yes, they added another hour to the delay. Sigh. Rinse and repeat.

Eventually the clock went around enough times, and we were able to board. All started as planned. I scored an exit aisle with no one next to me, so was as comfortable as was possible. I parsed out my in-air activities – reading, daydreaming, snoozing, nibbling – to coincide with our expected flight time. All looked to be on track, then the dreaded announcement: "Ah, folks, this is the captain speaking. Looks like they are having some issues on the ground with all that backed up traffic, so they asked us to circle a bit. At this point, they saying should be about 40 minutes. I'll keep you posted, but for now, just sit back and relax." Sigh again. Back to reading, daydreaming and snoozing: ran out of nibbles.

That drill repeated once more, but eventually we were cleared to land. While it was some six hours later than planned, I was safely on the ground and in the same day I started. As Peter Allen wrote, I had indeed been stuck between the moon and New York City, but thankfully landed in the latter and headed home. All good, water under yet another bridge. Until next time.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has started to travel for work again. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Alexification

You may be an Apple person, and so are a Siri devotee. Or you may have embraced the Google ecosystem, and consider Google Assistant as your go-to disembodied helper person. Others may name their virtual employee of the month as Cortana or Bixby, Athena or Cubic, Mycroft or SILVIA. But if you're a person who uses a smart speaker, then you join more than a quarter of that crowd by starting your query about the weather or setting an alarm or asking about the plural of "nieces and nephews" by saying "Alexa." (It's "niblings", by the way.)

Originally designed in Poland as Ivona, and subsequently bought by Amazon and rechristened as Alexa with a hard "X" so it would be easier to recognize, the computer voice and conversational system was rolled out in 2014. To be accurate, the device is actually not called by that proper name. Rather, that is the moniker of the underlying software for the Amazon Echo device and its various offspring like the Dot, the Plus, the Studio and the Show. But regardless of the form factor, size and fidelity, the devices all have the same feminine persona at their core, and so get lumped together as an Alexa.

When Amazon launched the device it was regarded as a curiosity at best, a white elephant at worst. It was inaccurate and confused as often as it was right, and one wondered if Jeff Bezos has flushed so many millions down the toilet. After all, for every idea like Jobs and the iPhone, or Musk and Tesla, there's Facebook, now Meta. Zuckerberg hung his hat on virtual and artificial reality as the future of tech, and even changed his company's name to reflect that. But at this point in time that's a bet that looks dicey at best, causing more than one analyst to wonder if the company will go the way of MySpace. On the other hand, Amazon's early entry into the voice and AI space gave them a toehold that has turned to solid ground. And the market and their share of that space reflects their early entry and mastery.

Not content to churn out self-standing iterations, they are seeking the Alexafication of all things that can connect. For sure there are TV's and headphones and watches that you can talk to and will report back as needed. But with the Internet of Things, that net is widening to anything than can house a WiFi or Bluetooth receiver. Want your room a little darker? Just talk to your Yoolax Motorized blinds, and the glare is gone. With the Rachio Smart Sprinkler, if your lawn looks a little dry all you have to do is tell the old girl to give it a drink. And with GE's new Alexa-enabled washing machine, dump your basket of stuff in and close the lid. Then tell it what type of clothes are in there and the kind of stains they have, and it fill figure out the cycle, automatically dispense the right amount of specific soaps, and keep you appraised of progress as it rub-a-dub-dubs. No, it won't fold the laundry, but you might be able to train your robot vacuum to do that.

As more and more things acquire the Alexa connection, Amazon does have one potential problem: the more entrenched it gets, the more general it becomes. Kleenex didn't want to become kleenex. Oh, sure, it wanted to be the tissue that you reached for first, the one you asked for at the store, the product against which all others are measured. But just as xerox and brillo and dixie cups (all lower case, not initial caps) are now common verbs and nouns versus proprietary products, Amazon risks its unique moniker becoming so ubiquitous as to become generic. It's not hard to imagine a not-too-distant future where you when your partner asks you a question you can't answer, and your reply is "Don't know. Go alexa that."

Meanwhile we will see more and more things connected to our favorite online lady. There's already an Alexa-enabled shower head that lets you sing along with your favorite tunes, an Alex-enabled dog camera that also can dispense treats, and an Alexa-enabled toothbrush that coaches your morning routine. What's next? Autos? Handbags? Mailboxes? It won't be long before you get strange looks from the neighbors for talking to your garbage can. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is alexaing more. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Remember?

Like many, I was saddened to hear about the death of David Crosby. His music was a big part of my personal soundtrack, having played his records (for you younger readers, big round things, black, sat on a turntable) again and again in my room, as well as listening on the radio (an over-the-air transmission of music programming where you had to turn a knob to pick a station. In a streaming world, both systems seem quaint.) 

As we were just about to get in the car for a two-hour drive home from a family visit, I asked Spotify to queue up a "best of" playlist of his songs. "Teach Your Children," "Helplessly Hoping," "Wooden Ships:" the list goes on and on, and easily filled the entire ride home. My wife was kind, not to let me enjoy the music as she did as well, but to not comment as I sang along to every song. As I went "doo-doo-doo-da-doo. DOO-doo-da-doo-doo-doo" ("Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" if you couldn't tell) two things struck me. First, what an amazing musical legacy he and his mates left behind. And second, despite the bulk of his most well-known material being 50 years or so old, I remembered every word, melody and rhythm like it was yesterday.

The question is why? While I love music, I am not a working musician and have no need to remember lyrics or melodies in my day-to-day life. So while it's nice (for me at least) to be able to sign along, there are other things that would probably be better served talking up the limited real estate in my head. I can't remember to write "milk" on the shopping list or how many scoops of coffee I added to the pot, but I can sing along at the top of my lungs with CSN&Y, confident that even if we don't have two cats in the yard we have a very, very, very fine house. Surely there's a better way to use my brain.

Maybe not. Scientists say they are different types of memory. Short term is our working buffer, enabling us to recall errands, when to stir the spaghetti sauce and where we left the car. Research has shown that as we get older, this buffer starts to erode, making it harder to remember where we put our keys or if we told our spouse we ran out of cereal. Note this is not to be confused with selective memory, where you choose not to remember that you forgot to take out the trash. 

Long term memory comes in a few different flavors. It can be episodic, which are memories of events, including locations and people involved. Things that fall into this bucket take a conscious effort to recall. There's semantic memory, which is all of your accumulated knowledge about the world. Like episodic items, you remember these things only if you take a moment and bring them to the surface. And last is procedural memory, such as tying your shoes, playing saxophone or simply walking. While you might get rusty if you haven't done it in a while, odds are the ability will come back quickly once you give it a go. In fact, years after you learn those skills through countless repetitions, you can likely do them with your eyes closed without thinking about the mechanics. And also falling into this category are song lyrics and melodies.

The reasons for this are several. First is the sheer repetition factor. Like riding a bike or typing, odds are you sang that tune hundreds of times, so it got grooved into your brain. And because it was exactly the same every time, the groove got that much deeper. Also, for many or many of us, music creates an emotional reaction, which further locks a song deep into your head. All of which helps to explain why I was able to give an impromptu concert all the way up the New Jersey Turnpike.

The thing is that procedural memory is not selective. Do anything often enough, and even if your tastes change it will stay lodged in your synapses. And so while I wish him nothing but good health, I hope I am alone in the car on the day that Barry Manilow dies. "Copacabana" anyone?

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Marc Wollin of Bedford's singing should rightfully be confined to the shower. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.