Trust me, nobody has ever confused me for Spock. But I’ve co-opted the title of Leonard Nimoy’s first autobiography for the title of this blog because I’ve recently been thinking a lot about human illogicalities and incongruities. Nimoy himself was not immune to such inconsistencies. In a move of incomparable irony, he followed up I am not Spock twenty years later, in 1995, with his second autobiography: I am Spock.
Humans are a study in irony and contradictions. Take Ilya Mechnikov, Russian immunologist and 1908 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He was a big fan of yoghurt, which makes him a big fan of mine (I consume a sizable bowl with granola before retiring to bed every evening). He evidently maintained a sanguine outlook on life, publishing books entitled The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy and The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies, yet, he attempted suicide. More than once. Or take one of my UConn colleagues, whose academic expertise is the psychology of memory. We’ve crossed paths countless times over the years, but he never remembers me. It’s not that he has just forgotten my name, which we’ve all experienced; each time we meet he reacts as though it’s our first encounter. Or take one of my table tennis friends, who is considered the “Love Doctor” in her community. She spends countless hours trying to heal broken hearts and fix the romantic relationships of her friends and acquaintances, yet she herself resolutely avoids such relationships. And truthfully, with a little self-reflection, I don’t need to look beyond myself for an exemplar of contradiction. I’m fond of humans, and I have always had a naïve optimism about them (maybe similar to Mechnikov), but I’ve never been that comfortable around them, especially in social settings. And the more humans, the less comfortable I am. Yet, what do I do for a living? I study humans, specifically, in social settings.
Humanity’s proclivity toward inconsistency and contradiction is not a novel observation. In An Essay on Man (1944), philosopher Ernst Cassirer, for example, claims “contradiction is the very element of human existence.” My children never hesitate to point out when I am being illogical, but publishing The Ping Pong Player and the Professor has forced me to fully confront my inherent incongruities. I have been described by more than one friend as the most private and reclusive person they know, and they are not misjudging me. I am fiercely private. Yet, somehow, I wrote and then published a book that put my life on full public display. Had I suddenly gone insane? Had I been possessed by a jinn? Or maybe the Romulans had finally perfected their mind-control technology and I was their first target? Possibly all three. Or, perhaps, I was just being human. We are a bundle of contradictions, to the core.
The decision to publish The Ping Pong Player and the Professor was not straightforward for me. My private side, fearing public scrutiny and critique, certainly resisted. My other side, which has been affectionately referred to as my crazy side (those who are less generous—my kids—believe both sides are unhinged), thought the book had an important message worth sharing with others. And Eliel supported that side, even if skeptical of my sanity. His encouragement was pivotal. As an academic I am used to critical evaluations of my research. Admittedly, it’s not fun, but I try not to take it personally, or at least too personally. But The Ping Pong Player and the Professor is nothing but personal. It’s my story, about my family, written by me. My skin is simply not thick enough for a critical evaluation of anything that personal. Nonetheless, that’s the risk I took in publishing the book. A bundle of contradictions indeed.
Fortunately, the feedback on The Ping Pong Player and the Professor has been positive and very kind. Surely there are readers who have not enjoyed the book, but they’ve been kind as well: presumably recognizing my fragile ego, they have kept their criticisms to themselves! I mentioned last month that I’ve received many thoughtful emails from readers. Several of these readers, even while praising the book, have raised critiques, highlighted errors, and posed insightful questions. Let me share a few of their comments, some of which exemplify our inconsistencies.
One of my favorite messages was from a fellow ping pong pop. He wrote,
Right at the start, the brief discussion of what is a sport convinced me I was going to like the book. It’s a discussion I’ve had many times. However, you failed to mention some criteria I apply in deciding sport or not. First, a sport cannot be reasonably played while smoking. This rules out both golf and pool/billiards. (I am a huge fan of pool and billiards, so this is not meant to be derogatory toward them.). Secondly, a sport can be refereed, but not judged. Sorry, gymnastics and figure skating, you’re both excluded. I did, however, like your characterization that nobody else can make the moves for the player in a sport (e.g., as could be done for a card game). That is not one I had considered previously—although rule #1 on smoking would handle that case.
In my response, I completely ignored the no smoking rule, probably fearing that my response would sound dismissive. I thought the rule was clever, but it seemed a little too dependent on someone’s ability to multitask, or explicitly, their ability to smoke in motion. Perhaps I was too embarrassed to admit that in my travels to countries where kids grow up playing soccer rather than football and baseball (i.e., the rest of the planet), more than once I have found myself on a soccer pitch watching a cigarette-smoking local player dribble the ball right around me, leaving behind nothing but a trail of smoke and my bruised dignity. And for the record, knowing that I could undoubtedly beat these smokers at table tennis, with a cigarette in my own hand, did not restore my dignity. I did, however, respond to this ping pong pop’s second rule, although I’m not sure I’m even convinced by my response.
