20190803.0430

Tomorrow, the Mrs., Ms. 8, and I will head to a state park not too far from where we live. There, we will gather with several score members of the extended family, as has been done annually for longer than I have known my wife--indeed, long than she's been going to the event. It will not be the first time that I will have gone to the event, a family reunion that marks kinship attenuating through generations, and I do not think it will be the last; I have enjoyed it when I've gone before, and I look to do so again tomorrow. We'll be taking an ice-cream maker and fixin's for a couple of batches, which ought to make for a good time, and I expect to be helping on the pit. (There don't look to be burn bans where we're heading, which helps.) It's like to be a good time.
The first time I went to the reunion, though, I did not look forward to it. I was afraid of it, actually, thinking I would be around a bunch of people who already knew each other and wouldn't have any common ground with me. It's happened many times before. No few times that it's come out that I have a doctorate, or that I do the scholarship I have done and still at least pretend to do, conversation around me has died; no few times has conversation limped on with an "I guess I have to watch my language around you" or something similar, as though I remain ready to pounce on any slip of usage when I am not on the clock. Even with my own family, it happens; there is too much I do not share with them, and them with me, for it not to happen. And with others with whom I do not share blood and background, it's worse. With people who do "real" work for a living, it's worse yet--and many of the people I expected to meet were, I knew, hard-working folks.
I am still too much an academic. I still fall on the wrong side of the town and gown divide too often. And I do not have a room in the ivory tower anymore, though I still seem to visit.
In the event, I did manage to fit in decently well. Two things did it, I think. The first was that, when we arrived and got unloaded--because we don't show up empty-handed--I went up to the folks working on the pit and asked what I could do to help. The second was that I largely shut up and listened to the older people talk. The first has worked well for me in other contexts; it's hard not to be favorably disposed towards someone who leads off with trying to be useful. The second has, as well; "lurk moar" is an old refrain of internet communities that still take in new members, and listening to others presents a humility that many people find agreeable.
I still go in to help. I still listen. And I still do well with both at the reunion. Or I did last time; maybe it will work for me again.