The Curse of the Cautious

In defense of boring

Babies are born friendless and broke, so their parents’ relatives and coworkers have to give them stuff. Clothes, toys, books they can’t read, whatever. It’s just the rule.

So when mom, dad and baby arrive home from the hospital they are greeted by a stack of cardboard boxes containing onesies and blankets and stuffed animals and more onesies. Many of these gifts will be tossed in a pile in the baby’s new closet with the spare hardware from the crib that dad assembled one night after four beers, but the gift-givers don’t care — their job was to send the gift, not to make sure it got used.¹

The parents come home to a gift as well. They didn’t ask for this gift, but they can’t return it and will be required to use it every hour of every day. It’s a pair of invisible glasses (let’s call them “Trouble Goggles”) that enables them — forces them, actually — to see a thousand alternate universes, each one exactly like this one except that it contains a different Dreaded Thing (a random accident, disappointment or illness, etc.) that’s specially designed to pounce on their kid.

Believe me, the Trouble Goggles are a shock to the system during those early days of parenthood. You have access to new worries that you didn't know existed, all kinds of Dreaded Things that probably won’t happen but absolutely could. Is this seat belt tight enough? Why is she so loud? Why is she so quiet? Did your dad wash his hands? Formerly harmless things like staircases and intersections and boozy uncles barking “CAN I HOLD THE BABY” become threats to your kid’s well being.

You quickly realize that the rest of your parental life will be a battle to keep the Dreaded Things stuck in their alternate universes and out of this one.

Some of the fears that the Trouble Goggles unleash are exaggerated, but some are not. Because there’s no real way to tell the difference, you find yourself taking simpler, safer routes and generally avoiding chaos. You become a little….boring.

A few months ago my wife and I dropped our oldest off at college. As we said our goodbyes I thought I might finally be able to ditch my Trouble Goggles for good, or at least trade them in for a pair that didn’t work so well.

Surprise! Not only did I get to keep the Trouble Goggles, they were automatically updated with new software that unlocked new alternate universes caused by the fact that he no longer lives under our roof. Evidently the paranoia of parenting never goes away, it just evolves.

So we left our son to fend for his own food and transportation and friendships and now I sit here miles away checking the Life360 app to make sure his little dot on my iPhone appears safe and healthy².³

All of that got me thinking about Simone Biles, obviously.

Simone Biles, protector of her universe.

Remember the Olympics a couple of summers ago, when Simone Biles was all we talked about for a week? Biles, probably the best gymnast in the world at the time, withdrew in the middle of Team USA’s gymnastics competition due to a debilitating bout of anxiety that was messing with her timing.

We learned that this unwelcome phenomenon has a name in gymnastic circles: the “twisties.” The twisties are like a golfer’s case of the “yips”, except instead of missed putts there are broken craniums.

As the story developed that summer we learned that Biles had a prior relationship with the twisties and that her old friend had decided to pay her a visit on the biggest night of her life. She found herself freezing up as she finished her first event. Things got so bad that she elected to withdraw from the team competition altogether.

Biles was relentlessly criticized for her decision. She had abandoned her team, her sport, even her country, and Twitter was super mad about it.

But Simone Biles had her own pair of Trouble Goggles. She alone could see what might happen if she pushed through and performed soaring backflips without her balance or timing. She understood that a Dreaded Thing was waiting in the wings, so she made the tough call.

The Curse of the Cautious.

When a person with Trouble Goggles chooses the safer path, she keeps the Dreaded Thing at bay, stuck in its alternate universe. To the rest of us, unburdened by that special eyewear, the decision can seem like an overreaction.

It’s the Curse of the Cautious: when you protect the universe from the Dreaded Thing, everything remains safe and quiet and that thing doesn’t seem so scary anymore, or even real. Nobody is grateful for the status quo.

When a mom doesn’t let her kid get on the neighbor’s rusty trampoline, nothing happens. And that’s the point! The kid sulks at home in the annoying, boring silence with no evidence that anything bad would have happened — OH MY GOD MOM, I’LL BE FINE, CONNOR’S MOM LETS HIM DO IT — but he can’t see the things that mom can see.

It’s important to have fun in life, but it’s also key to be boring once in a while. Next time someone chooses what seems like an unnecessarily safe path, remember the Curse of the Cautious. The poor suckers with Trouble Goggles have a duty to protect the rest of us from the Dreaded Things we can’t see. They didn’t ask for their gift, but we’re lucky they use it.

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The following appeared in The Athletic on December 8, 2017. It’s an early example of attempted parenting advice in the “Dear Faux” column. I remember writing it at work as I looked out the window at the snowy sidewalk and coincidentally saw a grade school kid in dark blue boots walking alone. I hope he’s made it home by now.

December 8, 2017

Dear Faux Pelini,

When you were young, did you walk to school?

Peter D.

Hi Peter,

Why yes Peter, I did walk to school as a boy. I walked every day no matter the weather — cars and buses were not in the picture other than as moving targets for my snowballs. I even walked a mile to kindergarten every day by myself. It was a simpler, dumber time. Yet here I am.

Now, some people use stories like mine to argue that kids have it too easy nowadays, that parents are making kids soft by being overprotective. They start sentences with things like “When I was a kid we didn’t worry about …” and refer to annoying inventions like seat belts, allergies and Cracker Jack prizes that a toddler can’t swallow. We walked to school by ourselves, yet here we are. Babies rode in the front seat, yet here we are. We were left home alone while our mothers got drunk and went to macramé class, yet here we are.

And that’s all true, but you shouldn’t listen to those people. Just because you didn’t die doesn’t mean a thing you did was good.

There’s luck involved in surviving, whether it’s a tournament or a career or a life. Math usually dictates that there have to be survivors — someone has to win the college basketball tournament, for example, because the brackets force one team into that middle box. We then write stories about how talented and brave the winner is, even though there was going to be one all along. Sometimes a team just wins six games because someone had to, but nobody clicks on that article. So we make up stories.

In the same way, sometimes a guy doesn’t wear a seatbelt for 20 years and doesn’t crash his car, and everything turns out fine. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t being stupid.

So yes, Peter, I walked a mile to kindergarten and no, I wasn’t kidnapped or smushed by a bus. But that doesn’t mean today’s parents are soft.

Don’t learn fake lessons from survivors. They may not be as smart as you think.

1. Technically the hospital gives the baby her first gifts: a few crusty pink and blue striped towel-blankets and half a box of leftover diapers that her parents’ insurance paid $142 for.

2. Just kidding son, we don’t check you on Life360, we’re not weirdos.

3. OK maybe once or twice when you don’t answer your phone, but that’s on you.