842 MWG - The Programs (Part 2b)

Sunday, August 20, 2006

More synopses of the programs I attended at the Mensa World Gathering.

Belly Dance Basics

An Orlando pro (and Mensan, who later performed at the formal dinner. I didn't go to the dinner, but I did go to watch the performance.) In this 1-hour "lesson" she had us doing snake arms, florios, shoulder shakes, shoulder shimmies, rib lifts and vertical and horizontal rib circles, hip lifts and drops, large and tiny hip circles, horizontal and vertical 8s in both directions, flat foot shimmies, shimmies on toes, layering, belly rolls, the whole shebang. It was easy to get the impression that she wasn't so much teaching anything as demonstrating "see what I can do and you can't?" If there was any stretching or warmup, it was so brief I don't remember it. But at the end, I was amazed at how loose and how good I felt. I've missed it. I'm going to have to start doing the movements again. I don't have to actually dance, I've never been really comfortable "dancing" outside my own kitchen, but the movements as exercise are wonderful!

The Answer Is Communication

This talk was given by a gorgeous very muscular(yuck) guy with a beard, and a bleached mullet(double yuck!), wearing a black leather vest and dripping with chains and metal(yuck yuck). Absolutely not my type, but within minutes that virtuality in the back of my head had settled on the same scenario playing on all three screens. Something about dragging him behind a bush or something. He was so sensitive!

Huh? Oh, yeah. Back to the session.

He was saying that communication (within a relationship) serves two purposes, transmitting information, and achieving understanding. A common pool of understanding creates safety. You can't be any better in handling relationships than the quality of that pool of information.

Crucial conversations are those where the stakes are high, the emotions are high, and the issue is important. They are usually about disagreements or disappointments. We are chemically set up to fail at crucial conversations - anger takes blood away from the brain. We can walk away or we can face the situation, but facing it often means handling it badly, so the response to a crucial conversation is too often silence or violence.

Most of his talk was based on two books, Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations (see here) which he recommends highly. He says that the books say the same things over and over, to the point where it becomes annoying, but then it starts to sink in, and you realize that the repetition is necessary to get past your initial resistance. You can learn how to handle crucial conversations on your side, I guess, but if you are in a relationship with someone who has the "silence or violence" response, all you can do is try to create a place where the other feels safe. If he or she still won't talk, then there's nothing you can do.

Coincidentally, Chris of Inane Thoughts and Insane Ramblings mentioned these same books in a recent posting. Chris lists the the three important questions to ask yourself (they're under his "Unconditional Love" subheading).

[Something I noticed after I returned home: I seem to have subconsciously chosen several sessions that had a bearing on my relationship with Roman. He and I broke it off as anything beyond a friendship the Friday morning before I left for Orlando. I removed my pillow, robe, toothbrush, and overnight case from his home that morning. That made it sort of official and in my mind pretty final, more final than the previous two breakups.

Many of the talks I attended clarified for me what was wrong with "us".

Roman's response to crucial conversations is definitely silence or anger. He feels "more comfortable" with the other woman precisely because !they don't have! crucial conversations. Her reaction when she found out about me is a perfect example. She asked no "who", "why", or "when" questions. She just froze him out. Silence. They never talked about it, at least not to the point of understanding anything.

I, on the other hand, need to have those high-stakes emotional talks. I need to understand. I need to know what he needs, what he wants. When he shuts me out, I keep asking, gently, not in a threatening manner, but he sees it as "pushing".

I need a companion who is not afraid of introspection, who will address problems when they occur, who can feel safe in my haven. I don't see how two people can work together toward common goals without that kind of open safe "communicational" sharing.

Unfortunately, that's not Roman. At least not now, and maybe not ever. After the Gathering, I see it clearly now. But I still love him, of course, he is still the same person, and I want him to be happy. I am sad because I don't see how he can be happy with someone with whom he can't or won't talk reasonably with about the important issues. He may think he's happiest with that. Because she doesn't want it either, he probably sees her and their relationship as calm and steady. But that's exactly what killed his prior marriage, he wouldn't broach important topics with her either, and he still doesn't really see it. He's missing so much of the fullness and comfort of intimacy. He's afraid of intimacy. He probably doesn't even know that he's never had it. I could cry for him.]

