{"id":1154,"date":"2007-03-06T13:29:15","date_gmt":"2007-03-06T18:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2007\/03\/06\/i-prefer-to-read-leave-me-alone\/"},"modified":"2007-03-06T13:29:15","modified_gmt":"2007-03-06T18:29:15","slug":"i-prefer-to-read-leave-me-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/06\/i-prefer-to-read-leave-me-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"I prefer to read. Leave me alone."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>A whole life of making minimal demands, of keeping to myself, of doing all my chores promptly and well, of getting superlative grades, of being a star in band, of being a dutiful student of the piano, of having good and well-behaved friends, of working ever since I was old enough to drive &#8212; that all meant nothing. Being good hadn&#8217;t preserved me from random interrogations, in fact made me more vulnerable &#8212; I bought into their standard of judgment and tried to defend myself according to it, once even breaking down in tears, a seventeen-year-old kid, breaking down into incoherence, collapsing into a fetal position, and she just walked away. Even now, if something ever comes up in conversation, she acts like she doesn&#8217;t remember, like it was someone else entirely &#8212; she apologizes on behalf of this other person, over-eagerly, like she&#8217;s apologizing for some weird misunderstanding that she can&#8217;t fully assimilate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.adamkotsko.com\/weblog\/2007\/03\/dave-brubeck-and-heidegger.html\">Dave Brubeck and Heidegger<\/a>.  Adam Kotsko tells a short cliched-sounding tale &#8212; growing up with parents who don&#8217;t understand you &#8212; that he elevates into a moving memoir.  I&#8217;m glad to have been quite a bit more fortunate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A whole life of making minimal demands, of keeping to myself, of doing all my chores promptly and well, of getting superlative grades, of being a star in band, of being a dutiful student of the piano, of having good and well-behaved friends, of working ever since I was old enough to drive &#8212; that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}