THE CATASTROPHIZER

How to Avoid Merelyapotropaic Catastrophizing 09/01/2010

Dear Catastrophizer -
A concerned query: is it possible that pessimism could be seen as merelyapotropaic --i.e., unconsciously intended to ward off evil by imagining the worst (whereas optimism could be seen to be hubristic--i.e., asking for it...)?

It's absolutely and entirely possible. In fact, I think it might be unavoidable, especially now that I know it has such an impressive name. All the kids will be doing it ("Johnny, come down from your room right now and stop being so merelyapotropaic!").

It's also something that must be guarded against. Catastrophizers must sincerely and unremittingly expect the worst. They must not go unconsciously doing anything in a doomed attempt to safeguard themselves. No amount of negative thinking can protect you from all the terrible things that will undoubtedly happen to you.

If you wish to remind yourself that the worst really is bound to happen, just follow the following simple steps:

1) Watch any movie by Bergman.
2) Drink a pot of coffee.
3) Go to bed and cuddle up with Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych.
4) Remind yourself repeatedly that while optimists and pessimists may disagree over the likelihood you'll be killed in a plane crash or struck by lightning while falling from the 23rd story of a high-rise and suffering from small pox, no one, no one can argue that you're not going to die. Nope. Even if you miss every car crash and disease, you'll be dying at some point. You will no longer BE. Of course, it's also possible that your self-awareness will be compromised by senility before you die, so that might take the edge off.
5) Sweet dreams.

It's in fact imperative you do this, even if you are a devoted and dutiful Catastrophizer. As any PBS special or old person will tell you, our culture tries desperately to deny the fact that we're all going to die. We try to hide our wrinkles and our old people as best we can. We obsess over life-prolonging treatments and diets as though a acai-berry smoothie will cancel out mortality altogether. We avoid confronting other people's deaths by natural causes by, as I said before, shuffling off our elderly to old-person ghettos (unless they're wealthy, in which case they may be lonely and un-visited, but they at least get to play golf on a Wii).

Our popular culture provides us with no memento mori art. We have Beckett's Pozzo saying, "We give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more" in Waiting for Godot, but who reads that past college? Who actually reads that in college?

It's possible there will be more open discussion about everyone dying when the Baby Boomers get even closer to it. If they haven't already, they will soon be realizing that their generation is going to be dying en masse in the very near future.

And unless or until you have a human skull to stare at, keep this idea in mind: you won't be far behind.

Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.

A Rioting Swarm Gathers No Mosque 08/25/2010

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I don't have the right kind of friends. I know this because not one of them has traveled in a bus through the United States arguing against Obama's socialist takeover of the country or burned Nancy Pelosi in effigy. Or burned Obama in effigy while traveling through Nancy Pelosi in a bus. Not ONE of my over-educated liberal elitist pay-what-you-can-theatre loving, The Wire-watching friends has sent me the hilarious email mentioned by Michael Goodwin in his timely and incisive opinion piece on foxnews.com: "Good News - The 'Move the Mosque' Movement is Growing". Tell me you don't feel your sides splitting because of all the mirth after reading this:

I just applied for a building permit for a new house. It was going to be 100 ft tall and 400 ft wide with 9 turrets at various heights and windows all over the place and a loud outside entertainment sound system. It would have parking for 200 old cars and I was going to paint it snot green with . . . pink trim. The City Council told me to f--- off. So I sent in the application again, but this time I called it a mosque. Work starts on Monday.

Get it? Your average (i.e. Christian, Obama-care hating, and rotund) American wants to build a giant hideous building somewhere and stupid bureaucrats will not let him, but a MUSLIM wants to build a giant hideous building and he's allowed to because bureaucrats love Muslims almost as much as they love screwing over populists. As Michael Goodwin states,

"It's a joke, one of those mass Internet mailings that gets a laugh and captures the spirit of the moment."

What concerns me is something I just quoted. That's right. The "mass Internet mailings" part. I use the internet. I check my email regularly to read the messages amazon.com has sent me confirming my order of the most recent Madeleine Albright memoir or This American Life CD compilation. Not ONCE have I found that humourous mosque email waiting for me in my inbox. I can only conclude that I don't have the right kind of friends.

