story about a Catholic church in Ingleside whose priest made some odious remarks about gay marriage, and the activists who picketed outside the church dressed as nuns.
“It was supposed to be a quickie,” she says of the story. “Get a couple of quotes from each side, a photo of these wacky transvestite nuns. But I wound up spending three days talking to people in the congregation, watching them feed soup to homeless people, going to services, understanding what it meant to them to have, you know, guys in nun costumes outside their church every day. And once I’d done that, I had to spend time with the nuns too, and they were the coolest, funniest, most sincere people I’d ever met. Most of them had grown up Catholic and been terrorized by it. And I was so nervous while I was writing it, because all these people on both sides had really opened up to me, had taken me into their lives, and now I was trying to do right by all of them, except they hated each other.”
“How did it turn out?”
“I totally obsessed over it,” she says. “Right up to the last minute I was adding things and taking things out and counting the number of words quoting each side, trying to make it balanced. I got a little carried away. And then the day it came out, I got to the office and there were two messages. I’m always so worried the day a big story comes out, I dread checking the messages because it’s usually someone threatening to sue. But that day there were two messages. One was from the priest and the other was from the head of the protesters, and they both said, basically,
Thank you
.”
“That’s awesome,” I say, because it is in fact awesome, and because I have a huge crush on her and am glad to be able to tell her that I think she’s awesome by pretending I’m talking about her story.
“So what about you?” she says. “Do you get obsessed over your work that way? Do you have a, like, a favorite program that you wrote or anything like that?”
The answer to both questions is yes, of course. But the joy ofhacking doesn’t translate. If she’s like most people, computers are alien to her, mysterious electronic totems that require the ministrations of a shamanic caste of surly gnomes who live in the basement of her office building.
“I get pretty deep into it,” I say. “And the work I did for the startup, the interface I designed, I’m proud of that. I mean, I think it’s a good solution to a particular set of problems. But talking about it gets really boring to a non-programmer.”
“You worry a lot about keeping people on your side, huh?” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“If you were to answer my question, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I don’t think I’d be bored, but what if, worst case scenario, what if I was bored for a minute? Would that be the end of the world?”
I have to think about this. “Well, I don’t want to bore you. I mean…” This is hard, because the reason I don’t want to bore her is that I want her to like me, and obviously I can’t say that directly.
“I know, you don’t want to bore me, because you want me to like you,” she says.
Whoa
. “But you know, I’m going to make up my own mind about whether I like you, just like you’re going to make up your mind about whether you like me. And anyway, liking you is different from liking a TV show. The reason I like people is not that they never bore me. So why don’t you tell me about it, and if I don’t understand I’ll stop you and ask questions, which is what I do all day in my job, and if I get bored I’ll try to hide it until we’ve moved on to something else. OK?”
She drains the end of her drink, sets down the glass, and turns to face me. I look at her, and she looks at me, and that thing happens when you look at each other and realize,
Hey, here we are
. I ride it out, and then I jump in.
I try to describe what it’s like to get deep inside a really hardproblem: loading all the pieces
“It was supposed to be a quickie,” she says of the story. “Get a couple of quotes from each side, a photo of these wacky transvestite nuns. But I wound up spending three days talking to people in the congregation, watching them feed soup to homeless people, going to services, understanding what it meant to them to have, you know, guys in nun costumes outside their church every day. And once I’d done that, I had to spend time with the nuns too, and they were the coolest, funniest, most sincere people I’d ever met. Most of them had grown up Catholic and been terrorized by it. And I was so nervous while I was writing it, because all these people on both sides had really opened up to me, had taken me into their lives, and now I was trying to do right by all of them, except they hated each other.”
“How did it turn out?”
“I totally obsessed over it,” she says. “Right up to the last minute I was adding things and taking things out and counting the number of words quoting each side, trying to make it balanced. I got a little carried away. And then the day it came out, I got to the office and there were two messages. I’m always so worried the day a big story comes out, I dread checking the messages because it’s usually someone threatening to sue. But that day there were two messages. One was from the priest and the other was from the head of the protesters, and they both said, basically,
Thank you
.”
“That’s awesome,” I say, because it is in fact awesome, and because I have a huge crush on her and am glad to be able to tell her that I think she’s awesome by pretending I’m talking about her story.
“So what about you?” she says. “Do you get obsessed over your work that way? Do you have a, like, a favorite program that you wrote or anything like that?”
The answer to both questions is yes, of course. But the joy ofhacking doesn’t translate. If she’s like most people, computers are alien to her, mysterious electronic totems that require the ministrations of a shamanic caste of surly gnomes who live in the basement of her office building.
“I get pretty deep into it,” I say. “And the work I did for the startup, the interface I designed, I’m proud of that. I mean, I think it’s a good solution to a particular set of problems. But talking about it gets really boring to a non-programmer.”
“You worry a lot about keeping people on your side, huh?” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“If you were to answer my question, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I don’t think I’d be bored, but what if, worst case scenario, what if I was bored for a minute? Would that be the end of the world?”
I have to think about this. “Well, I don’t want to bore you. I mean…” This is hard, because the reason I don’t want to bore her is that I want her to like me, and obviously I can’t say that directly.
“I know, you don’t want to bore me, because you want me to like you,” she says.
Whoa
. “But you know, I’m going to make up my own mind about whether I like you, just like you’re going to make up your mind about whether you like me. And anyway, liking you is different from liking a TV show. The reason I like people is not that they never bore me. So why don’t you tell me about it, and if I don’t understand I’ll stop you and ask questions, which is what I do all day in my job, and if I get bored I’ll try to hide it until we’ve moved on to something else. OK?”
She drains the end of her drink, sets down the glass, and turns to face me. I look at her, and she looks at me, and that thing happens when you look at each other and realize,
Hey, here we are
. I ride it out, and then I jump in.
I try to describe what it’s like to get deep inside a really hardproblem: loading all the pieces
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