I learned early not to trust charismatic leadership. It was during my very brief membership in a gang. Luckily, my father sussed early to my involuntary recruitment and moved the family away. But I carried a hunk of two-by-four studded with three penny nails for a brief while. It was the gang’s most threatening piece of armament that a skinny thirteen-year-old could swing with threat. I received hints on how to look vicious while doing it.
Our leader was Carl, who, with his acne, would have been the despair of any dermatologist. Secretly, we all agreed that it made him such a nasty person. Despite the cratered face, he could pump up the gang to rage and innuendo with a practiced ease.
Carl’s weapon was a nasty, sharp, and pointy little single-hand opener, which he flicked open to drive home points while he talked. He maintained that the more popular switchblade was an unreliable weapon in a knife fight. While explaining these finer points of knife fighting, Carl would do a little dance to illustrate. Me and the rest of the idiot teenagers found Carl inspirational.
Our first fights were street corner confrontations with other want-to-be badasses in the same misbehaving milieu as us. We mastered them through sheer intimidation. I can still do the sneer Carl taught me and the slow swing through a shallow arc of the two-by-four. It was all an act; I was trembling. But I looked badass. The opposition, other small corner gangs, fled.
One night, though, we met our match. I am trying to remember the gang’s name – the Slugs? In any case, the Slugs pulled out a zip gun and changed the battlefield calculus. These days, when gangs casually wave about truly hazardous weapons, the zip gun is largely forgotten. It was hobbled together from a pipe, wood, and a 22-long cartridge. It might not have even been capable of firing. But the sight of it caused Carl to turn and run. With his running, the rest of us turned and fled. I took a nasty knock on the head from a sock loaded with pennies.
The black and blue swellings from the fight alerted my father to what was going on. I was grounded and had ample opportunity to reflect on my gang membership, Carl, and the nature of leadership.
My experience with Carl left an abiding mistrust for boastful leaders who can whip up a flurry of anger with their words and gestures. It upped the ante for anyone in a leadership position for me. My attitude has become one of showing me rather than telling me.
I tend to mistrust rather than trust. It was all the result of that final fight and flight, and watching Carl book it for points unknown.
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Which is exactly why I immediately distrust anyone who begins the conversation with, “Trust me.”
Well you grew up in Jersey. Like New York there were plenty of folks interested in hoodwinking us. You learn to be pessimistic early, if you’re smart.
I think a lot of the problem these day is that people think they can game the system and hang onto the coattails of rotten people for personal gain. No ethics, no morals, and no common sense.
Thank goodness for father’s who intervene, and a mind willing to see the wisdom in it.
Growing up in NYC offered many opportunities to learn from experience.
You tell a great story.
Thanks
I’m a skeptic. Definitely, “Show me. Shut up and show me.” I’ve been bulled enough times that my natural credulity and trust finally hobbled off into the sunset, pretty badly injured and I feel sorry for it. It was a of loss, but… Anger is uncomfortable. I do not understand the thousands of people who get off on it. What empty lives they must have.
A lot of men seem to be addicted to anger, some women too, but lots more men. I think, in our society, it’s how they are raised – alternately getting pampered and then abused.
Then they find that anger will get them what they want, and that’s a powerful drug. I regret to say that I’ve known lots of women who seem to be attracted to angry men – I’m not going to speculate foolish about why.
I’m very talented at defusing other peoples’ anger. I had an angry dad — he was angry for a very good reason but anger is anger. I think anger is a socially acceptable emotion for men where fear, sadness, and others are not. I don’t know if younger generations are the same as ours or my parents’ but… My dad had MS which materially messes with the nervous system in addition to being a death sentence unfolding right in front of you. I’d have been mad, too. I don’t anger easily, but if I get there…
I patched it up with my dad about a year before he died, and I am grateful that I did. but it was years later that I realized that he was suffering from the PTSD caused by surviving several torpedo sinkings in WWII. It’s hard to excuse extreme anger but at least your dad and mine had serious reasons for it – and during a period of time that there was no emotional support or therapy for the problems – just deal with it.
I wonder about our parents’ generation. They went through so much and they had to be tough about it.