Ping-pong balls, kids and the universe...

“Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are

taken in hand…an unsuspected and most

beautiful form of regularity proves to

have been latent all along.”

- Francis Galton,

Victorian iconoclast

The man was standing on a platform about five feet above the floor.

The stand projected into a room some 12 feet square (3sq m). In his hand was a Ping-Pong ball.

As the camera panned back you could see the floor covered with hundreds (maybe a couple of thousand) ping pong balls, sitting where cheese belonged in ‘armed’ mousetraps.

After saying a few words, none of which I understood, the man tossed the ball, like an arcing basketball foul shot, into the middle of the room. As the ping pong ball landed, the place exploded with little white spheres flying everywhere.

In a “…moment, in the twinkling of an eye…” it was over…the floor covered with random ‘traps and balls’ everywhere.  For the sake of the audience, the event was replayed in slow motion…one ball hitting another, and another and another…and it was AWESOME!

The apparent chaotically random chain reactions were the point of the experiment. I am sure the fellow explained all of this in simple and thoughtful terms, but for that little boy (me)? Wow, those ping-pong balls flying everywhere, smashing into one another, then dropping to set off another mousetrap, was amazing! 

A connection….

This week, my local YMCA held what they call ‘Trunk or Treat.’ It's a family event designed to provide a safe place for children to collect candy in the Halloween tradition.

I’m on the board, and thought it would be fun to participate. It was one of those things for which I volunteered not having a clear picture of what the event actually was…or for that matter, my particular duties.

“Show up at 3:30 (15:30) with your car and a willing heart,” Yvette said.

Being an obedient man, I did exactly has I had been told. As it turned out, when I arrived, there was a designated place for the car.

“You are in the ‘Funny’ section, uh let me see. Oh yeah, slot number 9,” the volunteer said.

“Just turn left at the sign. If you have a problem, one of the people there will help you.”

“Open the back hatch when you get there,” she ended, moving on to the next driver.

I found the spot, parked the car, and then, as if right on cue, a lovely woman, her son and his friend quickly, and with a bit of ingenuity, turned the back of my car into, what appeared to be, the living quarters of ‘Sponge Bob Square Pants’ (SBSP).

Some of you may know this cartoon character…while others – such as myself – may not. I can assure you, however, the children knew…but I am getting a bit ahead of the story.

A few minutes later, a cheery young female volunteer appeared with bags of candy, which I was to put in my open trunk, er…I mean SBSP’s living room.

For the next three hours, more than three thousand children came by…some in very creative costumes – others in none…each picking one ‘empty calorie’ laden treat of their choice. One piece per kid doesn’t seem like much, but there were thirty or so other cars with open trunks doing the same thing. They could come around a second time as long as they just picked one – I didn’t see many second timers.  With few, and I mean very few exceptions, the kids followed the rules.

It was wonderful to watch these youngsters take their candy. There were a few too small to see into the back of my car, needing a lift from their parents. Others looked like they had taken a too much growth hormone. Some of them walked right up grabbing a piece of candy quickly, heading for the next trunk, while others poked around a bit until they found something familiar – calculus unknown.

A number of mothers carrying babies looked frazzled. I suggested, with a conspiratorial glance, “…maybe the little one might like a piece of chocolate.” More than a few end-of-the-day moms ‘got it,’ smiled and accepted the offer ‘for the baby.’ A small thing to be sure, but I got more than a couple of shoulder pats and a fair number of ‘thanks for the recognition’ smiles.

The volume and variety of children was amazing…

Amazing they were even there…

While these kids were making…some quick – some slow…decisions about what piece of sugary delight should be captured for later consumption, they did not appreciate – nor in all probability did their parents – that they were already winners.

The fact they were even breathing suggested the random cosmic lottery into which their ancestors were thrust, had been successful.  In all the wars… famines…diseases…fatal accidents…murders…poisonings…all of it over the millennia our species has existed, their (our) branch of the family tree had survived, and there they were, picking the spoils of their survival victory from the trunk of my car!

What does it mean?

In order to understand anything about that ping-pong ball/mousetrap experiment, the film had to be slowed way down, because it happened so fast.

On the other hand, the lives of these children are just like that experiment. They will bounce off one another, and others yet unknown moving them in random directions.

The problem here is that the apparent chaotic chain reaction happens so slowly, in real time, that it is nearly impossible to get any sense of the trajectory of their lives.

