My Merry Christmas and Virtual Gift

Driving home just now from the airport, along Fremont, past public schools and closed shops and tall leafless trees that leave visible the many birds nests, and listening to a block of The Who which I've always loved not least because of a massive crush on Pete Townsend, I realized, I am so happy; so happy to be here, as well as so happy to not be in Los Angeles. Scott Kaufer, who is an extraordinary host and whose wit is at least nine times as sharp as most peoples', bet me I'd be back in in LA in nine months. Scott, drinks on you next time I'm at Yamashiro.

It's Christmas today, which means yesterday was taken up with baking. My sister-in-law Hillary sat across the counter from me as I rolled pie crust, giving her 12-year-old son an online Meyers-Briggs personality test. It was a unusual one, as you could only answer yes or no, and the questions were incisive. I listened as Hillary read her son's results, with an especial ear toward whether they would apply to anyone, depending on what you wanted to hear. All I knew was, his would never apply to me, a lot of stuff about engineering and standing off to the side. As I poured pecan filling into one crust, apple-sour cream mixture into another, Hillary gave me the test. I turned out to be an ENFJ--Extrovert Intuitive Feeling Judging--and what Hillary read to me about me was rather stunning in its accuracy. "That's you," said Hillary, who has known me ten years, "and that." Then she read me hers; I don't recall her type, but it was her, and again, utterly different from her son's and mine. Pretty cool stuff; take the test if you have ten minutes, and let me know what you get.

Midway through Hillary reading to me about herself, I began to feel as though someone has hung a 200-pound cloak packed with virus over my shoulders. Within minutes, I had a fever of 102 and felt as though I'd been used as a punching bag. I missed Christmas Eve dinner at the in-laws, instead staying in bed (for 17 hours) with yet another Jack Olsen book. One of the questions on the MB test asked, "You value justice higher than mercy." I knew the answer instantly: yes, justice, which is perhaps why I am currently having a love affair with true crime books; these books are not written unless there's denouement; I think lately I will write these books, and was recently contacted by a woman, a college dean, whose husband had faked his own suicide; had run through all their assets; who'd perhaps sexually abused their daughter, and who is now a high-lord in a warlock society: she wanted to know if I'd be interested in writing a book about her story, and I had to tell her, without putting too fine a point on it, that if someone had not been murdered, there is no story. I know she has a thirst for justice; so do I, when confronted with this sort of narcissist, who shares many traits with the men described in this post.

This is not to say women cannot go as rancid; I just finished Jessica Mitford's autobiographical "Hons and Rebels", a magnificent book for its history and unparalleled window into a way of life that simply no longer exists. During a stint as a Gallup pollster in the late 1930s, Mitford--who until then had lived only with own sisters in their rarefied world--writes about the sorority of Gallup girls she shared rooms with on the road.

One member of our team won the respectful admiration of the others for a particularly clever trick she had worked out to get her husband to give her extra money. Shortly after their marriage... he had approached her with great embarassment and haltingly explained that he knew there was a "certain time of the month" when women had unusual expenses, and that she shouldn't hesistate to ask him for three or four extra pounds when that time arrived.

"The silly oaf!" her flat, rather brutal voice continued. "I've been getting three pounds ten every month off him for the past ten years. He doesn't even know enough to know how much a package of sanitary napkins costs."

Listening to her story, and the approving comments of the others, I felt I had arrived at a rock bottom of degradation that I didn't know existed before.

I woke today feeling okay; we will drive to Mt. Hood in a hour. I will bring our hosts a pecan pie. I guarantee if you make the recipe below, you will become beloved and people will talk about the pie for years.

Pecan Pie

1 pie crust, uncooked
4 eggs
1 cup dark corn syrup
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar
6 TB. butter, melted
2 t. pure vanilla extract
2 cups pecan halves

Preheat oven to 350. Dump pecans into pie shell. Mix remaining ingrediants in a large bowl. Pour into shell. Bake 50 minutes, or until the center no longer appears loose when you jiggle the pan.

Comments

[Michael J. Totten]

Wow, that test really nailed me. Here's what it said:

Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving

"Clever" is the word that perhaps describes ENTPs best. The professor who juggles half a dozen ideas for research papers and grant proposals in his mind while giving a highly entertaining lecture on an abstruse subject is a classic example of the type. So is the stand-up comedian whose lampoons are not only funny, but incisively accurate.