Regarding your rules on what constitutes sport, I think it is tricky stuffing human activities into categories—they rarely seem to fit neatly! …I assume your wish to exclude gymnastics and figure skating from sport is due to a discomfort with the subjective evaluations that are part of such competitions. I agree there is something different about them, and I don’t enjoy watching them precisely because of the inherent biases in these judgments, even though I am awed by the abilities of these extraordinary athletes. I do, however, consider gymnastics, figure skating, etc. sports, or falling within the family of activities we call sport, although they differ from races and sports in which points are scored. Obviously, a sport like baseball has elements of subjective evaluation (umpires have different strike zones) that blur the distinction between these subcategories. And in the past few years, as instant replay becomes more common, I think the boundaries separating “judgment sports” and “point-scoring sports” have become less distinct. When officials turn to instant replay to determine whether a foul was committed in basketball, whether a receiver caught a football, whether a base runner was safe or out, etc. it is clear that a definitive assessment is often not possible and the commentators themselves frequently disagree while looking at the same video footage. The officials of course recognize this, not always offering a definitive assessment, but simply concluding that the call on the field cannot be overturned (i.e., the available information is indeterminate). Even in table tennis I have seen this. Last year at Nationals, Sid and Nandan [the Naresh brothers, US National Team members] played and the match ended in controversy because it was unclear whether a ball hit the side or the edge. The umpire ultimately decided it was a side ball and awarded Nandan the point (and match), but even after the match it was debated after many of us watched a video replay of the point. In short, defining sport is not easy!
Maybe our inclination to categorize, a universal human characteristic anthropologists have noted since at least the turn of the 20th century, inevitably leads to our contradictory nature. The world is just not as inherently ordered and consistent as our minds, as well as our cultures, would like it to be.
Another message I received was from an Olympian who noted a specific categorization error I had made in The Ping Pong Player and the Professor, but more on that in a moment. This Olympian, graciously, described The Ping Pong Player and the Professor as “the best book I’ve read in a long time.” His message was especially gratifying because he particularly “loved the end notes.” As I wrote last month, I regretted placing the discussion of why I anonymized many of the people in the book in the Notes, since many readers will not read the Notes (and the Notes are completely unavailable to audio listeners). In his email, this Olympian pointed out a few infelicities in the book, one of them in fact in the Notes. In the main text of The Ping Pong Player and the Professor I discussed the USATT rating system and in the Notes I mentioned the existence of alternative rating systems, such as the Ratings Central system. Ratings Central, uniquely, factors the time between tournaments into a player’s rating calculation. Thus, if this system is used infrequently, calculated ratings can be inaccurate. This had been our experience in New England, and I mentioned in The Ping Pong Player and the Professor that Ratings Central is not used regularly because it is not sanctioned by USATT. But what I hadn’t appreciated is that Ratings Central is used weekly in many US club leagues, which do not require USATT sanctioning, and it is used internationally, rather widely.
This Olympian also corrected a comment I made in the book, actually, about Olympians. In The Ping Pong Player and the Professor I inaccurately described one of the top players in the US as an Olympian, although I accurately noted that he did not compete in the Olympics. I am not alone in incorrectly ascribing Olympic status to this player: news reports described him as an Olympian, and an Olympic-themed party at his club celebrated his achievement after he earned a spot on the US team. However, the team this player made was the US squad that competed in the North American trials, in which Canadian and US players vied for three spots to compete in the 2016 Olympics. Ultimately, he did not win one of these spots, so, I was informed, he is not an Olympian. In my exchange with the actual Olympian I learned a sure-fire way to determine who is and who is not an Olympian: Olympians have their own post-nominal letters, OLY, they can use to indicate their status, similar to MD or PhD. Who knew?
While we are highlighting oversights and blunders, there is one statement I’ve been wanting to correct since The Ping Pong Player and the Professor was published. It is actually an example of our inclination to see life as neat and tidy, when it is in fact messier than my office. It’s also an example of our inherent contradictoriness: our urge to move toward the future, while embracing the past.
In my brief and admittedly idiosyncratic history of table tennis, I noted a “quick” transition from hard bat to sponge following Hiroji Satoh’s infamous run—with the assistance of a sponge paddle—to the Men’s title of the 1952 World Championships. I wrote, “The old paddles could not compete with the sponge paddles, and rather quickly all players adopted sponge paddles, although rules ultimately limited the thickness of sponge permitted.” If only things were that simple.