Perhaps, for those of us who have survived, at least to the reading of this piece, we can take a moment to reflect on the random interactions bringing us to where we are.

The day-to-day decisions we make are part of the ‘slow motion’ that lead us to the next collision with the cosmos, leading to a momentary pause before we interact again.

Unlike those ping-pong balls, however, we have choice…we can choose to interact (say yes) to a situation or not (say no). While our response (yes or no) may have an unknown outcome, the odds of survival are greatly increased through the choices we make…relationships…health…sleep…exercise, etc.

Like those kids at the trunk of the car, it may be easier to ‘grab and run’ to the next trunk, but taking a little time in the choices (yes/no) can make a difference in the outcome of this chaotic/random world in which we live.

For in spite of the apparent chaos of it all, an order emerges which to ‘this little boy’ (me) is AWESOME!

- ted

Small ball is the best…

The world is a possibility only

if you’ll discover it.”

- Ralph Ellison, 

Invisible Man

The people I like the most when I travel are the invisible ones.  

Those are the folk who make things happen, providing logistical support, making the engines run smoothly. You know, when things work well, it’s easy to forget all the pieces that make them operate. I like those apparently ‘incidental pieces,’ because this is often where the richness lies. Without them, things would be very different!

For example, I have just finished a weeklong convention with a spine organization to which I belong.

Hitting the road…

Preparing to head out of town is by now a well-exercised ritual. The only variables…when the flight leaves and where it is going.  
This trip departed at 5am – destination Chicago…the early morning hour because of an afternoon meeting and the two-hour time difference.

Tuesday morning began at 3:30am leading to cognizant dissonance in the cats. Hannah, the early morning house alarm clock – beginning generally between 4:30 and 5:00am, had a confused look on her face like,

“Hey, you are seriously interfering with my biorhythmic whining routine!”

Leah, having gotten up, sat by in the living room seemingly a little confused, while Sarah, looked up and promptly returned to her quiet snoring…clearly it wasn’t time for breakfast, so “What’s the big deal.”

The logistics for the morning went pretty well, and we were on the road a scant 5 minutes later than our 4:15am target. 

The great thing about early morning drives to the airport is the almost total lack of traffic on the roads. The horrible thing about early morning drives to the airport is…well…they are in the early morning!

The flight to Chicago was direct and the three hour flight (giving the impression of a five hour flight because of the time zone difference), simply ‘flew by’ – yeah that was bad…

On the ground...
Brian drove the airport shuttle into the city. He was extremely friendly and chatted us up all the way to our respective hotels.  He came from Irish stock and brought everyone up to date – if they didn’t already know – on the Chicago Cubs appearance in the Major League Baseball (MLB) play offs. He had great hopes the infamous curse of the Billy Goat Murphy started in the 1945 World Series was a thing of the past…it had been 109 years for the Cubbies, and yet hope does spring eternal!

I had access to a small breakfast/afternoon snack lounge at the hotel. One of those deals where you can grab a continental breakfast in the morning, coffee anytime during the day, and snack on small stuff between 5 and 7 PM.

In the morning it was ‘Bright’ and ‘Aretha’ that kept the place stocked up. Both of them told me it took them about an hour to get in to the hotel to begin their day. Bright, came in on the ‘EL’ (Chicago’s rail service) and Aretha took a bus, then the EL to get the hotel. Both got up at 3:30am to get in to make sure everything was prepared and ready when folk showed up at 6:30…The worked from 5am until 2PM.

Annie came on sometime in the early afternoon, because she was there at the end of my conference day – 5:30 or so – making sure the hot snack food and salad and dressing bowls were replenished. We didn’t talk the first day, but on the second, I dropped a couple of ‘tater tots’ (riced potatoes) on the floor and picked them up. As I headed for the trash she said,

“Here mister give ‘em to me.”

“No, that’s alright, I can just put them in over there.”

Proactively taking them from my hand she said, “You get a A+ honey just for pickin ‘em up. Most folks just leave ‘em there.”

That led to a short conversation and a similar story about how long it took her to get to work…she had a odd schedule, but got home sometime after 9PM.

She had one of those smiles that coaxed one out of me...then she glanced around with a bit of a conspiratorial expression and pointed up. I pointed up too and she said,

“You believe in God and Jesus?”

I was still smiling and nodded…she continued,

“Then we’re family in Jesus!”

“Yes we are,” I said. 

We had found a spot, and I’m pretty sure we both felt a little wave of goose bumps slip through our bodies. Over the next few days, when we saw each other, a 'knowing look' passed between us. It wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be…I gotta say, I looked forward to seeing her.