ENTPs are usually verbally as well as cerebrally quick, and generally love to argue--both for its own sake, and to show off their often-impressive skills. They tend to have a perverse sense of humor as well, and enjoy playing devil's advocate. They sometimes confuse, even inadvertently hurt, those who don't understand or accept the concept of argument as a sport.

ENTPs are as innovative and ingenious at problem-solving as they are at verbal gymnastics; on occasion, however, they manage to outsmart themselves. This can take the form of getting found out at "sharp practice"--ENTPs have been known to cut corners without regard to the rules if it's expedient -- or simply in the collapse of an over-ambitious juggling act. Both at work and at home, ENTPs are very fond of "toys"--physical or intellectual, the more sophisticated the better. They tend to tire of these quickly, however, and move on to new ones.

ENTPs are basically optimists, but in spite of this (perhaps because of it?), they tend to become extremely petulant about small setbacks and inconveniences. (Major setbacks they tend to regard as challenges, and tackle with determination.) ENTPs have little patience with those they consider wrongheaded or unintelligent, and show little restraint in demonstrating this. However, they do tend to be extremely genial, if not charming, when not being harassed by life in general.

In terms of their relationships with others, ENTPs are capable of bonding very closely and, initially, suddenly, with their loved ones. Some appear to be deceptively offhand with their nearest and dearest; others are so demonstrative that they succeed in shocking co-workers who've only seen their professional side. ENTPs are also good at acquiring friends who are as clever and entertaining as they are. Aside from those two areas, ENTPs tend to be oblivious of the rest of humanity, except as an audience -- good, bad, or potential.

[Amy Alkon]

Hi, girls! I'm an ENTJ

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes3.asp

Extroverted Intuitive Thinking Judging
Strength of the preferences %
33 33 1 44

A field marshall-type!

[Cathy Seipp]

We watched "The Sound of Music" on TV and Maia said that Liesl -- the you are 16 going on 17 girl -- looks "just like Nancy Rommelmann!" And it's true, she does!

That is my Xmas story this season.

[david]

INFJ
Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging
11 44 11 33

but of course, it could be wrong.

[Richard Bennett]

The test is probably accurate, David. I got the same diagnosis that I've got from several other forays into Meyers-Briggs previously, INTJ. But the questions were pretty transparent, so a person could easily game the test if he desired - I got a 100% on thinking, for example.

Famous INTJs:
Dan Aykroyd, actor (The Blues Brothers)
Susan B. Anthony, suffragist
Arthur Ashe, tennis champion
Augustus Caesar (Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus), Emperor of Rome
Jane Austen, author (Pride and Prejudice)
William J. Bennett, "drug czar"
William F. Buckley, Jr., conservative political advocate
Raymond Burr, actor (Perry Mason, Ironsides)
Chevy Chase (Cornelius Crane), actor (Fletch)
Phil Donahue, television talk show host
Michael Dukakis, governor of Mass., 1988 U.S. Dem. pres. candidate
Greg Gumbel, television sportscaster
Hannibal, Carthaginian military leader
Veronica Hamel, actor (Hill Street Blues)
Orel Leonard Hershiser, IV, major league baseball pitcher
Peter Jennings, television newscaster
Charles Everett Koop, former U.S. surgeon general
Ivan Lendl, tennis champion
C. S. Lewis, author (The Chronicles of Narnia)
Joan Lunden, television talk show host
Edwin Moses, U.S. olympian (hurdles)
Martina Navratilova, tennis champion
Charles Rangel, U. S. Representative, D-N.Y.
Pernell Roberts, actor (Bonanza)
Maria Owens Shriver, television newscaster
Josephine Tey (Elizabeth Mackintosh), mystery writer (Brat Farrar)
Rudy Giuliani, New York City mayor
Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense
General Colin Powell, US Secretary of State

U.S. Presidents:

* Chester A. Arthur
* Calvin Coolidge
* Thomas Jefferson
* John F. Kennedy
* James K. Polk
* Woodrow Wilson

Fictional:

Cassius (Julius Caesar)
Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
Gandalf the Grey (J. R. R. Tolkein's Middle Earth books)
Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)
Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' nemesis
Ensign Ro (Star Trek--the Next Generation)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Hamlet)
George Smiley, John le Carre's master spy
Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs)

[Matt Welch]

INTP.
moderately expressed introvert
moderately expressed intuitive personality
slightly expressed thinking personality
slightly expressed perceiving personality

That's me, the Introvert! (Wishful thinking, I suppose).

