Princeton Y, 10:55 AM

During Natalie and Jackie's swim lesson Saturday, Graham and I hung with Jackie's dad in the Y's other building, near the "Garden Cafe." There was a sad scene over there. A number of stockbrokers, insurance salespeople, mortgage brokers, and others had organized a workshop on women's financial independence, complete with juice, coffee, muffins and seasonally appropriate orange tablecloths. Nobody showed. No women desiring financial independence. Just a bunch of sad producers networking vigorously amongst themselves, unable even to give away Reese's Peanut Butter cups.

So John and Graham and I hung out by the little play area, and there's this guy there with a daughter who's going straight from ballet to a swim lesson at 11:30. Double-dipping. And so this guy strikes up a conversation with us, giving his name as Adam when I said mine. Standard guy small-talk. # of kids. Where you live. Etc. And then he's asking John when his kids were born, he had one with a birthday of April 19, while John's got one that's April 23. We'll I'll be. And he was digging oddly on some other small point in an inappropriate way.

On such occasions, the mechanical devices for finding common ground with an interlocutor are laid bare as mechanisms: "Where ya from? Where'd you go to school? How bout them Yankees?" You've got to have them, but step over a line and you vear ever closer to pathology. Who cares when your kids bday is? What sort of common bond could a coincidence establish? It's almost random, save for mating patterns (July vacations) that concentrate births at certain times. Was Adam just lonely, looking to loop us in quickly, or does this betray a deeper insecurity. One thing's relatively certain. We'll find out in coming weeks at the Y.