Flexible Flyers -- That Other World

Like in the cases of a lot of blog entries I post, I am not entirely sure that I should post this one, but what the hey.

Jeremy Bernstein is one of my favorite authors. I get so much enjoyment from his books. He is a theoretical physicist and also an adventurer (hiker/mountain climber and the like). He writes very honestly. He is not in the top tier of theoretical physicists. However, his strength is explaining the works of top tier theoretical physicists to ordinary mortals like me.

I am rereading his autobiography. He is Jewish. Jews felt quite a bit discrimination in the US in the 1930s. They also clung together -- this probably was more than due to the discrimination.

Jeremy's father himself seems like a very impressive man. The father was a rabbi. Jeremy grew up in Rochester, NY, a city of interminable winters. During most of the year, kids would walk around carrying a sled, allowing them sled down hills whenever they felt like it. [For a couple of years during my childhood, I would walk around carrying a metal ring about one foot in diameter and a handle which helped my push the ring as I walked . This was great fun and took the boredom out of the walking.] Jeremy's father could get sleds at wholesale prices from a member of his congregation and these were the sleds that Jeremy got. Jeremy's non-Jewish friends had a brand of sled called Flexible Flyers and not having it made him feel like an outsider. As he writes,

"Flexible Flyers came, in my mind, to represent that other world, to which I did not belong."

[Growing up barely lower-middle class in Chennai but going to a rather elite school, I felt like this regarding not being able to afford private cricket coaching by A.G.Ram Singh. This for me represented "that other world, to which I did not belong", and to which I very much wanted to belong.]

Nothing controversial in anything I have written so far. Why was I hesitant then? This comes in the next part, which I quote from straight from Bernstein. [Stating the obvious, Americans go out with different people of the opposite sex, to find their mates.]

"Later, when I started to go out with girls, long-legged, Scandinavian-looking blondes became Flexible Flyers."

 

This mentions the book The Life It Brings, where I read about The Flexible Flyer. This is a good book to read. I will post more from it another time.
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> I think everyone has 'the other world' in their mind.

That is the whole point of this blog entry. That Bernstein only had old-fashioned sleds or only could go out with non "long-legged, Scandinavian-looking blondes" [or that I was not able to "afford private cricket coaching by A.G.Ram Singh"] is no major tragedy [except perhaps for Bernstein and I ] However, just about everyone of us, especially in our youth, had "other worlds" we desperately wanted to be a part of.

For my children, this was being a part of their school's basketball team. Their hearts [along with mine] were broken when they were cut from the team [and I felt so helpless :-(]

One funny thing though. During practices, when ever the coach saw me coming, he would put my children in I was happy to have this kind of influence in the school. My parents were rather afraid to go to the school I went to in Chennai -- being unfashionable village folks, they would not have been welcome in the school. To U.S.'s great credit, all parents are treated quite well in schools. Additionally, my accomplishments gave me extra standing in the school -- I was glad that my sacrifices and hard work (not to mention my mother's sacrifices and hard work ) paid off in this way.