Three times I took taxis to the convention center. I had three African taxi drivers: One each from Ghana, Nigeria and the Congo. All three guys had been professionals in their countries, and were at various stages of ‘time in country’ here. The Ghanaian and Nigerian (a micro biologist and pharmacist respectively in their home countries) were both taking technical courses, soon to finish, so they would be able to stop driving the cabs. Both were grateful that unemployment rates were down for them and they could get work. The Congolese, a much newer immigrant, had just started driving, and spoke only about the difference in personal safety he felt living here as opposed to his home country.

Heading home…

This morning it was Darrin who made the 7am pickup to take me to the airport. Sunday morning the traffic was sparse and the trip shorter. He had been driving a shuttle for 15 years.

“How do you like the GPS tablet and video/audio monitoring in the bus?’ I said.

“It’s okay, but it would be nice if they put an extra dollar or two per hour to our pockets, instead of all this stuff.”

“Sometimes it tells you to do crazy things. Maybe it makes sense to the computer, but it don’t make sense if you know the city!”

He wasn’t grumbling, just saying what he thought.

“Minimum wage,” he said, “ain’t easy.”

I was his last stop at the airport; I asked his name and thanked him for the ride.

This trip to Chicago was one of the most informative and productive experiences of my professional career.  I chaired a symposium, spoke on the topic of measurement in spine care, and was privileged to moderate four days of a working group with some of the best spine researchers in the world, and yet there were a cast of invisible characters that made all of it…every single bit of it work.

Not invisible to me…

The Chicago meeting was one of the more memorable adventures of my professional career, but without people like Brian, Bright, Aretha, Annie, the taxi drivers and Darrin – all of whom had stories of their own…lives of meaning – it would not have been as thoughtfully contextual…reminding me that every single thread in the fabric gives the ‘cloth’ strength and resiliency.

I am uncertain what the future will bring…perhaps this week was the top of the mountain – one never knows, but when I reflect on the blessings and access this life has given me…those invisible folk step out of the shadows of my mind into the bright sunshine of my life experiences.

- ted

Thinking and feeling...

“The world is a tragedy to those who feel,

But a comedy to those who think.”

- Horace Walpole

The call came on her way home and she was drained.

“I’m not sure I want to do this any more. It was really hard last night.”

The comment was rhetorical…she needed to talk.

I had been working on a presentation about the importance of measurement in the clinical management of chronic back and neck pain. I’m getting toward the end of my speaking career and I wanted to ‘get it right.’ It’s a national meeting in Chicago attended by serious minded spine professionals.

My niece is a resident working nights as she rotates through the ICU.  These are the early days of her career, where everything comes at speed of the Niagara River…the precipice of its vertical drop over the falls to the chasm below so close you can feel its dangerous and unrelenting pull. 

ICU doctors live on the edge of the abyss paddling for all they are worth to keep from going over the edge, and yet in an ICU, there is an eerie calm that belies the unexpected patient crash, where suddenly, to the uninitiated, everything seems to descend into chaotic mayhem. To the knowledgeable, it is an orchestrated dance with life saving focus.

Figuring out which slides to use in a 12 minute lecture was stressful…hmmm – what to say? What to include? What to leave out? Would the sequence of thought make an impact on the attendees?

“I ‘pronounced’ an elderly man who had been operated on for a hip fracture,” she said.

“Two hours after the surgery, everything went south and he ended up in the ICU, where he died. It was heartbreaking.” 

“Pronounced” – the verbal ‘call’ for the official time of death.

Three years and eight months earlier as a medical student sitting quietly at the end of a dying woman’s bed, she quietly and unofficially ‘called’ the time of her mother’s last breath…IT WAS heartbreaking.

Man I’m telling you, getting the message just right for these 12 minutes I have been assigned seems to be a bit overwhelming.

The call was thoughtful...her voice and soul depleted…the night had been ‘nonstop intense.’  I could almost smell the antisepsis and hear the life saving monitoring equipment come through the phone.

I will be really glad when this talk is finished and presented a week from this coming Friday. It seems to take so much more out of me than it used to.

“I’m really glad the night is over,” she said, exhaustion seeping from her voice.

"I’m going to try and get some sleep.”

Then as always…

“Love you Teddy.”

“Love you too Mmer”

For some reason, that Chicago talk didn’t seem so important anymore….

- ted