Fremdschämen for $200, please.

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

- Charles Darwin

In college, I wrote for the school newspaper. It was a weekly column, not about news or politics or even campus events. I wrote not one sentence on social issues, sports, astrology, or self-help. I wrote a feature article.

It contained nothing of any substance or value. Looking back, this body of work amounted to a collection of sophomoric, lampoon-style junk that I thought was humorous. At the time, it might have been considered "amusing" among my friends and I know people read it. That makes it all the worse. When I moved on to another university, I picked up a column there too.

Today, each of those articles is neatly laminated and arranged by date in a beautifully constructed scrapbook that my girlfriend (now wife) made for me. The problem is that I will never show it to anyone.

Fast forward about 23 years. I was sitting in Jon "Cody" Sokolski's office in One Main for a meeting, during which he used a word that I did not know or understand at the time, but I smiled and nodded my head knowingly as to preserve dignity.

The word was "schadenfreude" and I went home that evening to look it up.
Schadenfreude is similar to many other German expressions used to describe a number of very particular emotional states fairly common in the English language. In this particular case, the combination of the German words schaden and freude, meaning damage and joy respectively.


By way of definition, this word describes a much more complex psychological concept, lacking a single-word counterpart in the English dictionary. Loosely translated, it's about pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. Not a very nice thing.

In the process of learning about schadenfreude, I uncovered many excellent German word/concepts that seem essential to describing a particular feeling that most humans experience at some time or another. For example, "schlimmbesserung" is a word for an improvement that makes things worse. And of course, there is "aufregen", which describes the feeling in your stomach when you wait in excitement or thrill when something is going to happen.

But why I came here today was to discuss something else called fremdschämen. It describes the embarrassment which is experienced in response to someone else's actions, but it is markedly different from simply being embarrassed for someone else. In particular it is different from being embarrassed because of how another person's actions reflect on us or because of how another person's actions make us look in the eyes of others.

Fremdschämen, as a noun, describes the palpable horror you feel for somebody that is oblivious to how embarrassing they truly are. In order for it to exist, it requires that someone who should feel embarrassed for themselves simply doesn't, creating that terribly uncomfortable feeling for the rest of us to endure, unless of course, you are the doer of the fremdschämen and then, by definition, you haven't a clue.

An example:

My newspaper days and more recent understanding of fremdschämen are connected. Terribly, terribly connected.

At a commencement ceremony for Parkland College a couple years ago, I had the honor of introducing the speaker, John Forman, Publisher and President of the News Gazette. I after reading his bio, I came to the appalling realization that he did some consulting work at my college newspaper during the exact same years I was writing my column. There remains a distinct possibility the Mr. Foreman may have been exposed to my blather, hence, ex-post facto fremdschämen. Latin and German mash-ups make for angst.

In reality, there is little chance the Mr. Foreman actually read my column, and even less of a chance that he would recall a title, much less the content. But still...

So here's the lead in to get you going:

Yes or No

• Do you secretly worry that others will find out that you're not as bright and capable as they think you are?
• Do you sometimes shy away from challenges because of nagging self-doubt?
• Do you tend to chalk your accomplishments up to being a "fluke," “no big deal” or the fact that people just "like" you?
• Do you hate making a mistake, being less than fully prepared or not doing things perfectly?
• Do you tend to feel crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your "ineptness?"
• When you do succeed, do you think, "Phew, I fooled 'em this time but I may not be so lucky next time."
• Do you believe that other people (students, colleagues, competitors) are smarter and more capable than you are?
• Do you live in fear of being found out, discovered, unmasked?

Quiz courtesy of Dr. Valerie Young

If you said "yes" to most of these questions, and I think most of you did, don't worry. You are in good company. A 1984 study of randomly selected American psychologists reports that nearly 70% of them feel like imposters. There is even a name for it.

Imposter syndrome

There is a good Huffington Post article that explains:

"Half the time I don't really know what I'm doing," is a typical comment I hear from people who seek help for the problem. "If people knew my weaknesses, they'd see that I'm pretty incompetent." There are several reasons why this talented group of people (which is much larger than you might think) is so insecure:

1. They don't attribute success to their own positive qualities. "I got this far by luck." "I was in the right place at the right time." "I do well only because I have good people working for me."