I do, though, have a plan to remedy this situation. What I'm going to do is the following: convince a black or Middle Eastern-ish man with some ambiguous form of head-covering to walk through a crowd demonstrating against the mosque planned for the neighbourhood of Ground Zero. The first person who starts yelling at him and calling a coward? I'm giving that person my email address. Then Michael Goodwin and I can enjoy a good laugh in "the spirit of the moment" together.

No Need to Eat Pellets! 08/18/2010

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Dear Catastrophizer:
I am 62 years old and retired. I keep adding up the numbers of my budget to see if I am likely to outlive my money. Until yesterday it seemed safe to assume I would make it through my dotage without having to eat cat food, even once. But yesterday when I added up the same numbers I discovered an error in logic that I'd been making all along. Can you tell me where I can buy discount cat food? Would pellets for rodents deliver the same nutritional punch at a lower cost?

Thanks, in advance, for your advice.

Yours truly, Aging woman.

P.S. I know you're too young to be worrying about this kind of stuff

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you're never too young to worry about penury, infirmity, and death. That said, those fortunate enough to have lived for a while in consecutive years might be in a better position to appreciate how nice money, "firmity" and life are, and to suspect that they are probably not now or ever going to be discovered on Johnny Carson.

Allow me to answer this while also getting to talk about something else that's been thrilling me and to do so by discussing a scene from The Golden Girls. In a scene more bizarre than any shakily-filmed drug-using sequence from a motion picture, the girls host a talent show at which Bob Hope makes repeated jokes about Ronald Reagan. I was, of course, appalled, because no one is permitted to make light of Ronald anymore. He is a conservative icon, even though it turns out that the very conservatives who venerate him today would probably colour him red for commie if he were still around. He was in favour of reducing the number of nuclear weapons kicking about, after all. Hippie.

But let's get to the whether-to-eat-pellets portion of this entry. I mention The Golden Girls because their example could well prove to be instructive. Why did these golden girls ends up rooming together? Not because they wanted to giggle girlishly and pretend they were undergraduates. It was made clear intermittently on the show that Blanche, Dorothy, Sophia, and Rose lived together because they could not afford to live on their own. They were forced into cohabitation by the reality of an empty wallet. One of the earlier episodes features Rose desperately trying to find a job and finding it difficult to do so because she's old and has no work experience.

A side note: when Rue McClanahan started on the show, she was 51. When Kim Cattrall starred in the last Sex and the City movie, she was 54. I know that only because I checked imdb.com and not because I saw the film. Even though the idea of three lovely white ladies going to Abu Dhabi and acting like great big sluts is HILARIOUS.

So here's my advice: find a woman who's sex-loving, a woman who's dizzy-headed, a woman who's sharp-tongued, and another woman who's sharp-tongued AND extraordinarily tall and move in with them. With all of you splitting costs, it should be possible to survive not by eating pellets of any kind, but by sharing beans from cans.

I ALWAYS Put Myself Last 08/11/2010

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By now, you've probably heard about Steven Slater. You might not recognize the name, but when I add that he's the flight attendant who launched into a tirade on the PA system of an airplane, activated the emergency chute, grabbed some beer, and then slid away, you'll probably remember hearing about him.

He's been a flight attendant for years. But on this fateful (for him) day, he'd had enough. A passenger hit him with a bag and swore at him, and the resentment of decades could no longer be ignored.

Now he's everywhere:

On Facebook, a celebrity fan page for Slater already had nearly 8,000 members Tuesday morning. A thousand more people had joined a group called "Free Steven Slater," and fledgling groups included "I hate the mother f***** who called Steven Slater a mother f*****" and "I want Steven Slater to be my flight attendant."

CNN calls him "a folk hero of sorts". Why is he being embraced so passionately? Well, said some woman on CNN, he did what so many of us dream of doing: quitting in a spectacularly public fashion. Many of us understand what it is to be gradually beaten down by a thankless job, and we can live vicariously through him.

Fair enough. That makes sense. We all relate to the poor sod who's been repeatedly trodden on by an uncaring public. One question, though: who, then, sees him or herself as part of that uncaring public? Because there are lots of people in that group. Steven Slater may have been driven to escape via chute by one particular person, but it's clear his revolt was the product of years of ill-treatment. When we hear this story, we're so quick to align ourselves with him, with the underdog, but what if we're the reason he hated his job? What if we are the repugnant, selfish, unrepentant public?

