Thirty Two Faces - Prologue. Rule 3354

Date: 14.3.2007.

Author: Keith Meier

Subject: Rule 3354

I hate writing.

I’m supposed to write the first thing that comes to my mind, and this is it.

Dad makes me write my reflections down daily because he wants me to learn how to express myself. This way, I can make friends by letting the world understand me. But writing is very hard. How to reduce the whole day into a few short sentences? There are so many things I see, feel and think about. An average person has about 7,000 thoughts in 24 hours, and I don’t know what is interesting to other people and what to write down.

My brother Samuel learns from talking to people. Their faces will show you their motivations and peeves: what makes them happy, sad or angry. Dad says 85% of communication is in the face and gestures, which is bad for me. You see, I only recognize three types of faces in most people:

i)                   Happy ,

ii)                  Pissed ,  

iii)                 Upset  .

They are not enough to tell me what a person really thinks. Take this morning, for example.

Mom and Dad were out of house, and they left my brother in charge. It was a quiet morning inside our tiny home two blocks away from the University of Oregon. Both of us share a room, and normally we play together. For the most part of the morning, I stared at the clouds. There was a beautiful rainbow after the rain stopped.

It was still early for our appointment with Dad, so we had time to visit the playground. However, I hadn’t seen my brother around for the whole morning. I stumbled into Samuel playing with his wee-wee when I entered our room, he looked happy in a weird way. I hadn’t seen that face before, and I was confused why he looked so happy. Dad says I am like a little investigator, so I analyze the probable reason for the curious happiness on his face. My brother was doing three things at that time. One, he was playing with his wee-wee. Two, he was listening to me saying I want us to go to the playground together. Three, he was watching a movie about girls who don’t wear clothes.

The type of happy face he was showing – like excited-happy, proud-happy or happy-happy – tells you the reason why he could be happy. And it was the first time I saw that kind of happy on his face, so I had no idea what he was thinking. After I asked him about the faces, he said the answer is one, so I call it the wee-wee happy face.

“Can I take a picture?” I asked. He said okay. And he looked something like this .

“Can I take your wee-wee, too?” Then he looked like this , he snatched my phone, and his face changed into this and says, “Fuck, no! That’s sick.”

I was hurt because my brother never uses the ‘sick’ word on me. He always says there’s nothing wrong with me; I’m just different. I must have looked downcast, because his face softened after that.

It is hard to recognize the new face because it changes so fast. The easy way is to look at his wee-wee, which grows really big when he is showing that face. My brother sighs and says softly that I don’t have to worry about that face. I will recognize it when I am older. He calls it the ‘horny face’.

Because he allows me to stare and study his face, I can recognize 32 of his expressions. That is why I can understand him better than other people. Emoticons aren’t really useful, because face patterns change too fast. Unless you are familiar with the person’s face patterns, the expression is gone by the time it makes sense to me.

Dad and his colleague, Professor Hoffman, want to write a book on bringing up boys like me. So we have been going to his office every week for the past few months. Our parents are busy today, so instead, Samuel has to take me to Dad’s office, which is about an hour’s walk away. That means I have to go outside into the noisy streets.

I’m scared. “Can we skip today?”

Loud noises are scary because it’s hard to tell if they are dangerously close to me. That’s why I dare not cross the road, because the cars always sound like they are going to knock me down.

“But Dad says they have a big surprise for us.”

I don’t like surprises. In fact, I won’t go to anyplace new until I have seen pictures and videos about it a dozen times. Going to new places is like playing those zombie-shooter games that Samuel plays: things just spring out on you suddenly. There are so many things going on, and you don’t know where you are supposed to look – the cars, the traffic lights, the people walking past, the dogs, the buildings, the lampposts – but I only can focus on one thing at a time.

“Don’t worry, Babe. I’ll hold your hand.”

“What about the skate park? There are so many kids there.”

The squeaky sounds from the wheels are painful to me, like fingernails scratching a blackboard. Those noisy kids make me dizzy, too. It’s like listening to fifty people talking to you at once.

“Easy, just put these on,” he puts a headset on me and plays some soft music from his iPod. I can’t hear a thing he says.

Did I mention my brother is the smartest guy in the world?

He is eager to walk because mom bought him a camera last week for his birthday. He’s dying to try it out.

Both of us like to notice small things that no one pays attention to. Details can talk to you if you treat them like a friend; they will show you many things about their history, like how they got there, where they are going. That’s why Samuel likes to take pictures: because he can tell a story with them.

Along the way, we take many pictures.

We pass by the trashcan and see the colorful food stamps lying on top, about to be blown away by the wind.

Then I hear a click.

The brown eyes of a stray dog, click. He follows us for a few blocks. I think he wants to be friends, but Samuel scares him with the camera flash, and he runs away.