Fishbowl

Fishbowls have been a Mensa Gathering staple for at least 30 years that I know of. I've never heard of them in any other context. They are always held very late, starting about 10:30 pm. At some point the doors are closed and latecomers are turned away. The room is divided, with the women on one side (or in an inner circle) and the men on the other side (or in an outer circle). The men are, as a group, to come up with a set of questions they would like the women to address, on assigned topics like sex, intimacy, relationships, and so on. The women do the same. The questions are given to the moderator.

The moderator will select one of the men's questions to ask the women. The women have a certain set amount of time to discuss it. Now, here's the important part - the women are NOT to answer or speak to the men, or even, really, look at them. The women are to address each other, and discuss the answer to the question among themselves, in their circle. Girl talk. Slumber-party-style. They are to give their own personal views and opinions, from their own personal experience, and not to try to reach a general consensus, or attempt to convince each other. Just talk about it. The men may listen, but they are not allowed to speak at all, not even to clarify the question or ask further questions. They must remain absolutely silent or they will be thrown out. That's why it's called a fishbowl.

Then it's the men's turn to discuss a question from the women. Same rules.

Primary among the rules is that nothing that is said or done is to leave the room, so I can't tell specifics of any of the experiences or opinions here (to protect the guilty, I guess), but I see no harm in mentioning the questions.

What I found most amusing was the absolute cluelessness apparent in the men's questions. They were so naive it was cute. I know we have a lot of nerds (gotta love 'em!) and geeks, but what other set of 50 men from any other group, given an opportunity like this, would come up with a question like "How can I tell if you're interested, how do I know that I can approach you without rejection?" or "How do I know when we're 'in a relationship'?"

That second question had the women shaking their heads. The first third of their ("their" rather than "our" because since this was my first fishbowl in twenty years, I mostly just listened) time was spent trying to figure out what the men meant by "in a relationship", and wondering how anyone would not simply KNOW. Then they just defined what "relationship", in all its individual manifestations, meant to them and what they expected of their partner in a relationship. One of the women said that maybe by "in a relationship", the men were actually asking "when is it ok to ask for sex?", so the discussion went that direction for a bit.

Nerds. Ya gotta love them. They're just plain sweet.

Caution: Do not try this at home. Fishbowls are not a good idea in a group of people who regularly hang around together. Even though nothing is supposed to leave the room, things do get remembered, and can lead to awkward misunderstandings. Not to mention gossip.

Drug War: How We Got Into this Mess, and the Special Interests that Keep Us Here

This was an excellent and eyeopening presentation of the history of drug regulation, "illegal" drugs, and who profits from keeping them illegal. The full and amazing PowerPoint presentation can be found at http://www.dpft.org/speakers.html. Scroll down to Suzanne Wills and click on the presentation name.

Logic Problem Tournament

I registered for this. We were given 90 minutes to solve six logic problems, 2 easy, 2 medium, and 2 difficult. You got a certain number of points for each correct solution (more for the harder ones), plus one point for each minute remaining in the tournament. (So if you solved a problem in the first five minutes you got an additional 90-5=85 points.) The moderator said that the average person would solve two in the 90 minutes, and the winner would probably solve three. I got excited because two of the problems were grid-type problems, and I'm really good at them, and one was topographical, and I'm often intuitive on them. So that's what I dove into.

I was doing well, except ---

We were sitting at tiny rickety card tables. On either side of me was a man and a woman. The woman entered the room with a huge bowl of snacks from the hospitality room. While we were working on the problems, the man ate the entire bowlful, starting with the pretzels. Loudly. Sloppily. Crumbily. That wouldn't have been too bad, but - have you ever seen the video on America's Funniest Home Videos of the little girl taking a test, the one where she jumps and violently moves the papers around after making every checkmark? Well, the woman on my left was like that. She didn't use the grids provided on the problem sheets. She used the scrap paper provided, and swoosh swoosh swoosh drew her own pencil grids. She'd make a few fast Xs, and then she'd ERASE THE WHOLE DAMN GRID and start over! The table shook with every swoosh and erasure. I don't know why she didn't just use fresh scrap paper. Every time she shook the table, I lost my place on my grids, a critical problem when you get to the "what if this is true" stage. She pissed me off so thoroughly I got up and walked out. (I later solved five of the six problems sitting on the patio by the lake. In less than an hour. I'm pissed. Royally. I coulda been a contender.)

(If you'd like to see what I mean by "logic grid problems", try some of these. Even the ones rated most difficult are pretty easy, because the ones at this site rarely require the "what if" approach.)

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It's late. More tomorrow.