Page 41 - WhyAsInY

WHo are tHese PeoPle? (Part 1)
you, I did not grow up in an area where kids of high school age could drive, and no one known to me drank alcohol. I could not travel to Man- hattan or to any other manifestly dangerous borough until I was fifteen—and, even then, I could not travel unaccompanied. (This became a real problem when I wanted to visit camp girlfriends who lived in Queens; you had to change trains at 34th Street in Manhattan.)
I would be required to call in immediately when I reached each destination to which I did travel. Thus, if I failed to phone home at the appointed time, or if I failed to make the call when my mother had cal- culated that I should have arrived, then she would be the one who would pick up the telephone. A distress call would go out to the parent of the friend whom I was visiting; worse, to the friend himself; or, worst of all, to the friend herself. Embarrassment was not the only issue. I wish that it had been, but my mother’s worrying, irrational though I thought it to be, set the stage very effectively for a strong dose of guilt. (The worrying never stopped: When I was working as the general counsel at Coronet Properties at 505 Park Avenue, I was called out of a conference only to discover that my mother, having heard that there was some form of dis- turbance somewhere on Park Avenue—she knew not where—had telephoned to assure herself that I was all right.)
When, in my young adult life, I would challenge my mother about what I considered to be her overprotectiveness, she would remind me that she and my father had allowed me to go to an “out-of-town col- lege,” with the implication or the explicit message that a major concession that entailed a good bit of emotional sacrifice on her part had occurred. The fact that I was her only child obviously did not help, and, in my view, her overprotectiveness led me to be very risk averse, both as a child and in adult life. That is not to say that I didn’t make what might seem to be life-changing decisions. It is to say, however, that those deci- sions were hardly of the pioneering type. In fact, it would be difficult to call my life at all unconventional. And that is something that I regret.
In fairness, I must say that my mother did not limit her worrying to me. For years, when my father would make a house call, my mother would insist upon accompanying him, not, of course, to assist in the
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