Do you slot people?

Of course you do. We all do – overlay a version of a person over our initial vision, associating them with aspects of themselves while excluding others.

I had a friend who associated me with tennis and Shakespeare. When (twenty years ago now) sickness yanked me from the tennis court I was, in this friend’s sight, abbreviated by half. That I replaced tennis with these missives didn’t compute with my friend. Good for tennis, I was no good without it. See ya.

I’ve noticed this slotting tendency with my growing grandkids. They were over for dinner. How I love them! I heard myself quizzing and joshing them along lines that had become familiar. One was a lawyer-in-ovo; another a tech whiz and chocolate fancier; a third a gladiator. Their slots were generous, verging on ennobling – these were our grandkids, after all – but also, all too evidently, restrictive. I was not trying to “get to know” them beyond the costumes I’d assigned them in the human drama. I was simplifying them, so they were more readily memorable in the time allowed.

We’ve no choice but to do this, condense and cast acquaintances, near and distant, in the story of our lives. We’ve only so much room in our psyches for the largeness of otherness. Giant as Jane looms in my consciousness, there are elements of her life my curiosity overlooks. I didn’t know she’d once worked a sewing machine until conversation unearthed this nugget the other evening. How much else don’t I know about her – or she of me? How much have I impoverished her actuality by shrinking it to my needs?

This is a human dilemma. Other creatures know each other instantly if Henry’s experience is any guide. A big dog comes loping onto our trail – huge and unleashed, its owner nowhere in sight – three times Henry’s size – exuberant and unschooled. Henry crowds my ankles for succor, fearful for his life. A few sniffs and both are satisfied with the other’s amiable intentions. They’ve subsequently become pals when they meet, neither pouting at their underappreciation.

Slotting is justifiable injustice. If we cram our lives with too many complex characters we’ll lose track, as in a Russian novel, forced to refer to the prefatory pages to remind ourselves who’s who. I want to know you better – you are reading my words! I want you to know me better, which is why I write them. But can either of us guess the immensity of our interiors – what we’ve seen, whom we’ve loved, what we hide? We slot ourselves for the other’s delectation. About many of you I’ve jotted a few notes – but just a few – to recall you meagerly to mind. I’ve shrunk you to fit into my skull.

Slotting is a prerequisite for sanity. Remembering we’re slotting is essential to our humanity. Too often we mistake caricature for character, loathing or loving our reduction while forgetting who they “really are.” This happens famously in war: adversaries are shrink-wrapped into “enemies” whom we erase because we must. Soldiers report waking to the realization that they’ve killed a person just like them! Wilfred Owen wrote a great poem about a soldier meeting his victim in the underworld. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend,” he gulps,

Slotting, we shoot – bullets, epithets. Thinking, we refrain. Let us allow to all we know the extent we seek for ourselves.