It reminds me of the "I just give too much" people. You know them. They say things like, "I just give too much to other people. I have to learn to put myself first." Invariably, these people are the most selfish, irritating, self-righteous prigs around. And also invariably, when one hears one of those prigs trumpet his or her self-abnegation, one thinks, "That's so eerie. That's just like me. I totally give too much, too." Does anyone ever say, "You know what? I absolutely do not give too much. In fact, I take too much from other people. I have to stop being such a selfish jackass"?

It's easy to identify oneself with the mistreated, the overlooked, the beaten down. But don't forget, someone's also doing the mistreating, the overlooking, and the beating. That someone could be you. It can't be me, because my problem is that I give too much.

Our Banners in Triumph Shall Wave 08/04/2010

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Dear Catastrophizer,

I have recently rented a new apartment in a downtown neighbourhood of a major North American city. The neighbourhood is mostly populated by the city’s vibrant gay community and known for its bon-amie and joie-de-vivre. Earlier this week when visiting the building to sign my lease, I noticed that instead of the standard rainbow-coloured “Pride” flag, the balcony of the unit next to my soon-to-be new home was adorned with a “Gadsden” flag (named for the American revolutionary figure Christopher Gadsden) which bears the motto “Don’t Tread on Me”. I have since read that the Gadsden flag has been recently adopted by Tea Party movement in the U.S.

My question is: what sort gesture of hospitality should I extent to my new neighbours? I initially thought I would prepare them a basket of vegan baked goods, but now I am uncertain. Any guidance you can give me in this pursuit would be greatly appreciated.

A Faithful Reader

I'm not going to lie: you're in an unenviable position. Allow me to explain (at length).

You may be aware that various French men from the 1970's had adorable theories about how things like the clothes we wear are actually systems of signs invested with profound social and philosophical significance. We "read" the outfits of other people and then use those readings as the basis for invariably harsh, albeit fancy, judgements.

And it doesn't just have to be clothes. Think of the posters you put up when you were a teenager. They defined you; they were outward manifestations of your taste; they were like a mating call that might be answered by a like-minded individual if you'd ever been fortunate enough to have such an individual in your room.

So your neighbour's flag is important. That flag Says Something. The problem is, what? What, so help me Wikipedia, is that flag supposed to be saying?

The Gadsen flag has indeed been adopted by the Tea Party movement. However, it has also been adopted by a number of other suspicious and rebellious groups. For example (and I quote, as is my wont, directly from Wikipedia):

Athletic apparel company Nike uses the image of a snake coiled around a soccer ball for an ongoing, patriotic "Don't Tread On Me" campaign in support of the United States men's national soccer team. The phrase has become a rallying cry for American soccer fans and the Gadsden flag can occasionally be seen at national team games.
The Boy Scouts of America frequently fly this flag at campouts, ceremonies, and jamborees.
The flag appears in the Disney animated television series Recess, raised above the home of the character Gustav, whose father is a Marine. It is seen in the first episode's segment titled, "The New Kid," which addresses individuality and tyranny.
Metallica later used the flag on their self-dubbed "Black Album" as a song name ("Don't Tread on Me"), and on the cover of the album, the snake from the flag is in the lower right hand corner. 311's eighth studio album is titled "don't tread on me" released 2005, and also of significance is the Cro-Mags' track of the same title.
The New Jersey based punk rock group Titus Andronicus features one on the cover of their self-titled album, and the flag is frequently seen with them on tour.
The flag has also been used as a critical prop in several movies and TV shows, such as in the final episode of Jericho, where it was flown to signal the titular town's independence. The flag also hung on the wall of Sam Seaborn's office in the television series The West Wing. Inspecting Sam's flag carefully, you will notice the prop was constructed in error. The bottom stripe is white instead of red.

So. What do all these bullets I couldn’t figure out how to double-space tell us about your predicament? Your neighbour could be:
1) a rabid fan of American men’s soccer
2) a proud and public supporter of the Boy Scouts
3) a rabid and public fan of a Disney child named Gustav
4) a lover of a) Metallica b) 311 c) Cro-Mags d) Titus Andronicus (hope for this one - they’re really good)
5) a worshipper of the West Wing, or
6) one of those people who sent all those peanuts to the TV networks to prevent the cancellation of Jericho.