This description makes me sound like a Fascist:
"[My] distant goal is always to rearrange the environment somehow, to shape, to construct, to devise, whether it be buildings, institutions, enterprises, or theories. They look upon the world -- natural and civil -- as little more than raw material to be reshaped according to their design, as a formless stone for their hammer and chisel."

This one makes me sound like a good candidate for suicide:
"INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them. ... A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves."

This is a cry for help, people!

[nancy]

Well, if we're getting specific: ENFJ, Extrovert Intuitive Feeling Judgmentals (heaviest on the last two, in my case), are...

"... the benevolent 'pedagogues' of humanity. They have tremendous charisma by which many are drawn into their nurturant tutelage and/or grand schemes... But it's usually not meant as manipulation -- ENFJs generally believe in their dreams, and see themselves as helpers and enablers, which they usually are.

"ENFJs are global learners. They see the big picture. The ENFJs focus is expansive. Some can juggle an amazing number of responsibilities or projects simultaneously. Many ENFJs have tremendous entrepreneurial ability." (Author's note: hahahaha)

"ENFJs know and appreciate people. Like most NFs, (and Feelers in general), they are apt to neglect themselves and their own needs for the needs of others. They have thinner psychological boundaries than most, and are at risk for being hurt or even abused by less sensitive people. ENFJs often take on more of the burdens of others than they can bear...

"Face-to-face relationships are intense, personable and warm, though they may be so infrequently achieved that intimate friendships are rare...

"ENFJs are blessed through introverted intuition with clarity of perception in the inner, unconscious world. Dominant Feeling prefers to find the silver lining in even the most beggarly... Such "Thinking in the service of Feeling" has the appearance of logic, but somehow it never quite adds up."

[Richard Bennett]

Matt, INTPs sound like Angels fans with that "haunting sense of impending failure" and all.

[Curtis]

INFJ here. Gee, I knew I had a few problems, but this...?

[Jackie]

ESFJ - Extroverted Sensing Feeling Judging

You are:
slightly expressed extrovert

slightly expressed sensing personality

moderately expressed feeling personality

slightly expressed judging personality

Provider Guardians take it upon themselves to arrange for the health and welfare of those in their care, but they are also the most sociable of all the Guardians, and thus are the great nurturers of established institutions such as schools, businesses, churches, social clubs, and civic groups. Wherever they go, Providers take up the role of social contributor, happily giving their time and energy to make sure that the needs of others are met, that traditions are supported and developed, and that social functions are a success.

Providers are very likely more than ten percent of the population, and this is very fortunate for the rest of us, because friendly social service is a key to their nature. Highly cooperative themselves, Providers are skilled in maintaining teamwork among their helpers, and are also tireless in their attention to the details of furnishing goods and services. They make excellent chairpersons in charge of social events. They are without peer as masters of ceremonies, able to approach others with ease and confidence, and seemingly aware of what everyone’s been doing. And they are outstanding hosts or hostesses, able to remember people’s names, usually after one introduction, and always concerned about the needs of their guests, wanting to insure that all are involved and provided for.

Providers are extremely sensitive to the feelings of others, which makes them perhaps the most sympathetic of all the types, but which also leaves them rather self-conscious, that is, highly sensitive to what others think of them. Because of this Providers can be crushed by personal criticism, and will work most effectively when given ample appreciation both for themselves personally and for the service they give to others. This is not to say that Providers are afraid to express their own emotional reactions. They are quick to like and dislike—and don’t mind saying so—tending to put on a pedestal whatever or whoever they admire, and to come down hard on those people and issues they don’t care for...

Gosh, Nancy, that's nothing like me - is it? Heh.

[nancy]

Jeez, Jackie, that's spooky!