Driving the Bus: Collected Non-Fiction Shorts

More Than Enough

I am an only child. When I was seven I begged my mother for a brother. She told me that I was more than enough.

When I tell my friends this story they always laugh. "Of course you were!" they'll say, "who could blame her?" These are the same people who always say: "Well that explains everything," with a knowing smirk when they discover that I'm an only child.

Those with siblings still outnumber those without, and they have interesting ideas about what kind of people only children are: we're spoiled, self-centered, socially inept. There's the usual backpedal after a statement like that: "You turned out okay—but for the most part the only children I've met . . . ." These exchanges don't bother me—anymore. I used to go into detail about all the time I had to spend alone amusing myself, how having all of your parent's attention led to receiving not only all of their love but all of their expectations too, and how I'd never ever received that electric car racing set I begged for three Christmas's running. Now I laugh and say: "You poor sibling-saddled folk are all alike: insecure, competing for attention, beholden to fads. Of course, I don't mean you, you're not like any of the others I've met."

Both views are fashioned from the cloth of bigotry. In the same way that men will never understand what it's like to be women, only children will never understand what it's like to have siblings (and vice versa).

Having done little more than talk about myself to this point, I expect the sibling camp is snickering behind their hands, and rightly so. My self-examination stems, however, from a recent realization that being an individual is less important than being a community member.

Most people think of an individual as any person, but I don't. People are not individuals simply because they exist and are entities. No, being an individual requires more effort than that. The existentialist definition comes to mind: a single person coming to grips with a deterministic universe. But frankly, there's so much goo attached to the existentialist camp I try to steer clear. I think of individuals as people who do as they are: who ignore social mores, trends, desires, and simply "be."

While watching a nature show about lions I discovered that the only lions really dangerous to people are lone males. This is due to their inability to successfully take down animal prey—people make easier targets and the fat ones are slow without being unduly strong. Lions are pack hunters. The community works together for its success. Wolves are much the same, or ants, or Orcas (I watch a lot of nature shows—boyhood dream #1: to be Gerald Durrell, a zoologist/ writer). All these animals are social animals. The success of the individual lies in the success of the group. Like it or not, humans are social animals too.

The nature shows did not bring the importance of this realization home to me. Instead, it was Mike, a middle-aged dumpster-diver who did. Mike lives on the edges of society, on the street. He's a scavenger, an individual, a lone wolf--at least that's what the everyday person sees if they see him at all. When I see Mike, poking his head out of a heavily graffitied dumpster, in the alley behind a polished glass box office building at four in the morning, he smiles and says hello. Because I'm a security guard he gives me news about who's making messes at dumpsters because they're on heroin again, or who he saw cause an alarm, or bust a window. Mike is tied to a community and the role he plays in that community is important to him.

People in all walks of life are tied into groups. We are indoctrinated into the group mentality at an early age: by junior high kids carve themselves up into castes complete with dress codes, cultural distinctions, and special languages. They call themselves preppies, rockers, skaters, ravers, brains, Goths, geeks, jocks, stoners, punks, skinheads, mods, spice girls, whatever the latest trends dictate. Adults aren't free of this tendency either--remember hippies, yippies, yuppies, Gen-Xers? The blue-collar versus white-collar dichotomy? Safety and strength reside in the group.