After writing The Ping Pong Player and the Professor, I realized there were gaps in my knowledge about the history of my beloved sport, so I committed myself to reading all 21 volumes of Tim Boggan’s History of U.S. Table Tennis. Yes, cover to cover. When I mention this commitment to fellow table tennis enthusiasts it invariably elicits an expression of disbelief; these volumes are not only massive, they are unwieldy, without a cohesive or driving narrative to push the writing forward. But I’m actually enjoying reading them, and I’m learning more about table tennis than I could have imagined. I assume Larry Hodges, who incidentally wrote a very nice review of The Ping Pong Player and the Professor on his blog (thank you Larry), has read it, but when I finish I wouldn’t be surprised to find out we are the only two people on the planet to have read every word of this meandering 21-volume set. Why am I mentioning this? Because after completing the third volume, which covers 1953-1962, it was clear that sponge paddles were not quickly adopted, as I had thought. The transition to sponge rubber in the US, as well as internationally, was still unfolding and being debated in the late 1950s. Many thought it was ruining the sport, a sentiment I still hear at clubs and tournaments to this day. It’s a fascinating history, full of contradictions, such as impassioned arguments about how sponge paddles were leading to the sport’s demise, yet table tennis was actually going through its most significant growth phase in decades. Sharing the details of this transitional moment in table tennis history, however, will have to wait for another day.
Aside from generous praise, which of course has been deeply appreciated, I’ve also received numerous discerning questions about The Ping Pong Player and the Professor. A close friend from my undergraduate days posed one that has particularly intrigued me. He was curious about how I was able to describe Eliel’s matches in such detail and he wondered if I took notes during his matches. I responded that I couldn’t take notes during matches—I was too busy coaching—but I always wrote notes about matches in the evenings, when we returned to our hotel. He expressed awe at my memory, which made me laugh, because like everyone with more than five decades of experiences under their belt, my memory isn’t what it used to be.
My friend also mentioned that after finishing the book he decided to watch some professional table tennis matches on YouTube, but he was disappointed. He found them impossible to follow, and again, he marveled at my ability to recall how points unfold when everything happens so quickly. I realized that if he and I were watching the same match, our experiences would be entirely different; our minds would be seeing different things. In truth, I had no difficulty remembering the details of any match I watched, especially Eliel’s matches, since as his coach I stay intensely focused. Well, I should say that after threats of losing my revered role for talking with others during his matches, I now stay intensely focused. And remembering my own matches is even easier than remembering Eliel’s. I would bet the life of my beloved sock monkey that this is not evidence of a superior memory; I have enough memory left to recall what my memory was like when I was younger, so I can’t delude myself.
I assumed my ability to remember the details of matches, but not, say, to take out the garbage on Wednesday nights, was the result of expertise, and nothing more. My inquiring friend is a musician, a truly gifted guitar player, so I said to him, “I guess being able to remember how points unfold comes with experience. I’m sure it is the same with you when you perform. I suspect after a show you remember all the details of your performance, how particular solos unfolded and so forth.” Surprisingly, at least to me, he said performing is not like that at all. If the music is flowing he doesn’t remember any of it. After a concert, the only details he remembers are the mistakes. My assumption was evidently incorrect.
Later that evening I told Eliel about the conversation and he laughed at the notion of it being difficult to remember how points unfold; it is simply second nature to him. Indeed, after a tournament he can talk for hours, in astounding detail, about every point of every match. I had also mentioned my assumption that heightened memory would be manifest in all activities requiring learned expertise, and my surprise that my expectation was inconsistent with my friend’s experience performing live music. Eliel concurred with my friend. Eliel’s musical career on the trumpet ended abruptly when he got braces, although once the braces were removed he did become a reliable and sought-after shofar blower. However, he took a voice class in college and he related that he would ask his friend to pay attention to his performances because he realized that for him, the memory of each performance was a blur. Like my guitar-playing friend, he couldn’t recall the details, only the mistakes.
The ease at which Eliel and I remember matches is not unique; indeed, when not competing or practicing, tournaments are spent recounting matches with friends, or anyone who is willing to listen. And it is obvious from interviews with athletes in all sports that competitors have vivid memories of their competitions. My own fieldwork experiences suggest foraging is much closer to sport than music in this regard. Subsistence fishers and hunters I’ve worked with recall the details of their pursuits, and they share those details around the evening campfire while consuming their prey. I’m not sure why there is a difference in memory between sports and music. Perhaps I should ask my colleague who can’t remember me?
Speaking of fellow faculty—and here I’ll wrap things up—I recently had lunch with one of my new colleagues (yes, one who actually remembers me). She expressed all of the normal anxieties that young faculty typically experience, although in her case such anxieties are unwarranted (she’s an exceptional scholar). But to ease her mind, in our conversation I revealed many of my neuroses and contradictions, including my anxieties about book publishing: my conflicting urges for privacy and reclusion on one hand, and a desire to express myself and share my personal experiences on the other. Remarkably, she expressed the same fears, which stunned me. She seems so sane! Perhaps there are more conflicted souls out there than I realized? Maybe none of us are Spock. As I left her office I appreciated that I may be a little crazy, and I may be a study in contradiction, but if so, it probably just means—contrary to the claims of my children—I’m simply human. And if I can wax philosophical for a moment, I wouldn’t say that contradiction and irony make us human, per se. Rather, it seems that it’s learning to live with the struggle between our many contradictions that defines our humanity. I’m still learning, thankfully.
Richard Sosis 