2. They don't dwell on their achievements and keep raising the stakes higher. "I got that research grant but now I have to start thinking about the next one." "That performance went well but I have to do even better next time."

3. They have tunnel vision. They notice every instance where they think they should have done better or where they made a mistake. They then put a great deal of importance in what are usually minor flaws in their performance. On the other hand, they fail to notice, or fail to put sufficient importance on what they do well.

4. They discount their accomplishments. "I got a lot of applause but I didn't deserve it." "I got an award but no one realizes how little I deserve it."

5. They compare themselves unfavorably to others. Frequently they pick out the most outstanding people in their office or even in their field and judge their own performance accordingly. "They would have done a better job." "They earned more than I did."

The name "imposter syndrome" is based on research conducted in 1978 by psychotherapists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes.

As it turns out, a good number of people often have the belief they are "fooling" other people, "faking it" or getting by because they have the right contacts or are just plain "lucky." Many hold a belief they'll be exposed as frauds or fakes. The experts also think that women tend to internalize their feelings to a greater extent than men. Researchers therefore theorize that "if something goes wrong, women tend to blame themselves, whether or not they were, in fact, at fault. Men, on the other hand, more readily accept the fact that some things are beyond their control."

These are the people you want in your organization. They have skills and talents. Very few people get to significant positions without at least average abilities and talents in most areas and significant skill in at least a few. The down-side is that they tend to under-value themselves and that can bring about other less desirable side-effects such as over-working, long hours, and maybe even reluctance to engage in extreme cases.

That was the good news. Let's talk about the ones you have to keep your eye on. They are the people that never feel clueless and always know better than everyone else. If it is you, please let me know, so that I can be aware of how dangerous you are.

It starts out like this:

When we are young, each day in school we learned more, received praise and encouragement, and truly got better and smarter. If we went to college, the progression likely continued and at some point we may have become supremely convinced of our own awesomeness, all the while our parents tried to remind us in one way or another that “you don’t even know what you don’t know.”

Once we started maturing as a person (read: going to work 8 hours a day), we realize that there’s more to this discipline that we thought. 


At this point, what we think we know starts spiraling downward. We start to become aware of the depth of knowledge we haven’t yet tapped. At a certain point, the two paths cross, and this is where humility kicks in. 


You may go through the day thinking you have so much more to learn, but the fact is, you know more than you think you do. At this point, you start making much better development decisions because you’re slightly underestimating yourself. This is good and normal. It does not happen to everyone.

The Woebegone effect

You may have heard of Garrison Keillor through his books or through his very popular radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. During his show, set in the fictitious community of Lake Woebegone, life is pretty good. Keillor often says that "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."  I never got the strong women and good-looking men part. Seems to me they ought to have been flip-flopped.

Regardless, Keillor's depiction of the idyllic lifestyle has led to a phenomenon called the Woebegone effect. Simply stated, it is the tendency of people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits. Heck, it even extends to driving ability.

Raise your hand if you are an above average driver. See, everyone has their hand up. Me? I'm a terrible driver and I'll be the first to admit it. I am easily distracted, especially on long trips and can't wait for the day that Google solves the autonomous car. Really. I can't wait. This is one of the reasons that there is mandatory car insurance.

In 1987, John Cannell completed a study that reported the statistically impossible finding that all states claimed average student test scores above the national norm. Hummm. By the way, how many "m's" are too many in the word hummm? The Urban Dictionary says three is just right.

One College Board survey asked 829,000 high school seniors to rate themselves in a number of ways. When asked to rate their own ability to "get along with others," a statistically insignificant number — less than one percent — rated themselves as below average. 

Furthermore, sixty percent rated themselves in the top ten percent, and one-fourth of respondents rated themselves in the top one percent. Okay. Remember that they are high school kids and are still on the journey to awesomeness and fremdschämen. We can forgive, but what of the adults?

The real reason that, as an adult, you may feel like a fraud is because you have been successful in taking a lot of information from the "things about which I know nothing" category and moving it into the "things I know a little bit about" category. In the process, you realize that there is a lot of stuff you don’t know.

The good news is that this makes you very not dangerous. The bad news is that it also makes you feel dumb and self-conscious a lot of the time. For some, age brings wisdom, but for others, age comes alone.

