I, Robert

In my experience, a lot of college-age people from reasonably privileged backgrounds end up overestimating the amount of downside risk involved in various choices one makes in one’s early twenties, and that their parents typically exacerbate anxieties on this score rather than using their experience and wisdom to lean against it.

Elizabeth writes (on her blog):

When I was younger - say eleven or twelve - I mistranslated the phrase, “Grow a pair.” For a good year, when everyone was saying this phrase more often than was appropriate, I thought it was “Grow a pear.” I thought it was a reference to the pear-like shape of the uterus. In this way, although it was slang and my mother would disapprove of my saying it, I still really enjoyed the idea of it. When I said it to boys, I envisioned a pear expanding inside of them like one of those capsules you toss into water that then expands into a dinosaur. It was amusing, this phrase was great, it inspired fantastic imagery. As a woman, it made me feel empowered to have a popular phrase devoted to the strength, courage and heightened pain tolerance of individuals with a uterus.

Anyway, I was wrong.

The device does so many different things so well that there’s a constant urge when you’re using one to do something else. Two or three pages into a book, you’re already wondering whether you’ve got new mail, or whether anyone has atted you on Twitter. One of the joys of reading is to be able to shut yourself away from distractions and lose yourself in a book. When the book itself is packed with distractions, the whole experience is compromised.