by A. J. Jacobs
As a mild OCD sufferer, I support Washington completely. His handshake-phobia, however, came a few decades before the germ theory. It was all part of his aloofness and dislike of physical contact. Washington preferred the old-school greeting: bowing, in accordance with Rule 26: “Make a reverence, bowing more or less according to the custom of the better bred.”
So I’ve decided to follow suit. When I visited him, Dean gave me a tutorial:
“When you bow, you must sit back on your rear leg. Oh, and we have no monarchy in this country, so you keep your eyes straight. You look into the eyes.
“If you’re bowing formally, you put your best foot forward and you turn out your toes to present your calf. If you’re bowing to a man, your calf projects your power. If you’re bowing to a woman, your calf projects something else.”
Something else? What something else? Was there a saying, the bigger the calf, the bigger the . . .
Dean smiles mysteriously. (He later told me that’s exactly what he meant. Legend has it there were even prosthetic wooden calves you could stuff in your socks to appear more manly.)
For the last week, I’ve avoided handshakes altogether in favor of the bow. There’s been a clear split in reactions.
There are the reciprocators. I met this lawyer at a cocktail party my wife took me to.
“This is Alex, he’s a friend of Barbara’s.”
Alex stuck out his hand.
I did a quick, shallow bow. He looked startled. And then he did an even deeper bow.
I took that as a challenge and executed the full Dean Malissa lean-back-and-present-your-calf-and-bend-90-degrees-at-the-waist bow.
He responded with a graceful arm swoop and a doffing of his baseball cap.
On the other hand, there are the insulted. Yesterday, I met my friend David for lunch, and he brought his business associate Terry, whom I’d never met. Terry stuck out his hand. I ignored it, and bowed to him, presenting my calf. He looked startled.
He kept holding out his hand. He would not take it down.
I bowed again, this time more quickly.
And yet that hand—it stayed out there.
I bowed a short cursory bow, just a little head dip.
“You want me to say something in Japanese?”
“I’m trying not to shake hands.”
“It’s all right. You can shake hands.”
“No, I’m trying not to.”
“Come on.”
We stood there for ten seconds, playing chicken with the salutations. Finally, he took down his hand, but the lunch was halting and awkward.
Historically, the handshake was seen as a democratic gesture. William Penn was a big proponent, and scandalized some upper-crust types by shaking hands with Indians. But nowadays, I think the bow has more benefits. Though it may seem pretentious, it’s actually deeply humbling. Just lowering yourself before someone—the universal symbol of modesty—makes you feel more respectful. Behavior shapes your thoughts.
REFRAIN FROM ANGER LIKE GEORGE WASHINGTON
George Washington is known for controlling his emotions. What’s remarkable about this is what a struggle it must have been for him. He wasn’t born with a Zen attitude. Just the opposite. Below his placid exterior, he was a burbling witch’s cauldron of emotions.
And when he did lose control—which was more often than he liked—oh man it was ugly. “Few sounds on earth could compare with that of General Washington swearing a blue streak,” wrote his private secretary.
Gilbert Stuart—the artist who painted the portrait on the dollar bill—said he saw in Washington’s face “the strongest and most ungovernable passions, and had he been born in the forests, it was [my] opinion that he would have been the fiercest man among the savage tribes.”
But as the Rules say, “Use no reproachful language against anyone, neither curse nor revile,” and “In all causes of passion, permit reason to govern.”
I worked on restraining my wrath during my Bible year, but it’s a struggle that’s never over. Today I get my chance to practice Washington-style anger management. Here’s what happened: since I have no office, and since I have three extremely loud boys, my mother-in-law lends me her studio apartment when she’s away on a trip. I go there during the days to write.
Last week, she came back a day early, before I’d had a chance to clean up the empty soda cans and dishes.
She was not happy. I called to apologize, which was the Washingtonian thing to do: he could be great at saying sorry.
“Hello, Barbara. It’s your son-in-law calling to apologize.”
“This is not working out,” she says. “We have different standards of cleanliness. You’re going to have to find somewhere else to work.”
“Well, I know I made a mistake, but—”
Damn. My cell phone cut out. I dial her back. She answers.
“Hi, Barbara. Sorry about that, my cell phone seems to have died.”
“No, it didn’t. I hung up.”
“You hung up on me?”
“I said what I wanted to say, and then I hung up.”
“Wow.”
Now, normally, my reaction would have been mild annoyance mixed with amusement. She’s a character, my mother-in-law. The first words I ever heard her utter were “I need a drink.” (She’d had a bad parking experience.) So generally I’m able to enjoy her quirks.
But I’m hyperaware of manners right now. And to get hung up on? That was rude. Highly uncivil. I’ve been treated better by parking cops.
I start to sweat. I punch in her number, ready to reproach her and curse and revile. Wait. I can’t do that. Follow George Washington’s lead. I click off.
That afternoon, I sit down to write a letter to Barbara. I love the Colonial style of writing—the roundabout phraseology. “It is not without reluctance that I bring this up,” I start. “But I wanted to endeavor to elucidate my concern.”
The beauty part is, this formal, repressed language actually makes me less angry. How can I be foaming at the mouth when I use words like elucidate?
