Mallory's Camera

Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.

--a quote variously ascribed to Aristotle, Ignatius Loyola, and Francis Xavier

The past few weeks have been filled with so much sound and fury that I completely missed an event of real significance—well: Real significance to me.

Michael Apted died. The director behind the Up films.

The Up films are a series of documentaries about a dozen or so people whom Apted visited and filmed at seven-year intervals between the ages of seven and 63.

Now that Apted’s dead, we’ll never see 70 Up.

The original subjects were selected to corroborate the director’s confirmation biases about the British class system. The producers recruited the films’ subjects during a children’s field trip to the London Zoo in 1964. They chose six kids from the East End (including a couple residing in group homes), four scions of wealthy parentage and a smattering of middleclass children—from Liverpool of all odd places. (Odd to this American, at least, because all I know about Liverpool is that the famously working-class Beatles hailed from there.)

So, does class determine one’s life trajectory?

That remains unclear.

Of course, it’s an impossibly small sample size for such an ambitious experiment.

But what it seems like to me is that class (predictably) buffered the lives of the wealthiest (who are also the least interesting as they age), but had relatively little effect on the East Enders whose grit and cheekiness helped them grab hold of their life circumstances and use them as a hoist.

The kids who had the biggest life struggles were the middle-class kids.

The other thing that struck me was how amazingly articulate these people are. Even as seven-year-olds! Not just the upper-class kids, but also the East Enders. The breadth of their vocabularies was astonishing. I doubt very much you could find American kids—or adults for that matter—who express themselves as well. (Though maybe you could in 1964; I don’t know.)

Now that I’m elderly myself, I spend a lot of time wondering, When is the exact moment someone turns old? Is there a clear boundary—young on this side, old on this side—and once you step over it, BAM! that’s it? Or is it a more gradual phase change?

I kinda think the exact moment you grow old is that instant when the last trace of that child you once were disappears from your face. All old people look alike, you know; it’s kinda like we’re all one big indistinguishable clan.

Only one of the Up series’ subjects at 63 retains the unmistakable stamp of his seven-year-old self, and that’s Tony, the East End lad who wanted to become a jockey but was realistic when he couldn’t make the grade and became a taxi driver instead. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that he appears to be the most content and well-adjusted of the crew.

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In other news, temps rose above 40° yesterday, so true to the bargain I struck with myself, I tromped. I also did the exercise bike, so all in all, my body logged 10 miles, and I still couldn’t sleep. Which is a drag.

I mean, I did sleep: I took melatonin, which Cousin Alicia, the biochemist, tells me I should be taking anyway because it fights Covid (huh?) But I don’t like taking drugs except recreationally, and sadly, those opportunities are rare.

Also Facebook, did its Star Chamber thing and kicked Alpha Male and the Management Valkyrie off. No explanation! No date for the execution!

Alpha Male’s expungement from the Garden I could kinda understand: He goes out of his way to be provocative and honestly believes that Parler should still be hosted on the Amazon cloud.

But the Management Valkyrie? She is—no shit, Sherlock—the most tactful and diplomatic person on the entire planet, so the algorithms really fucked up on that one.

Anyway, this meant I had to spend a good chunk of the afternoon sitting on top of the Sooper Sekrit Political Group to which Alpha Male appointed me co-administrator many years ago.

That was exhausting.

The whole point of starting the Sooper Sekrit Political Group was to assemble a pool of minds who do not buy into the entirely media-created and artificial “left” versus “right” partisan divide.

As a sidebar, I will note here that one of the things that happens when you are living in an oligarchy where 1% of the population controls 90% of the wealth is that political labels become meaningless or interchangeable, and democratic contention is a mere team sport without much consequence in the real world (except when it comes to removing dangerous assholes like Donald Trump from office.)

Alas! Most of the members of the Sooper Sekrit Political Group don’t seem to understand the Group’s original intent and are fiercely partisan. Since I refuse to identify myself with either the “left” or the “right,” I naturally get a lot of flack from both sides. Thus, I spent the afternoon fending off simultaneous attacks: “Trump apologist!” “Antifa apologist!”

Fortunately, the Star Chamber released Alpha Male after 12 hours, so now I can ignore the Sooper Sekrit Political Group again.

But in exasperation, I signed up for something called MeWe.

No, I’m not gonna bail from FB: How else can I keep in touch with my best friend from high school, RTT’s former daycare provider (one of my favorite people on the planet), and all those X-boyfriends, and People Magazine and ICM colleagues?

But I’m getting fed up with FB censorship.

If it’s possible to have meaningful conversations in another online venue, I’m all in.

And yes, yes, I agree! It is Not Healthy to depend upon online forums to supply any part of my social needs.

But in these times of the Plague, what other option is there?