Less competent, the more over-estimation of ability

Yes, there is a "syndrome" or "effect" for everything, and this is no exception. There exists something called the  Dunning-Kruger effect and I have linked a paper here. It is a 14 page summary that describes a cognitive bias in which people perform poorly on a task, but lack the meta-cognitive capacity to properly evaluate their performance.

An example:

As a result, such people remain unaware of their incompetence and accordingly fail to take any self-improvement measures that might rid them of their incompetence. According to Dunning and Kruger:

"People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities."

It is important to make a distinction here between intelligence and self-awareness. In evaluating ourselves, we tend to start with preconceived notions about our general skill and then we integrate these notions into how well we think we are doing on a task.

For example, one might think, "I have never driven my car off the road (without provocation), only been in three accidents (none my fault) and amassed only a half-dozen moving violations, therefore, I am an excellent driver." You might disagree, as do the police in four towns in two different states.

I'll try to explain in pictures. Below is a figure taken from D and K's paper. The line with the circles represents (adult) performance on a test. This one happens to be a logic test. Note the fairly straight distribution, beginning with about 11% at the low end and around 87% on the top end. The other axis represents competency (as measured by this test) with the bottom quartile being the least competent and the top quartile as the most.

The line with the triangles represents how well each participant thought they would do on the test before taking it. The line with the squares represents how each participant rated their ability to think logically, again before taking the test.

Notice a couple things. First, there is a difference in all groups between perception of ability and perception about test results. All quartiles thought their ability was higher than the test results would show. Interesting.

Next, take a look at the bottom quartile. Look at the red line. There is an absolutely huge difference between perceived and actual ability, and not in a good way.

After comparing the student's own impressions with their actual performance, a clear pattern emerged in Dunning and Kruger's data: Worse students grossly overestimated their own performance. 


You get a clear sense of the extremity of the poor student's fondness to overestimate their own performance, when you consider these results: For the bottom quartile, while their actual performance may have, "put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated their mastery of the course material to fall in the 60th percentile and their test performance to fall in the 57th".


Bottom performers tended to overestimate their performance by roughly 30%; a general pattern that has been replicated many times over since.


Similarly, "participants taking tests in their ability to think logically, to write grammatically, and to spot funny jokes tend to overestimate their percentile ranking relative to their peers by some 40 to 50 points, thinking they are outperforming a majority of their peers when, in fact, they are the ones being outperformed."


On the other hand, top performers tend to underestimate performance, as the green line illustrates.

As Dunning and Kruger point out  that:

"This pattern also emerges in more real-world settings: among debate teams taking part in a college tournament and hunters quizzed about their knowledge of firearms just before the start of hunting season; among medical residents evaluating their patient-interviewing skills; and among medical lab technicians assessing their knowledge of medical terminology and everyday problem-solving ability in the lab."

Worried yet? Not so much. The vast majority of us are average. Yes, we are. Really. Look it up and be comforted in the fact that half the people you know are below average. Having said so, the blue circle represents the notion that those of us in the middle generally are realistic about our abilities, our perceived performance, and actual results bear it out.

Dunning and Kruger refer to a "double curse" when interpreting their findings. Those that fail to grasp their own incompetence, do so precisely because they are so incompetent. And since overcoming their incompetence would first require the ability to distinguish competence from incompetence, people get stuck in a loop.

"The skills needed to produce logically sound arguments, for instance, are the same skills that are necessary to recognize when a logically sound argument has been made. Thus, if people lack the skills to produce correct answers, they are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone else's, are right or wrong. They cannot recognize their responses as mistaken, or other people's responses as superior to their own."

"Top performers tend to have a relatively good sense of how well they perform in absolute terms, such as their raw score on a test. Where they err is in their estimates of other people-consistently overestimating how well other people are doing on the same test".

Of course, I should also draw your attention to a footnote, as Dunning and Kruger cite a study saying that 94% of college professors rank their work as "above average" (relative to their peers).

Why does this happen?

Well, it is a pretty good survival strategy to believe we can handle just about anything. Without some optimism and positive thinking, people wouldn't try anything new. New ideas wouldn’t be shared. In short, tempered confidence is required.

