I have been retired for almost 8 years.  I have achieved most of my life goals, so it is time to finally come out of the closet. 

I have this thing that gives me great joy, and I have deliberately hidden it from others for most of my life.  It is a strange thing that I intuitively knew many would never understand, so let me start at the beginning.

As early as I can remember, I have compared things, usually things that serve a similar function but achieve that function in a slightly different way. I can become so focused on a topic that everything around me fades away, and with each new piece of knowledge, my enjoyment grows.

I remember one of my first obsessive studies was pencils, which started before I entered kindergarten.  Why pencils?  Because I had access to them. I compared them in every way possible.  The quality of the lead. The choice of yellow. The ease of sharpening. The color of the eraser.  How were they made? Why did the designer choose a particular combination of clay and graphite? And on and on. 

When I started primary school, I received a small allowance.  I didn’t buy candy; I saved the money and bought pens, and compared them, just as I did with pencils. It may sound ridiculous to you that such an obsessive focus would give anyone pleasure, but I could get lost in understanding all the ins and outs of a device that, on the surface, was similar but, in reality, was infinite in variation.  

One day during my primary school years, I found myself rooting around the basement of our old, beat-up bungalow, and there I found her.  Bigger than a bread box, dusty and worn, and made of wood.  She was a giant radio, likely designed in the 1930s, eventually moved to our basement workshop, and then forgotten.  Did she still work? I plugged in her frayed power cord and turned the volume control on. It scratched loudly as I turned it up, and a clear hum came out of the speaker, but there was no defined sound.  The dial was a sliderule type, but it had an interesting feature that I had never seen on a table radio: buttons, like on a car radio.  I tried the buttons…nothing. I turned the tuning dial…it didn’t move. What was wrong?  Could I fix it?  I certainly couldn’t break it further, since it was already broken. It became my secret project, and it changed my life.

Radios from those days had huge vacuum tubes and giant components, perfect for me to study, and large enough for me to gain an understanding of design.  The cord that moved the slide rule had long since rotted away, but it was clear that it once followed an intricate set of loops to accomplish its goal.  I started to trace the path, this way…no, that way?. Should it twist around this pole twice, or should it be three times?  Finally, I figured it out, but what could I use to replace the now-dissolved cord? I found my answer in dental floss and fixed the slide rule dial. The buttons also had their own unique way of connecting to the tuner, and those components had rotted away too.  I fabricated new ones from corks.  I borrowed an extension cord, cut off the end, and replaced the old rotting power cord using my father’s soldering iron.  I saw him solder something once, and the process didn’t look too difficult. I found solvents and sandpaper around the house and cleaned the contacts to reduce the auditory scratchiness. I fabricated a new grill cover from a cloth placemat, stripped off the old checkered varnish, and restored the cabinet to its former beauty using cans of stuff that I found in the basement.  All along the way, I started to understand what the various electrical components did, how they worked, and why certain design choices were made.

Finally, my secret project was ready.  I plugged it in, turned it on, and slowly moved my dental floss dial. It worked! Radios in those days were often multi-band.  Not AM and FM, but AM and Shortwave.  What was Shortwave?  I didn’t know. I fashioned a wire antenna from scraps, connected it to the radio’s antenna terminals, and slowly turned the dial.  Beeps, bops, buzzes, then voices.  Some in foreign languages, some in English. It became clear I was listening to other nations’ international stations, many of which broadcast in English. I was hearing signals from thousands of miles away on an ancient radio that I fixed with dental floss, corks, and sandpaper. I was blown away.

Remember, I was young when I did this, which makes the next revelation easier to understand.  As a young kid, I believed what people told me, especially if they were adults. They obviously knew more than I did.  That old radio changed all of that.  I listened to news programs from other countries, and their reporting often contradicted the US stations. I listened to their variety shows, their music, their educational programs.  There was a similarity, but also a difference, just like the pencils, just like the pens. Alike, yet not alike.

That old radio made me abandon the idea that there was only one way of thinking. I could not rely only on others’ thinking; I had to think critically. That old broken radio that I fixed in 3rd grade changed me for the rest of my life.

I started finding broken radios and fixed them. Then I built my own. Then I saved up and bought radios. My collection followed the same pattern as my pencils and pens.  How were they different?  How were they the same? What designs were core to the base product? Where could creativity be exercised in the design? Why did the engineer decide to go with this circuit? Why did the industrial designer choose that particular color for the case? It almost gave me a high feeling the deeper I got into the weeds.  To be honest, not almost; it did.

