On Being Goldilocks

“You need to go to a harder school like one of the Seven Sisters. You’d make a perfect Smithie…” my friend Don used to muse.

So I begged my parents, European-born physicians who, with more generosity than I knew, funded my college education.

“Why?" they said. "Tell us one thing you would learn at Smith that you can’t learn at TCU.”

I couldn’t provide them with that information, but I was right. TCU, with its preening sorority wannabes, was manifestly unsuited to my adolescent persona: short haircut, blue jeans, hiking boots, and no makeup, ever. For my parents, college was Karlova University in the ancient center of Prague; they can be forgiven for not understanding the diversity of cultures that exists in American centers of learning.

Oddly, though, they were right, too. As an intellectually curious student, I turned out to be sort of manna in the desert for the professors at that small party school in north central Texas, and as a result I got to do pretty much anything I wanted. In my sophomore year, in a graduate level psychophysiology class, I autopsied a sheep brain, and drilled into the one of a live rat (yes, it was anesthetized! Though nowadays I would have animal-cruelty objections, anyway) implanting an electrode in its hypothalamus. Twenty-five years later, I heard the professor whose student I’d been, on NPR, discussing how his groundbreaking research with aging mice applied to humans. No, he didn’t even pretend to remember me when I sent him an email..

By twenty, I knew most of the neurotransmitters, and can still draw a pretty decent neuron and explain exactly what, on a cellular level, a term like ‘selective serotonin reuptake inhibotor’ means. Even though my GRE’s stank, after three years as an undergraduate I got into a top-flight phD program on the strength of an enthusiastic letter from my advisor to his old buddy at SUNY Stony Brook.

After which it all came tumbling down, but that’s in another story. My point is, that small place helped me to make an impression on people I would have never even met, in a place like Smith.
Nowadays, I find myself in an oddly similar position – and this time, I far better know its benefits.

Stopped by one of my favorite shops this afternoon, Hooked on Books at Academy and Maizeland. Mary Young, the owner, was in. She and I met decades ago, when I, pregnant with my first child, ducked out of the rain into her store. I told her how much I approved of Mike Merrifield’s choice of her establishment to officially announce his candidacy for county commissioner. Only, I misspoke, and said Matt Mayberry instead.

“Well, with all the political M-M’s in town, maybe Matt should run for something, too,” Mary chuckled.

“I don’t really see Matt as a political animal, the way Merrifield is,’ I said.

One of the shop assistants walked by. “I think Matt is too smart to run for political office, frankly.” He contributed. Mr. Mayberry’s apparently a friend of his family.

As I walked out, I thought about how interesting it is that I, a spectacularly unambitious special education teacher, know, at least on a handshaking level, both of these M-M’s.

Every summer I visit the Pacific Northwest. I ride the ferries, walk the beaches, ache to sail its waters as I did in my twenties. I read the newspapers, both alternative and mainstream, and ponder their level of sophistication, and the insouciant intelligence of the audience to which they speak. The bus I take into town drops me off in front of Bennihana concert hall, and I eye the seriously world-class talent advertised on its walls with a certain level of envy – not that I could afford to go to those performances!

I come back to this city, to my own relief. The Springs has become home not only because of the forested hills and mountains that greet me just outside my door, as I step out for a run or a ride. It’s home because I am sort of its Goldilocks. There are, count them, 5 YMCA’s, but the people at the desk downtown greet me by name. So do, for that matter, the owners of my two favorite cycling shops – and though I aspire to a certain athleticism, I never finish even in the top third of a race. There are two major museums, but I’ve met key people in both of them. The most famous soprano in town teaches in the same building as I do. And so on.

Colorado Springs is large enough to have substantial institutions, yet small enough that a reasonably ordinary person can claim a nodding acquaintance with folks that run at least some of its radio stations, museums, and newspapers. This is what’s kept me here, I think.

Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with that comment about being the biggest fish in a small pond, or was it the biggest man in an Alpine village? Either way, I guess I know exactly what he meant. I’m a pretty small fish – but in this pond, even I get to swim with the bigger ones, and sometimes the swim is kinda fun.

Tonight, I find all this rather appealing. No doubt the feeling will go away during the next local election.