Labels

A personal quirk of mine is that I like to be able to categorize things. I’ve touched on this before in Argh…Form Demographics (https://tib.cjcs.com/argh/38/arghform-demographics/) where I addressed my difficulties with classification info on forms and surveys.

I’m not certain where this personal predilection started. Perhaps it comes from all of those standardized tests I used to take in school. The “objective” tests would often have a section asking you which of three or four objects didn’t belong with the others. This was the section that I almost always wished I could have an area to explain why I chose the answer I did.

For example: let’s say that you are supposed to choose which is different from pictures of a lime, an orange, and a tomato. Well, let’s see. Limes and oranges are citrus, so obviously the tomato doesn’t belong. Also, tomatoes are classified as vegetables, not fruits (in the US), so again, they obviously don’t be long. But… oranges and tomatoes are both pretty much round while limes are more cylindrical with small nipples at the blossom and stem ends, so limes don’t belong. Also, oranges and tomatoes are both warm colors while limes are a cool green, so again, limes don’t belong. But, then again, limes and tomatoes both can be rhymed with other words in English, while oranges can’t, so clearly oranges don’t belong.

And so on. The answer is dependent on context. Thus, I could answer that any one of the pictures doesn’t belong, and I would be correct within a given context. If I’m left to guess the examiner’s context, then whatever answer I chose is correct or not based solely on blind luck and/or any extra-sensory insight I might have into the test-writer’s mind.

Often in my life, I’ve been confounded by the lack of classification within a context. It’s not like it’s debilitating or anything, just slightly irritating. It’s been that way with the Scotts* for years.

Mary and I tried to define the wordy terms of our relationship a while back. I don’t think we ever came to a mutually satisfying definition. I mean, we’re friends, sure, but it’s more than just a simple friendship. We’re family. That’s great, but it does make it awkward during introductions. “Hi, this is [Mary/CJ], s/he’s family.”

“Family how?” I would think if one or the other was being introduced to me. Sure, it defines the situation as being more than a simple friendship, but it also leaves a lot out. Inside my head it doesn’t help that I’ve thought of Mary’s younguns as surrogate daughters since just about the moment I met them. You know, you meet people sometimes and it clicks instantly. I couldn’t love them any more than if they were my own. However, and this is where the context and classification starts getting snarky, not only can I not take any credit for the cool young women they have become, but their actual father is still in their lives. As a result, any labeling along these lines becomes dubious and doubtless one-sided.

For me, the trickiest moment of definition was this summer during the famous fence episode mentioned in Mending Fences (https://tib.cjcs.com/mind-garden/259/mending-fences/). At one point after the initial fence mangling, the police showed up and asked about my relationship to Tess. I so wanted to say something better than, “I’m a friend of her mother’s,” but it was as truthful as I could be.

Over the years, I’d like to think that my relationship with the girls, especially Tess and Scarlet (since I’ve seen them most), has been pretty good. I’d even say that we are good friends. Even so, when push came to shove, in a context of stressful truthiness, I could only manage to label myself a friend of their mother’s.

Then, during the time when my dad was dying and onto the funeral, I have all of my cousins pushing to get me to label my relationships with the Scotts. That got snarky real fast trying to describe whatever it is I’m happily involved in. I’m sure I don’t help by calling Jamie, Tess, and Scarlet my “sorta-kinda-daughter-like-thingies”. (This is patterned off Dale describing herself as my “sorta-kinda-mother-in-law-thingy” once. I’ve also described her as my “friend-in-law”.) Of course it then follows that Lara and Dawn are labeled as my “sorta-kinda-granddaughter-like-thingies”. But that still leaves Mary…with whom I’m at a loss to adequately give a label to what we are to each other (I think it also matters whether or not I’m in the doghouse with her at the time :-)

I’ve consulted with other friends, both long-time and newer, about how to define what we have, and frankly they’ve not been any better at it than I. All I know is that whatever they are to me, either in my head or their’s, the Scotts are treasures. Vexingly unlabeled treasures, to be sure, but treasures nonetheless.

Perhaps this is one of those times that new labels have to be created. Phillamor (a loving friendship)? Amifamilias (friends as family)? Or maybe something equally polysyllabic and unlikely to be used unless you shortened it to something like “amifam” or the like? I think I need to leave it to sociologists, linguists, and etymologists to figure it out; clearly I’m in way over my head.

Honestly, I still have a hard enough time with conventional friendship designations. For example, “best friend”. Is that solely an umbrella definition, or can you have several best friends depending on the context? Like, your best friend to go out with, or your best friend to tell secrets to, or your best friend to count on when you need to move your furniture? If not, then can you be best friend-less if, on balance, none can be a general best friend? Is there a time limit? What if someone is your best friend, but moves away…how long does the best friend label still get to be applied, or can you proffer the label as easily as you change socks? Are you screwed if someone is labeled a BFF (Best Friend Forever)? Does this mean you can no longer consider someone else a best friend, literally, forever; or does is mean nothing…telling the world that you place little value on the permanency of close friends?

See what I mean? And this is just the tip of the friendship labeling iceberg. Clearly trying to label something as convoluted as my relationship with the Scotts is like throwing the Titanic into the mix. A labeling disaster that even Dymo would be hard-pressed to salvage.

But, as I said when I started on this three-hour cruise of mine, it’s just a personal quirk that I like the seeming order that comes from knowing what things are within a context. Perhaps it’s not the labeling, per se, that trips me up so much as the context itself. ‘course, that helps naught with those meddlesome standardized tests, but maybe if we start first by examining context instead of focusing on labels, things might fall into place by themselves. Might even avoid a major war or two with that philosophy as well (but I think I’ll leave that for another entry).