Some More Questions and Some More Answers
By Dewey Turner
Hey Dewey,
I know it’s late to be telling anybody this, but all I really want for Christmas is a hoodie. Not just any hoodie, though. I want one of those hoodies that you can disappear into so that when you’re out walking your dog you’re so deeply recessed that you don’t have to make eye contact with anybody, and you don’t have to make conversation, not even the low stakes kind of exchanges that are supposed to be easy and rewarding, but are usually the opposite for someone like me who can’t help feeling a pressure, an expectation, to perform in interactions with others, and not just perform, but do so in a clever and memorable way, all of which is to say I have low-grade social anxiety and the only thing I can think might help me day to day is the right kind of hoodie.
I already have a couple, but the hoods aren’t deep enough, and when I wear a baseball cap underneath to shade my eyes from the low winter sun the hoodies press down too tightly on my head.
I know I should just buy a new one, something inside of which I can feel hidden, protected, cocooned—warm and invisible. But so far I’ve been unable to swipe right because hardly any of them are all-cotton, and even the ones that say they’re all-cotton sometimes sneak synthetic material into the cuffs and collar, which makes my skin crawl. And what if it doesn’t have a deep enough hood and my face isn’t sufficiently obscured in shadow, and how can I justify spending so much money on something so self-indulgent, and which is the best way to go—zipper or pullover? Unlined or lined? Then there’s the whole problem of choice overload—All those brands! All those styles!
Apparently, I’m something called a maximizer, someone obsessed with making the best choice possible, overwhelmed by options and prone to second-guessing and regret, when life would be easier if I were a satisficer, the kind of person who is happy with whatever seems good enough in the moment. Clearly there are two kinds of people in the world: those who buy into binary interpretations of human behavior such as this one, and those who can’t make up their minds because there are too many other credible theories for how we make, or are reluctant to make, decisions.
It’s a lot to think about. I just wish I had that hoodie already so I could put it on, cover my head, hide inside it, then go out and walk the dog.
Exposed
Dear Expo,
Just remember what the psychologist D.W. Winnicott said: “It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.”
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Dewey Turner spent much of his childhood in Polk County, Florida, and has been trying to leave ever since. But like James Joyce, self-exiled from Dublin, he keeps returning in one way or another. He reports–with some consternation but no real surprise–that a great number of the kids he knew when he was a boy grew up to become Florida Man.
GOT A QUESTION FOR “HEY DEWEY”? Email [email protected].