A man smoking. He leans against a glass window beside the Starbucks logo, eyes looking at somewhere far away. Click and click.

Out of nowhere, he snaps pictures of me when I stare at the frosted hexagons of the glass covering the red traffic lights.

It’s funny to see your own face in a picture and wonder what you were thinking at that time.

He says I look like I’m talking to the red light as if it is a good friend. It is a figure of speech, because Samuel is my only friend.

“We’re here.” He looks up at the front of the building and clicks.

Dad is always busy, and we have to make appointments with his secretary to see him. I like to hug Miss Secretary because she smells nice. Samuel likes her, too, because he thinks she has nice milk jugs on her chest. When he grows up, he wants to hire secretaries like her.

“Why can’t you just buy milk from the supermarket?”

He smiles with one corner of his mouth and whispers, “It tastes better fresh.”

Miss Secretary returns with two ice-cream bars for us taken from her mini fridge. She is nice, and she always shows a happy face, but mom doesn’t like her. She calls her a slut. It means a morally loose woman. The term ‘loose’ is confusing because morals aren’t clothes you can wear. Like the loose clothes mom wears so she doesn’t feel overweight. It makes a lot more sense when my brother explains that it means ‘morally flexible’.

“Flexible is supposed to be good isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah.” He smiles at Miss Secretary from afar, and his brows wiggle as he takes a long lick at the ice cream. Her bum juts out when she bends over to take my file from the cabinet. Sometimes, my brother gets easily distracted. Then she walks over towards us.

“Are you boys ready to go in?” She bends down, and you can see her milk jugs jiggle. Samuel’s eyes almost pop out. Before we enter, I give him my handkerchief because his nose is bleeding.

The session starts off with the professor chatting with me.

Other than Samuel, it is difficult to understand other people. He asked me last week why I don’t talk to other kids. Dad got upset because he thought I was ignoring the professor. But I wasn’t. I thought about it for a week and listed down the following answers,

i) They say things I don’t understand, and they don’t explain.

ii) Their faces move too quickly.

iii) I have to look at people when I talk, but I can’t stare.

iv) I need time to think how to answer their questions.

Item iv) is the main reason, because most kids are impatient with me.

Samuel says Dad thinks I’m ignoring other kids because I don’t look at them when I talk. Why look at their faces when it tells me so little? Their hands or shirt or hair are equally interesting. That is a stupid rule. But he is trying to help me.

Samuel and I are really good friends because we help each other a lot.

Mostly, he helps me with my writing by telling me what are the important things to say that are interesting to people. Unlike math, you don’t have to define everything, because people can fill in the blanks themselves. For example, in the first edition of this entry, I included an explanation for ‘horny’ so that people won’t be confused with the horns on a goat or a cow. He said people will know. How does he know that? Because when you say ‘horny’ in a wee-wee way, people usually show a naughty face. That’s why this edition is so much shorter now.

In return, I help him do his math and science homework. They are really easy and logical: just know the formulas and apply them. There aren’t too many rules to remember, unlike grammar and metaphors. The worst are the social rules.

To help me stay out of trouble with Dad, Samuel taught me the three-second rule. It lets people know that you are interested in what they say. It goes like this: look them in the eye for three seconds, look away, then look for another three seconds, and look away again. I tried it today, but the professor thought I had dust in my eyes, and then I lost count of the seconds.

Even the grammar and metaphor tests are easier by comparison. I have ten minutes to answer fifty questions on a computer. It just took it a minute to calculate the results.

“I’m proud of you, Keith. You know what that means?” Dad nods and his lips are curled up like this , so it is a good thing. So I said yes, because he is smiling.

“That’s right, smiling is good.” The professor nods, his lips are curled up as well.

“That’s not true.” I try to put on a face. “Not when you smile like this .”

“What kind of smile is that?” He raises his brows.

“Horny smile, you get that when you-”

Ouch.

Samuel kicks my leg secretly under the desk.

Then Dad and the professor start laughing, but my brother looks really mad. I was confused whether I did something good or bad because two adults are happy but my brother is not. There are two ways to understand social rules. First way is the norm, which means majority opinion wins. Second way is the boundaries, which are the lines that keep you out of trouble.

In this case, the confusion is quickly cleared up when Samuel silently mouths that he will kill me later when we’re home. I have crossed a boundary, and I take note of that.

“You got 83% of the figures of speech correct. That’s impressive.” Professor Hoffman nods his head.

“My wife home-schooled him,” Dad explains.

“Actually, it’s Samuel who taught me those,” I correct. Hopefully, this will get me back into his good graces.

He looks all modest when Dad praises him. How did he teach me? Duh. Just explain them every time you use them; I’ll get it soon enough.

The professor flips the computer printout and looks at me, “You actually understand what ‘deadpan’ means?”

