The second installment of my adventures with Howdy Boy, aka Troy Anderson (Stanford ’89/’90). In the first installment (my 3/8 posting “Howdy”), with the folksy-friendly salutation “Howdy”, he introduced himself as a student in my gigantic 1989 syntax course — and thanked me for not flunking him. Now, I have a passionate interest (both personal and scholarly) in people’s lives — their daily lives and their life histories — so when I learned that Troy was not only a Stanford football player (a huge guy who looks like the offensive tackle he was at Stanford) but also a high-ranking Go player, now a business executive, who got a BA in anthropology, and as a member of the Coquille tribe in Oregon compiled a dictionary of its lost language, Miluk, for his MA thesis in linguistics, well, I was totally intrigued. We embarked on learning about each other.
Meanwhile, there was the almost flunking out. I wrote him:
It [has] occurred to me that if there was any chance of your flunking out, it would have been because you were juggling too many balls at once, always a danger for very smart manic multi-taskers, as you obviously were at the time (and probably still are).
(I’ll return to the barely not flunking out below). And I added:
I haven’t been able to piece together your history in recent years, so if you could fill me in some, I’d like to hear about it. I might try to talk you into letting me write about you on my blog. (You can sample my blog at www.arnoldzwicky.org.)
Troy turned out to be extraordinarily open in his response — giving me an inventory of major life events, some quite personal in nature, offering to supply further details, and inviting me to post whatever I wanted. An attitude that resonates with the way he presents himself; as I wrote to him a little while later:
you’re a sunny person; your most natural facial expression is a smile of pleasure... I take that disposition to be a sign of a way of being, a moral quality — of openness, of empathy, of enthusiastic commitment. In any case, whether you know it or not, you project a kind of niceness (despite your imposing body) that has surely served you well in life
Clearly, I appreciated his brand of charm, despite his being so startlingly unlike me (except for sharing linguistics, that sunny presentation of self, and serious moral commitments).
But then, more or less in the middle of the inventory, came a swerve and a surprise.
The inventory. Troy wrote, rather laconically: “happy to give you the whole spiel … there are a number of aspects”. I’ve edited and rearranged the inventory some, also divided it into the public sphere and the private sphere (where the swerve occurs). And added a bit in the private sphere that came from later e-mail exchanges.
public sphere:
– Stanford football
– Go player
– wrote a book The Way of Go: … for Business and Life
– Miluk dictionary writer
– Soto Zen indoctrinated
– indigenous language advocate
– cofounder of the Coquille economic self-sufficiency corporation
– one of few chief product and technology officers
private sphere:
– married a woman, three kids
– divorced, alienated from the kids
– came out, now with my husbear Brad and two dogs
private sphere, revealed later:
– being a child abuse survivor
– being gay in straight-seeming clothing
Wow. So it turns out Troy and I also share our sexual orientation (though our childhoods were wildly different). But as I have often said on this blog, there are a great many homomasculinities.
Instantly, there’s more to explore here than I could possibly cover in this posting: how, for example, the child Troy came to appreciate his otherness as a child; how he got to Stanford (promise on the gridiron would not have been enough); how he was moved to come out; how he developed that sunny disposition. On this last point, I wrote to him:
You deserve a round of admiring applause for what you’ve achieved. For having surmounted a ton of obstacles while maintaining that disposition. (I realize that you could tell me about the emotional damage you’ve suffered; I had an almost ridiculously warm and supportive childhood, but experiences in the world nevertheless scarred me in several ways, including some unshakable ptsd, so I admire those who escape shitty childhoods as good people.)
Troy has given me access to a pile of stuff, including both teaching materials in Miluk and tons of photos of him and Brad, two gigantic smiling bears with lots of friends and a love for adventurous traveling. The dogs are as adorable as they are.
Two background footnotes to the inventory.
On Soto Zen. From Wikipedia:
Sōtō Zen or the Sōtō school (曹洞宗, Sōtō-shū) is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism … It emphasizes Shikantaza, meditation with no objects, anchors, or content. The meditator strives to be aware of the stream of thoughts, allowing them to arise and pass away without interference.
On CPTOs. (distilled from various sources) A chief product officer (CPO) proposes what products will be, while a chief technical officer (CTO) oversees their development, and a CPTO manages the whole process.
Almost flunking out and all that stuff. An exchange between Troy and me.
AZ: Not for posting, but: why, in your first “Howdy” message to me, did you thank me for not flunking you? Were you overcommitted when you took the syntax course, or what? Did I give you one of my “shape up, buddy” speeches?
TA: You should feel more than welcome to post about this. I was a terrible student. Between being [secretly] gay, a child abuse survivor, and not knowing the first thing about how to be a good student, the end of my tether was reached for my intelligence making up for my ability not to have to study.
AZ: Bunch of flags here. I happen to have collected quite a few intimate life stories of gay men, in which their childhoods play a big role. I hope to post separately about this. So that’s one thing.
Then there’s being really really bright and inquisitive and energetic, but a terrible student. You are far from alone; I have tons of experience with students like you, and have been helpful to some …
TA: Fortunately, Stanford then (I don’t know about now) would drop the class if you flunked. So I think I dropped four to five classes that way my freshman year. I almost hit the brink of getting kicked off the team for lack of units therefore. So, my summer after freshman year, I took intensive Chinese to stay eligible on the team.
AZ: Here I rolled with laughter: “I took intensive Chinese to stay eligible on the team”! Who the hell maintains eligibility by taking intensive Chinese? Every university has courses that are far far easier paths to eligibility than a fiercely demanding intensive Chinese course. It’s a mark of your character that you considered this to be a reasonable thing to do.
TA: It was there I turned my calling to linguistics. [link to his Miluk salvage work, supervised by James Fox in anthropology, with advice from Joseph Greenberg in Linguistics (both have since died)]
Still, despite now a purpose to my education, it didn’t make me a better student. I still remember your class well in that I’m like, I should really know this stuff as it applies to my subject matter, but that alignment didn’t magically make me into a better student.
I’ll try to find my transcript for you. It’s a horror show. lol.
AZ: Please no.
Sunny disposition, the longer story. One exchange:
AZ: Something I flagged from watching your videos: you’re a sunny person; your most natural facial expression is a smile of pleasure (my dad was like this, my husband was like this, I’ve been like this from early childhood), and I take that disposition to be a sign of a way of being … In any case, whether you know it or not, you project a kind of niceness (despite your imposing body) that has surely served you well in life (as it did for my dad and husband, and has done for me); random people are likely to trust you (and they won’t be disappointed).
TA: You’re spot on, I’m a happy-go-lucky sort despite all that life has thrown at me. A Ferdinand the Bull sort.
A lovely image, of the gentle bull who would rather smell flowers than fight in bullfights.
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