I sign it “A. J. Jacobs.”
Julie laughs at me. “You probably don’t need the last name.”
At least I didn’t write “Your humble and obedient servant,” the way Dean signs his e-mails.
I drop the note off at Barbara’s apartment building. The next day, Barbara comes over to talk.
“I’m sorry if I offended you,” she says.
“And I am sorry about the cleanup.”
“I just thought it was better to get off the phone quickly so nothing escalated.”
“You liked the letter?”
“It was very formal.”
“Thank you.”
It’s possible you could call the letter passive-aggressive. But the Rules encourage passive aggression. And I have to say, passive aggression gets a bad rap nowadays. It may not be appropriate in all occasions, but it’s a lot better than aggressive aggression.
IGNORE GOSSIP LIKE GEORGE WASHINGTON
Remember how Dean said George Washington has sensitized him to just how uncivil these times are? I think about that a lot.
These are some seriously uncivil times. It’s been two weeks, and I made the mistake of looking at some comments about myself on the Internet. It’s a terrible habit, and I’ve been trying to kick it for years. But I keep sneaking back on.
Today, I clicked on a YouTube video of me speaking about my Bible book. Among the comments:
“His voice is sooo annoying.” (I’m a tad nasal, sort of Truman Capote without the drawl. Or maybe late-model Arnold Horshack.)
“Does he remind anyone else of Beaker from the Muppets?”
Another called me a “rabbit man” (a reference to my slightly buck teeth, I think, or maybe my love of lettuce).
I read the comments with my finger on the QUIT button, so that if I get to a particularly harsh one, I can zap the window off my screen.
These are brutal times. But the question is, Are they any more brut
al than Washington’s era? I’m not so sure. There was some scurrilous, nasty stuff going on. Consider James Callender, a sleazeball journalist would have done quite well as an Internet troll. Thomas Jefferson hired Callender to write nasty articles about John Adams. When Callendar felt he didn’t get paid properly by Jefferson, he turned on Jefferson, writing a scathing article about Jefferson’s private life. He was the first to expose Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemings.
Luckily for me, of all the Founding Fathers, George Washington does seem the most civil. He wasn’t much of a gossip. And he didn’t believe others’ gossip, to the point of naïveté. In Washington’s second term, Thomas Jefferson started spreading nasty rumors about Washington—including that he was senile. Washington was told, but refused to believe Jefferson would say such things. Washington looked for the best in people. He was no Machiavellian.
It makes me like George Washington a lot more. And Jefferson? Maybe I’m just falling for the pro-Washington propaganda, but he does seem seriously flawed.
WEEP LIKE GEORGE WASHINGTON
It’s late October, just a couple weeks until the election. As a moderate New York liberal, I’m legally required to vote for Obama. But I have to say, I’m looking forward to my two minutes behind the curtain, unlike voting for John Kerry four years ago, which felt like wiping the inside of the microwave oven—something I needed to do, but I knew wasn’t going to be much fun.
Everyone compares Obama to his fellow Illinois man Abe Lincoln. But since I’m doing this project, I see everything through Washington-colored lenses.
And to me, Obama is the political offspring of our first president. Consider:
• Obama (aka No-Drama Obama) is famous for his mastery over his emotions. In true Washingtonian style, Obama even controls his facial muscles.
• He’s deliberative. Like our first president, he doesn’t lead from his gut. Thomas Jefferson wrote that “perhaps the strongest feature in [Washington’s] character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely weighed.” Obama got slammed as indecisive for not voting on a bunch of U.S. Senate bills. But I have a soft spot for reasoned indecision.
• He says he plans to surround himself with a cacophony of voices. Before Lincoln’s team of rivals, there was Washington’s team of rivals. I’m surprised the agrarian idealist Jefferson and the industrial realist Hamilton didn’t claw each other’s eyes out.
• He styles himself a postpartisan president. Washington was prepartisan. He was appalled when the country split into political parties.
I know. I’ve been swept away by this Obama thing. I’ve lost all perspective. I feel like the poet in the 1789 New Hampshire Recorder who wrote:
Behold the matchless Washington—
His glory has eclips’d the sun;
The luster of his rays so bright
’Tis always day, there’s no more night.
The next day, I call Dean to give him an update. I tell him that I had been skeptical of George Washington early on, but now I’m liking him more and more.
“I remember I was reading Washington’s Secret War by Thomas Fleming,” he tells me. “I was on vacation at Villa del Sol in Mexico—that’s the beach in Shawshank Redemption, by the way. It’s where they always dreamed of going. I must have had a couple of Coronas. I put the book down in my lap. And I started to cry.
“And my wife says, ’What’s wrong?’
“And I said, ’It’s not what’s wrong. It’s what’s right.’
“This man is amazing.”
I’m glad Dean feels comfortable enough to tell me about his crying jags. Maybe it’s because his hero was also a weeper. I wouldn’t have thought it, seeing as he’s so famously stoic. But Washington wept in public several times. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Washington gave a speech to his men about how proud he was of them, and had tears streaming down his face.
A few days later, at 11 P.M., Julie and I are watching TV in bed. John McCain has just given a highly civil and decent concession speech.