None of my friends talked about things like that, and intuitively I knew I would be looked at unfavorably if I shared these obsessions with them, so I didn’t. It was easy to model conversations and actions by simple observation, so that is exactly what I did, and I fitted in. I looked and acted like my peers, and they accepted me, but I always felt different and always feared I would be found out. They would discover my weird quirks and reject me, so I worked hard to keep my secrets.

Being good at science was acceptable, so I became the science kid in grade school. The nuns thought I was special, and even praised me. They told my parents that God had special plans for me. The other kids were OK with my knowledge of science.  I learned that you sometimes could be different, but those differences had to follow certain rules. I was succeeding at fitting in, then puberty hit in 6th grade, and everything changed.

To this day, I don’t know why it happened, but in a very short amount of time, I went from being a little husky to being over 100 pounds overweight. I was horrified.  It was easy to hide my many differences, but this was one no amount of subterfuge could mask. 

I was now a clear target to be picked on, but my peers never did. I don’t mean to constantly say negative things about my dad, but he was definitely a source of shame and humiliation around my obesity. The words that he used to describe me still make me tear up when I think of them.  The only other critical person was, surprisingly, an aunt. Her son was also overweight, and for some reason she needed to know which one of us was fatter.  I remember that one time she made me try on his belts, but the worst incident was during a sleepover where, despite my protests, she weighed me in front of her entire family.  I will never forget that humiliation.  

I found a little booklet at the grocery checkout called The Drinking Man’s Diet,  and bought it for 35 cents.  It was a precursor to all the low-carbohydrate diets being hawked today.  I started to diet in earnest, and between the end of 7th grade and the middle of 8th grade, I lost 100 pounds and became a family celebrity and diet guru. Slowly, I regained the weight, and over my life I have lost around 100 pounds 5 different times, plus countless smaller weight losses.  Twenty years ago, I spent $20,000.00 of my own money to get a gastric band placed.  I lost a little weight and then gained it back, and the side effects of that useless surgery still haunt me to this very day. Like everything else in my life, I became an expert in all manner of dieting.  Low carb, high fiber, the exchange diet,  Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, you name it.  Right now, my weight is fairly normal, but I work hard at it. I don’t want to be judged because of my weight; I just want to be accepted for who I am.  Honestly, this is an internal struggle. People do seem to accept me; I’ve kept friends for decades, some going on 60 years. My wife has told me she prefers me a little chunky, so I know this is a personal fear that goes beyond reality. 

My compulsive comparing of things has continued.  In the last few years, I have been buying bread makers for $5-$20 at thrift stores, and I have quite a few. I have studied them, their similarities and differences.  I have written about them.  I use them. I make my own bread, and after every few loaves I’ll switch to a different machine.  It sounds absolutely crazy, but it makes me happy.

I love simple machines because they’re easy to understand, and they all follow a similar yet different design concept. Most recently, I have been picking up electric pressure cookers at thrift stores.  The most famous of these devices is the Instant Pot, but many others are similar inside yet differ in their programming and design choices. The Instant Pot fad has faded, and all sorts of machines are available for a few dollars at thrift stores and online sources like Marketplace.  I have been going through my usual comparisons. It sounds weird even as I write this, but this is who I am. I’m similar to most people, but I’m also different. 

I know this is what drove me into science: to see how things are similar, yet different, and this is what also pushed me into psychiatry. 

We are all similar, yet we are not the same.  My life experience as a white, privileged doctor is very different from that of a black man raised on the West Side of Chicago. We likely share many things.  We want to advance our lives, raise our children to become successful adults, and live in a safe neighborhood.  Yet, our experiences make us different too, and that is OK. We still share many common links.

A large portion of my doctor work deliberately focused on the underserved. These were often the most mentally ill clients who, due to their mental illness, had the fewest resources.  I split this work with my private practice in an affluent suburb of Chicago. Two very different populations. Different, yet the same.

I think being different has helped me understand others. I can find commonality while accepting their differences.

What a privilege my work life was.  I got to intimately know people from all races, religions, sexual orientations, political beliefs, and genders. All different, but the same.

The same joins us, and the different enriches and broadens us. Why can’t people see that? Why is it so easy to hate, and so hard to love?

I was different, but I could hide it until I gained 100 pounds. Yet, even then, I was the same.  That difference made me more empathetic, a critical thinker, and a problem solver.  It turned out to be a positive in my life, even though I always thought it was a negative.

Together we are stronger.  Don’t let others manipulate you to think otherwise.

Peace

Mike