If the flag-hanger next door is 1, 4d, 5, or 6, there’s a good chance your vegan treats would be greeted with heart-felt gratitude. If, though, your neighbour is any of the other things, vegan treats would enrage him/her. Boy Scouts and Gustav hate hippies.

I am ready to speak decisively on this matter, having made lists involving numbers AND letters. Be sly. Manage to run into your neighbour and be spy-sneaky when conversing. Say things like: “It’s funny - that terrifying blond woman from CSI: Miami was really good as a Republican on the West Wing” or “Some Kind of Monster was the reason I started going to therapy” or “I love boy-scouts” (which could backfire, given). Watch your neighbour’s response carefully. If you suspect you might learn to like this person, give him/her vegan treats. If you suspect you'll learn to desperately try to avoid this person, give him/her vegan treats. There. That was easy.

Kate + 8 + the Former Governor of Alaska 07/28/2010

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If you, as I am, are preternaturally attuned to the publication of not-entirely-substantiated stories involving unpleasant reality-tv stars with whom you're not entirely familiar and once-were lady politicians who compare themselves with Shakespeare, then you probably already know the following: it seems Kate Gosselin (the one with the large head and many children) will be taking her adorable television children camping in Alaska with the large-headed and equally adorable former governor Sarah Palin.

There are many obvious things that could be said here about the blurring of the line between the apparently entertaining and the putatively political, about crass and conspicuous opportunism, about this being the final sign of the imminence of Armageddon. I'd rather throw more bodies in the camper-van. Here are the other people I think would profit from going on an outdoor adventure with Kate Gosselin and Sarah Palin:

1) Tony Hayward: He's no longer at BP, so he's got more time on his hands. He could use an image boost, as everyone tends to hate him. But one glimpse of Tony surreptitiously trying to drill for oil while dealing with the madcap escapades of 8 adorable child hooligans would surely be enough to catapult him back into our good graces.

2) Rod Blagojevich: I just think he should be everywhere, at all times.

3) Mel Gibson: If he wants to restore his image (back to what it was before this time AND the time before when he was upset at women and Jews), he should start by showing a softer side by surrounding himself with delightful tots, dim-witted/opportunistic women and the great outdoors. And Danny Glover should be there, too.

4) Justin Bieber: He can't let himself get lazy. Or soft. He has to continue to challenge himself by trying to escape from teenage girls on a segway across different types of terrain. Also, the teenage girls willing to follow him to Alaska would be the really crazy ones. And Kate Gosselin would totally fight them. It would be awesome.

5) Shirley Sherrod: She's hot right now. Really hot. And while she seems like a nice, sensible person, they could always edit her scenes later to make her look like a total racist.

The Mad Trekker's Tea Party 07/21/2010

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Dear Mr. Federation President:

I am a great admirer of the Tea Party Express, an exciting grassroots political movement in the United States that is for underground bunkers and against secret Communists.

Recently, the NAACP (I don't know what that stands for, but I know it has something to do with organized whining!!) came out and said the Tea Party movement was racist, just because there are so many racists in it.

Tea Party Express organizer and, inevitably, conservative talk radio host Mark Williams responded to this charge by writing a devilishly clever satirical piece in the form of satire. Here's just one hilarious satirical snippet from this satire:

"We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!"

LOL! I am laughing so hard at this satire, it is difficult to write!!

Some people, though, did not realize that because this letter was satirical, it could not be racist. The National Tea Party Federation (which the Tea Party Express belonged to even though everyone in it thought Swift's A Modest Proposal was really about eating Irish babies!!) expelled the Tea Party Express so it could prove it wasn't satirically racist to the gay, socialist, secret Muslims who run this county.

You're probably wondering why I'm writing to you about all this. Well, Tea Party Express spokesman Joe Wierzbicki got so mad at the secret lesbian Unitarians who run the National Tea Party Federation that he said the following:

"The Tea Party Express with over 400,000 members is by far larger than the Tea Party Federation's entire membership. Most rank-and-file tea party activists think we're talking about Star Trek when we try to explain who the 'Federation' is. Given the absurdity of the actions by the 'Federation,' this is quite fitting, since their conduct is alien to our membership."