Is that a question or a statement? The tone is a question, but ‘actually’ indicates certainty. Explain deadpan? Then I point to my face. And then they laugh.

Do I understand why they laugh? Yes, because it is supposed to be funny. So I have a sense of humor, then? So I have a sense of humor. What a weird question. And they suppose I learn that from my brother? That is correct. Tell them something funny, then? I tell them Mom and Samuel call me Babe.

They don’t laugh. Instead, they look something like this .

So I explained that ‘Babe’ could mean three things:

a) The piglet in the 1995 movie by Chris Noonan, which is why Mom calls me Babe.

b) A big baby, which is why Samuel calls me Babe.

c) A girl with big milk jugs, like Miss Secretary.

I don’t have any milk jugs, and I’m not a piglet, but I’m dumb like a baby; therefore, you can consider it as a joke.

Samuel looks hurt.

“You think I’m making fun of you?”

“It’s not a joke?”

No one is laughing this time.

“It’s a term of endearment,” Dad explains.

Terms of endearment are words to describe someone you care about. I write down the definition under Rule 3354:

Dad asked me to name situations where I upset people. Samuel glares at me, so I avoid mentioning him. Instead, I cite Rule 645 a.1.2.1.4.

a) Mom looks like this  when I hug people whose names I do not know.

1. If I know their names, I should not hug them unless they look like this .

2. Even if they do, I must still ask them for permission.

1. The exception to this rule, applies to Mom, Dad and Samuel.

4. However, the exception to the exception is that I mustn’t touch their private parts.

“Are you always so detailed?” The professor looks at me funny. How else would I know if he understands me? Making assumptions about what other people know is rude.

“But you don’t talk like this to your brother.”

“They spend a lot of time together,” Dad said.

I can read 31 (now 32) of his faces and their associated meanings. For instance, he wants to share secrets when

a) his left eyebrow is raised more than 30 degrees multiple times within 4 seconds,

and he wears a crooked smile (left or right),

c) and he is looking at me.

The professor says, “You two seem to be quite the team.” Then my dad and the professor talk privately, and they nod at each other.

Samuel’s face lights up when he looks at me. I know what it means immediately. They are announcing the big surprise.

“From today onwards, you and Samuel don’t have to take any more lessons from your mom.”

We exchange a look. Even my brother doesn’t know if this is supposed to be good news for us.

“Are you sending us back to school?” he asks.

Dad smiles and shakes his head. “And let you terrorize other boys? I don’t think so.”

Samuel throws an arm around me and says, “They ask for it. No one bullies my brother.”

Miss Secretary comes into the office carrying a box with several ring binders. She picks out some documents and hands copies to Dad and the professor.

Professor Hoffman hands us a white envelope. “This is your first lesson.”

“What is it?” I ask.

He says it’s our first puzzle and clues. Dad tells us that Professor Hoffman designed the program for us, he calls it street schooling. We’ll have to explore many new places and talk to strangers. It sounds pretty scary already.

Dad says mom has spent the whole morning planting those clues in the neighborhood. We’ll have a lot of fun hunting them down. I look at the puzzle sheet, and it looks like a math problem to me.

“It’s a street code, Babe.” He points at the line OR97XYZ, where x = 2z –y, 2x = 32 / 8 and z = x – z + y

It’s just a simple simultaneous equation with three unknown variables.

“OR97201,” I say without thinking.

Samuel stares at me like I’m a freak.

I check Google maps for the address. “That’s the university across the street. But I’ve never been there.”

They don’t really expect me to go there without any warm-up?

Before I can protest further, Dad interrupts. He looks at his watch and says, “You have 48 hours to complete this mission, starting from now.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Just like Amazing Race!” Samuel shoots up and tugs me off the sofa.

“Each mission you win, your mom will let you play an extra hour of Xbox per week.”

Samuel’seyes gleam. By the time Dad wishes us luck, my brother has already dragged me out of the office.

On our way to the university, a car zooms from behind and makes me jump. I’m tugged behind Samuel like a rag doll.

The lights turn red.

Four men and two women cross the road, one heading towards me.

A car honks.

My face is all sweaty despite the breeze.

I pull Sam back and beg, “Can we not go?”

He finally pauses. “You’re scared?”

I nod as I catch my breath.

He rubs his chin and stares at me. After a while, he smiles and holds up a finger, “I know a trick. You won’t be scared in a second.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Wait and see.”

He pulls me in and presses my head firmly against his chest. One of his hands cradles the back of my head; the other loops around my waist.

“How does it feel, Babe?” he speaks in my ears softly.

It feels just like blankets and pillows wrapping me up. Warm, safe and snuggly.

“Still scared now?”

His forehead knocks against mine gently.

Wow.

My brother is amazing.