The problem, though, is that all of us have some tendency to overextend our confidence to an unsafe point, like messing with the electrical system in your home because you had an electricity class in 6th grade or maybe texting while driving. Or, more to the point, writing newspaper articles at 20 and a blog at 43.

Oh my fremdschämen...

  

Kruger, Justin. (1999) Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121
Dunning, David. (2003-06) Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 77-87. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8721.01235

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Favorite Things

I watch the Oprah show. More accurately, I listen to the Oprah Show. She is on at 10 pm each weeknight and Michelle tunes in on occasion. I'm usually in heated  discussions with the sandman by this time, but I can hear her through the fog. Last night, her show was allegedly "special" from what I am reading this morning in the news.

I recall from last night's replay, that Oprah was indeed excited, judging by her tone of voice and volume. Typically, her voice is an even-toned and sing-song, a pleasant sound that cuts my sleep negotiations down to mere seconds. But last night was different.

Last night, as it turns out, was the famous Oprah’s Favorite Things show. In the segment, which is typically aired during the holiday season, Winfrey shares products with her audience that she feels are noteworthy or that would make a great gift. In addition, the audience members present during the taping of the episode receive items from that year’s list for free.

It is accompanied by screaming, laughing, and crying audience members

And Oprah's voice was different. Her usual mellowness was replaced by a three and sometimes four-toned yell with a little voice-warbling at the end. I'm sure there is a speech or musical term for what she does. Someone will correct me. I was unaware that she had a propensity for this type of talk until I found this clip.

Obviously, it was difficult to sleep with all that yelling and screaming going on and it got me thinking about two things. First, we should give some thought to announcing events, news, and such at Parkland College just like Oprah did.

"Single sign on is HERRRREEEE!"

"The new carpet in INNNNNNN!"

"We've doubled our Bandwiiiiiiiddddthhhh!"

"The TAX LEVY is lower!"

Go back and read those again, but this time like Oprah does. And then, picture the faculty and staff jumping up and down, screaming and laughing, and slapping each other on the backs. High-Fives and pandemonium...

Ok, moving on.

My second thought was that this is a great idea, this Favorite Things episode. It's so good, I'm going to steal it and use it for my own purposes. I hope to avoid jail time by giving proper credit to the originator. Done. Without further complication and in no particular order, I give you my version of Favorite Things for 2010:

The Flattop Grill -  Obvious reasons. The horseradish sauce is amazing. Plus, we have one in town.

Microsoft Kinect - I don't have one yet, but come on...it has to be cool, right?

Single Sign On - Faculty, if you click the "Angel Login" link on the Applications tab in the Portal, you'll automatically be logged into Angel!  You won't have to type your username and password into Angel separately – Single Sign On! Hooray. Well done, Patrick!

Global Positioning Satellite - Not only in the car, but on a phone!

Outstanding Staff Awards - Award winners will each receive College-wide recognition and $750/$250 for professional development costs such as tuition and fees; textbooks; conference and workshop registration; travel; professional periodicals and texts; membership
dues in professional organizations; work related software and hardware. The two Outstanding Staff Award categories are the Parkland GOLD Award for Parkland staff of 6 years or more and the Parkland GREEN Award for staff of 5 years or less.

The iPad - One of the coolest inventions yet. It has limitations to be sure, but on the whole, well done. Our Board of Trustees use iPads in place of paper materials.

Words with Friends - If you have the iPad or the iPhone, this is one of the best applications.
It's free, it's Scrabble, and you can play against friends or random strangers.

Doubling our bandwidth -  At a Faculty Forum, faculty expressed how slow our Internet was on campus and how it impacts classroom instruction and other academic tasks. The backstory:  ICN is our internet service provider. They allot bandwidth to institutions based upon enrollment. Since we host the Region VII office, we are given a bit more. Those two total 25M of bandwidth. A year or two ago, we purchased an additional 6M chunk to alleviate bandwidth issues which helped for a while.

We also implemented a bandwidth manager to put limits on streaming video applications such as Youtube, while providing the instructors' workstations (in the classrooms) with priority
over everyone else. All of these steps were effective for a while, but bandwidth demand continues to escalate.  Several months ago, ICN raised our bandwidth cap to 45M for a two-week period. As of 11/13/2010, we have increased our connection to 100M.