Well, further thought (and over 5,000 letters from members of a powerful political lobbying group known as LARP) has led him to the conclusion he may have spoken in haste. It may be that the United Federation of Planets has something to teach the Tea Party movement. I've learned that:

The United Federation of Planets (abbreviated as UFP and commonly referred to as the Federation) was an interstellar federal republic, composed of planetary governments that agreed to exist semi-autonomously under a single central government based on the principles of universal liberty, rights, and equality, and to share their knowledge and resources in peaceful cooperation and space exploration.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in favour of it when secret fascists form giant, taxation-addicted governments, but when Tea Party activists band together to lead a tithe-enhanced libertarian rebellion, well, that's something else.

The thing is, when right-wing fringe groups join forces to fight secret Jon Stewart Bolsheviks, we stop being so fringe-y. We start being able to do outrageous things like influence elections. We don't like losing fringe credibility by forming larger organizations, and we certainly don't like working with other groups whose ideas won't fit on their placards, but we do quite like setting the national agenda and listening to Anderson Cooper say our names.

I would be so grateful if you could give me advice to pass along to Joe Wierzbicki about how to how to transform autonomous organizations into semi-autonomous ones that are controlled by the Tea Party and that agree to abide by the principles of:

Rampant reactionism
Aggressive anti-Communism
Capitalist boosterism
Insistent insurrectionism
Small-governmentism
Mongerism (of most things)

Live long and do really well! Thank you in advance for all your help,

An Ardent Tea-Party Supporter

Little Did They Know 07/07/2010

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I often feel as though unborn children are laughing at me. That people who do not yet exist are already beginning to snicker. If one is a thoughtful, sensitive, imaginative person (I am obviously referring to myself AND preparing to say something terribly portentous), then one realizes life is like a book one will never finish, like a movie one will miss the end of, like other things one thinks are gripping that one will be prevented from seeing through until the end.

I recently heard Dr. Michio Kaku, a fancy string-theory person who is pictured on his website looking like Doctor Who standing in front of a powerful fan, talk about his new book, Physics of the Impossible. He claims that, because we can now teleport atoms, it might be possible in the future to teleport larger things. Like Dr. Michio Kaku. He also contends that time travel might be possible in the future, and that the reason we don't notice that we're surrounded by time travelers from the future is that they are wearing clothes that make them invisible (which will also be possible in the future).

These are very exciting suggestions. I would like to be teleported. I would like to travel back in time and stare knowingly and condescendingly at the people who can't see me through my invisibility clothes.

But, you know what? I probably won't live long enough these things happen. Dr. Kaku probably won't live long enough to see these things happen. Even if I do live long enough to see these things happen, I won't live long enough to see the equally exciting things that will happen after my death happen. I will never know how this all ends, whether this all ends, which science fiction narratives were eerily prescient. Smug little future people will look back at my generation and think smug things like: "How did they ever get around without hover Hummers?" "They ate food?! What a quaint, curious thing to do?" "They had organs? How impractical!"

I hate that the people of the future will know more than I do. When I studied the period "between the wars" (1918-1939 for those of you who haven't yet discovered the glory that is looking back smugly at generations past), I was haunted by the fact that the people who lived then didn't know they were living between the wars. They probably thought of themselves as simply post-war. But I know better. I know that the world was headed for yet another appalling conflagration. And they didn't. Which means that some irritating undergraduate with great self-regard will think something about us. She/he will think how amazing it was that we didn't know yet. About the coming war? About the unprecedentedly important scientific discovery? Who knows. I don't, and that drives me crazy.

TERRORISTS disrupt G20 in summit shocker! 06/30/2010

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Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, whom many up to this point thought of as a reasonably reasonable individual, has declared that the Black Bloc hooligans who broke windows at the recent G20 Summit in Toronto were "terrorists."

This thrills me. Not because I welcome the threat to my imaginary storefront, but because this may be a sign that Toronto, previously a modest and restrained metropolis, should be awarded the highest civic honour with which I am familiar: a sister city in Northern New York.

Unfortunately (for me, and, I'm sure, for two or three other people) newscasts produced by local Northern New York television stations are not readily available on the internet. If they were, I would be able to introduce you in a far more dramatic and credible fashion to...the Rock Sniper.

