The other day I got in trouble with my some of my family for sending a group text that got read as snippy. (“Sixty-eight-year-old guy does a poor job of communicating nuance in a text” – Stop the presses!) I was not being snippy – I was just in a hurry. I later argued, in my defense, had I ever sent them a snippy text? (No.) Why was I not given the benefit of the doubt this time? One dear family member said that if I had just added a smiley-face emoji it would’ve been fine. Continuing my defense I asked if I had ever, in my whole life, intentionally sent an emoji? (No.) As we continued hashing this out (hey, it’s what we do – it can be truly exhausting to be in a family with me), I wondered aloud if, had this same text been sent by someone else, wouldn’t that person have been cut a little more slack? The response was, “Yes, but you are always so careful with your words, so your curtness stood out.”

Well, pardon my ass for a life-time of empathic care-taking. (Wink.) (“Wink” is as close as I come to an emoji.)

But, I get it.

If someone is two standard deviations above the mean in anything (thoughtfulness, patience, willingness to listen, ability to focus, friendliness, ability to remember names, care with personal hygiene, fielding a grounder . . .), should that person exhibit just an average level of that quality/trait/behavior it gets read as BELOW AVERAGE.

I hate those damn movies where the stoic dick of a dad – the guy whose own dad mistreated him and so he hadn’t learned how to love, or who was so hell-bent on his career that he forgot to be a caring dad as the kids were growing up – finally gets it at the end of the movie. In the back of the gym, backlit, yet recognizable by his outline and his ever-present cigarette or distinctive cap, he finally shows up, to watch Junior make the winning bucket, or get his only minute of playing time, or whateverTF. But then . . . hugs all around, “I knew you’d make it, Dad,” and the knowing, grateful nod from the beleaguered, sad-eyed wife. And all is forgiven.

Well hell. You mean I coulda chosen NOT to plan all those family vacations (and work to be able to pay for them), not read all those books at bedtime, not sat on those painful, too-low plastic stools attached to the school cafeteria tables, and still been at the same place in my family by just showing up once when they were 18? I coulda gone golfing instead of coaching little league? Coulda slept in instead of taking my share of wee-hours feedings? I could have gone fishing? And then, by sacrificing just one evening, showing up at the gym – well, maybe one evening for each kid — I could have, in the famous words of Harry Dunne, “totally redeemed myself”?

I don’t think so. But . . . .

One of our sons used to frustrate me when he wouldn’t study hard for the first test of the year in a high school class. He’d argue, “If I get a low grade on that first test I have the whole rest of the grading period to make it up.” Sidebar: He was the king of the “89.6.” If he earned an 89.6 for the grading period that would be rounded up to a 90 which was an ‘A’; if he earned anything higher he’d think he had spent too much time on that class and not enough on the other classes, on tennis, on his friends and the rest of living. I’d of course counter with the old saw, “Son, listen, you have only one chance to make a first impression. You get an ‘A’ on that first test and the teacher pegs you as an ‘A’ student. The rest of the year if she can’t quite suss out what you’ve written, she’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.” (For the record, Dr. Bias has done alright for himself.)

But now I am thinking that my son was wise in this matter (as in most things).

Maybe there is value in being a late bloomer, a late adopter, just . . . late. Be selfish. Give in to the urgings of your LESSER angels. If you are at, say, the 20th percentile for years, then, hell, a later 65 looks like a B+.