Barack Obama strides onstage in Chicago’s Grant Park.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” he tells the nation.
Julie is crying. Jesse Jackson is crying. I’m having trouble controlling my face muscles as well.
This is an amazing moment. Even if Obama did run for president instead of stand for president, it’s still an amazing moment. I hope Obama turns out to be a Washingtonian leader in the original sense and not Washingtonian in the Beltway sense. We’ll see.
EVOLVE LIKE GEORGE WASHINGTON
As my project wraps up, I’ve got a hankering to see George Washington in action again. Dean isn’t performing this weekend. But another reenactor is slated to appear at a French and Indian War battle near Pittsburgh. It’s where George Washington first tasted the military life, fighting on the side of his future enemies, the British.
I get to the field right in time for battle. French forces, about a hundred of them, dressed in white uniforms with tall black hats, advance slowly from the left side of the field. The British forces advance even more slowly. It’s an organized and polite battle—the two sides take turns shooting at each other, never letting the affair descend into unpleasant chaos. The muskets— which are loaded with gunpowder but no bullets—sound like very loud microwave popcorn. Pop, pop, pop! The guns blow smoke rings that float up and disappear in the trees.
Here in the spectator section, I’m standing among the members of the Boy Scout troop from Allegheny County.
“Two AK-47s is all they need,” says one Boy Scout. “Mow those Frenchies right down.”
The Brits have a kilt-wearing bagpipe player who walks behind the soldiers blowing a mournful tune. War was still brutal back then, but at least it came with a lovely soundtrack.
The soldiers on both sides start dropping to the ground. Every few seconds, another one slumps and splays on the field. They are good splayers, these soldiers, arms and legs bent in all sorts of acute and obtuse angles.
The Brits are almost wiped out. The head British officer surrenders to the French, who take him away for a vigorous pedicure, or whatever they did to their fellow gentlemen/officers.
It’s been forty-five minutes and so far, no George Washington in sight. I ask the Boy Scout leader where the colonel is.
He tells me Washington wasn’t in this particular battle, but is around somewhere.
“You know where he’s camped?”
“He might know,” says the Scout leader.
He points to a stout reenactor in a green jacket and a brown felt hat. He’s a Pennsylvania infantryman.
“Excuse me!” I call out. “I’m looking for George Washington.”
The Pennsylvania soldier stomps over to me.
“Colonel George Washington? You’re looking for Colonel Washington?”
“Yes.”
“The brash, arrogant young man?” He shakes his head. “He got us into this war. Brash and arrogant he is.”
I laugh. I haven’t heard such blatant anti-Washington rhetoric. It seems almost sacrilegious. I’ve had my issues with George Washington, but this soldier seems unduly harsh.
The soldier, I find out, is Mike, a veteran reenactor.
“Did you fight in the battle today?” I ask.
“No, I hurt my knee and figured the mud is slippery, so maybe I should sit this one out.”
Mike’s been doing French and Indian and Revolutionary War reenactments for forty years, a survivor of about eight hundred events. He buys gunpowder in bulk, he tells me.
“So that’s real gunpowder?”
He nods.
“You ever use live ammunition?”
“No,” he says. Most reenactors are exceedingly careful with their guns—you’re not even supposed to jam the gunpowder do
wn with a ramrod.
“Someone might forget about it and leave the ramrod in there,” explains Mike. “And then it’ll fly downfield and spear a soldier on the other side. It happens.”
He pauses. “Especially with Civil War reenactors. Those guys have no idea what they’re doing. Horrible. Horrible.”
I wasn’t aware of this—the cold war between the Civil War and Revolutionary War reenactors. But Mike assures me the Civil War troops are a problem.
“We’ve had converts,” Mike tells me.
I return to the subject of Colonel George Washington.
“I’m not a fan of the young Washington,” Mike says. “He turned out to be a good man when he was older. But as a young man? He was subversive. He tried to undermine his superiors. Watch what you read about him, because he’s glorified.”
Mike didn’t know where the brash colonel was, so I wandered off. Finally, the wife of a French soldier pointed out the young officer a few hundred yards down the path. He had the red hair of a young George Washington, and a blue long coat. I approached.
“Colonel Washington?” I said.
“Yessir.”
“I’m from a gazette in New York called Esquire.”
“Oh,” he says. “How can I help you?”
“I talked to a man just now who called you brash and arrogant.”
Washington laughs.
“That’s got to be Mike,” he says.
“Yes, that’s who it was.”
He scoffs. “He’s just jealous he has to wear that ugly green uniform.”
The young George Washington—who, when not commanding troops, spends his time as a geologist named Bryan Cunning—is jovial and chatty. He doesn’t have Dean’s gravitas, and certainly breaks character more often than Dean. I thank him for his time. He tries to shake my hand, but I bow instead.
“Oh yes,” he says. “Right.”
As I drive back to New York, I think more about Mike’s unexpected rant than about Bryan’s Washington interpretation. Many of my books talk about how Washington evolved for the better as he got older. But no one had put it as succinctly as Mike. Washington was a selfish twit who turned into one of the greatest men of his time.