Over the course of three weeks in 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, better known as the "Beltway Snipers", shot and killed ten people. When, soon after this occurred, windows in Watertown (I'm pretty sure it was Watertown - as I said, the case has, inexcusably, not been well-documented on the internet) were targeted and broken by rocks, the rhetorical temptation was unavoidable. They were dealing with the "Rock Sniper". They interviewed residents who'd borne (or rather whose windows had borne) the brunt of the Rock Sniper's rage. They solemnly intoned the phrase: "The Rock Sniper has struck again." They provided anxious viewers with Rock Sniper updates. Just as people on the east coast of the U.S. were gripped by the fear that they would randomly be shot, so too were the people of Watertown gripped by the fear that their windows would randomly be broken. Which of the two groups suffered more grievously from fear? Who can tell?The word "sniper" has the remarkable ability to reveal the essential resemblance between situations which, to the untutored eye, might seem a tad different.

And now Chief Blair has revealed the same remarkable ability in the word "terrorist." Denizens of Toronto should immediately proceed to sympathize volubly with New Yorkers, Israelis, Palestinians..etc...etc... we can now shake our heads slowly and sadly and reflect on the terrible toll that terrorism takes on civil society. When someone speaks to a Torontonian of a "death toll", he or she can respond with harrowing tales of the "window toll."

A final note: it wasn't just Chief Blair who used inspired and entirely defensible rhetorical flourishes in discussing the G20. Judy Rebick, a well-known local hippie ne-er-do-well, also insistently drew an ingenious and tenable parallel between totally comparable things when she referred to just about everything as being "like a concentration camp." Bravo to everyone involved!

I was quite depressed when the journalist and television host Steve Paikin avoided any such illuminating phrases while describing his experience of seeing a journalist roughed-up by police. THEN, thankfully, he began his defense of the reasonableness and docility of a crowd of protestors by describing it as "middle-class" and I could rejoice once more.

The Kids Aren't All Right 06/24/2010

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I got another write-in question. That's right. And this time it's from someone who is not in the least related to me. Not by blood, at least. It's a very sensible question about whether children should have friends.

The NYT helpfully informs me that "best friends" for children are, in fact, bad for them. Is this just more overprotection? I figured if anyone could see the downsides of having (or not having) a BFF, it's the Catastrophizer.

In "A Best Friend: You Must Be Kidding", Hilary Stout discusses opinions held by various professionals about whether children should develop close attachments to other children.

"I don't think it's particularly healthy for a child to rely on one friend," says Jay Jacobs, director of Timber Lake Camp in New York State. "If something goes awry, it can be devastating. It also limits a child's ability to explore other options in the world."

However, as Stout notes: "The last people who should be considered credible when it comes to childhood psychology are camp directors." No, she didn't say that. She said: "Many psychologists believe that close childhood friendships not only increase a child's self-esteem and confidence, but also help children develop the skills for healthy adult relationships - everything from empathy, the ability to listen and console, to the process of arguing and making up".

So what should one do, or think behind other people's backs while they do?

1) If a child has a close friendship, it will undoubtedly end badly. Childhood friendships are grounded in things like a shared love of the colour orange or a shared hatred of the colour orange. When children grow older, and they will, they'll realize that friendship is more complicated. Based more on whether one likes or dislikes Wolf Blitzer, for example. Of course, the fact that the childhood friendship will inevitably end badly could be seen as a good thing: adult friendships are also inclined to end badly, or at least to become trapped in a defeated, passive-aggressive stalemate, so early experiences of interpersonal failure will prepare him or her for the interpersonal disappointments of later life.

2) If a child has multiple, less serious friendships with other children, he or she will probably never develop whatever skills are necessary for forming and maintaining healthy, grown-up relationships. He or she will always be lonely in a crowd, overly thick-skinned (or overly thin-skinned) and sociopathic.

3) Don't get worked up. I can testify to the fact that this is not an either/or proposition: it is entirely possible to be a child and not form either one unhealthy, intense friendship or a number of superficial friendships. I'm sure it will bring you great comfort to know that it is likely that neither of these problems will ever be yours, nor those of any children of yours.

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