The William M. Staerkel Planetarium at Parkland College -  They have added a new holiday program to its show lineup, called "Season of Light." The show opens at 8 p.m. on Friday, November 26 and will run Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. through December 18. 

"Season of Light" traces the history and development of many of the world's most endearing holiday customs, all of which involve lighting up the winter season--from the burning Yule log, sparkling Christmas tree lights, and candles in windows, to the lighting of luminarias in the American Southwest and the traditional ritual of the Hanukkah menorah. The show is narrated by Noah Adams of National Public Radio.

Tickets are $5 for adults and $4 for students, seniors, and children under 12 with all tickets being sold at the door. Friends of the Staerkel Planetarium are admitted free of charge. For more information on Staerkel Planetarium programs, call the show hotline at 217/351-2446 or visit the link.

The Engadget website - It satisfies my need for up-to-date- information on gadgets,
computers, and technology in general. It's on my daily read list.

SPARK - SPARK is Parkland College's brand new open-access digital repository. It is the home of the rich body of scholarly and creative work of Parkland College students, faculty, administration, and staff. SPARK promotes and showcases these works, and facilitates their global discovery. Go Sherry!

Cobra Volleyball - National Tournament-quality teams nearly every year and Coach Hastings was named the Region 24 Coach of the Year!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and be safe.




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On Airports

Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something. 

- Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

I love people movers. You know, those long, flat, escalator-like contraptions that make you feel like a superhero at the airport?   

Seriously, if I had the time, I would just ride back and forth for hours, in addition to several physics experiments I have in mind.

I find myself in airports quite frequently these days, so much so that I could probable devote a thousand or so words to the topic. So I will.

Airports have always been sort of a magical place for me. I never actually flew until I was 18 and off to basic training in South Carolina. On my own for the first time and having been dropped off in Chicago the night before by my parents, I had a one-way ticket (on an airline that no longer exists), $25, no luggage, and really no idea how to navigate the complex system that is O'Hare International Airport. I imagine that what I felt that morning is awfully similar to what our students might feel when they come to the College for the first time -- wide-eyed, hyper-alert, and little nervous about how things will go. 

The airport is anticipation. It's a stamp in your passport, a memory of the stale smoke-smell of Heathrow, the humidity and chaos at Jomo Kenyatta, and the antiseptic sterility in Beijing. 

For me, airports are yesterday's memories of a Red Stripe outside Montego Bay, the sprawl of Dallas-Fort Worth, and the psychedelic tunnel in Detroit. I recall the best parts, unhitched from the baggage of reality. Airports mean unlimited possibilities and unfettered itineraries, if nowhere other than in my head.

Since that first flight, I've always been fascinated by the whole idea of air travel and the systems that make it possible. I'll never get bored looking out the window and seeing airplanes land and take off. I enjoy visiting all the newsstands and food shops, the electronics stores and the sunglass huts.

I am enchanted (perfect word) with the adventure of it all, no matter what my destination. I could be going to DC for the twentieth time or across the ocean to a foreign country, it makes little difference. I experience what I think author Bill Bryson meant when he wrote, “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” 

I hope that feeling never changes, but reality dictates that most of my travel consists of the same routine -- a domestic destination, cab ride to a hotel followed by meetings in conference rooms that look remarkably similar the world over. Then, after a couple days, it all gets played in reverse.

Airports seethe and undulate in a discernible rhythm of motion and activity. There seems to be little conception of time (or social conventions) as weary travelers sleep during the day, have breakfast at night, and drink beer in the morning. 

I like the crowds. You can sit and think about things or watch the people -- the hurrying and obviously late, the flocks of teens on spring break, or young couples in love, the military personnel, the mommies and daddies with their offspring on the way to some vacation spot.

Necessarily, there is an older couple sitting somewhere, anticipating a visit with grandchildren or a cruise ship. The woman clutches her purse and holds her tickets, absently touching the carry-on bags in unfocused apprehension as the husband looks on, incognizant. Every five minutes, she checks her watch along with the zippers, straps, and boarding passes.

There is always a guy asleep in the boarding area, slumped back and snoring. I see a small child with his parents, attention divided equally between looking at the planes through the window and riding the people mover, just like me.

I'm always surprised to see how much stuff people carry with them. No one wants to pay the extra $15 to check a bag, so zippers strain to stay closed and bags hang off other bags. Bits of food, a souvenir or six, electronics, and inflatable neck pillows are tucked under arms or divided amongst the kids.

The technology of the place is quite incredible as well. Having a some interest in networks and software, I marvel at the fact that my cell phone can tell me every last detail about my itinerary in near real-time. As often happens at O'Hare, gates change and delays occur. I play another little game, timing the delay between the actual announced gate change and the time it takes before my phone application beeps to announce the new location. Five minutes at most, these days.

I Twitter the flight detail, which is liked to my Facebook account, so my wife and parents know what I'm up to. On the way in, my credit card slides smoothly into a self-check kiosk and in seconds, my destination is verified and I'm presented with a couple of big little decisions. Choose or change my seat, check a bag, buy an upgrade, or double your frequent flier miles?

The seat-choosing is always the most difficult part. Window  or aisle? Avoid the middle seat at all cost as playing the armrest game with strangers is no fun. Look for a row that has other open seats in hopes of getting a little extra room. Then of course, there is the big decision...upgrade or not.  At check-in, the machine tells me that I qualify for a business-class seat for just $45. I mull the decision. 

Checking a bag costs $15 in coach but its "free" in business class. Now it is a $30 decision. How long is the flight? Are there lots of seats available in coach? 

I always choose wrong. About half the time, I pick the upgrade and invariably I regret it. Last week I flew to Washington and took the upgrade on the way out. Unfortunately, it was a small plane with very little space difference between business and coach. The guy next to me is intent on making up his ticket price in wine. I count seven refills before I get disgusted and close my eyes. After the hour-and-a-half flight, I decide it wasn't worth it.

On the way home, I skip the upgrade and chose a window seat, 10F. Near enough to the front and close to the exit row. As I board the plane, I do my little pre-flight ritual. It consists of placing my right hand flat on the skin of the aircraft for about 5 seconds, right before I duck in the door. I'm not sure when or why I started doing this. Maybe always. But now, every single flight I take, that's what I do. I'm sure someone has a theory about my little routine, but so far, it has worked perfectly. I've never been killed in a plane crash.

Inside are hundreds of people, their luggage crammed into the overhead compartments, tray tables in the upright position and all electronics turned off and tucked away for the duration of the flight, except for the one person talking loudly to someone that is apparently very interested in the details of the loud talker's life.

I like takeoffs and landings, and the in-between part can be fun if I have an entertaining seatmate, but I don't really like the actual flight that much. I look ahead to my seat and my stomach sinks. A young couple with a small child are already wedged into 10D and E. As I get closer, 10F begins to look terribly small and inaccessible. How am I with my computer bag and pressed suit, going to survive this?

Her name is Mia and she is 14 months old. She is a bit small for her age, according to her mother, an equally small woman with dreadlocks and a crooked smile. Her husband is from Chicago and they are on the way home for a visit. Mia is dressed in bright pink with matching little sneakers that are now in my lap as we taxi for take-off.

We are not in the air but a few seconds when Mia lets out a ear-splitting scream, instantly informing rows one through thirty-two that she is no longer enjoying herself. 

Mom and Dad do their best with liberal application of toys, food, picture books. Mia will have none of it. In mid-yell, she suddenly notices me and climbs over. Mom is horrified, embarrassed, apologetic, and probably a little worried. I smile and tell her not to fret. I recount for her that my (at the time) 6 year-old son slept the entirety of a ten hour flight, sprawled on top my wife and me.

For the next hour-and-a-half, Mia and I are inseparable. 

Sitting in my lap, together we investigate air-sick bags, Sky Mall magazine, the window shade, my tie, my watch, and my phone. Mom and Dad apologize several times and try to retrieve Mia, but she wants nothing more than to expore this strange new person in the window seat, 10F.

On approach over the great Lake Michigan, Mia falls asleep and the transfer back to Mom's arms takes place uneventfully. I have a sweaty, wrinkled shirt, some cheerios stuck to my tie, and a smile on my face.

I drive to the next hotel in silence with another stamp in my mind's passport.

PS: Rest easy and in peace, Karen Keener.

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