"Why should I help them?" or: A Fountain of Filthy Water

I had just moved into an apartment in a high rise building in Germany. There was a knock at the door, and I answered it to find the elderly couple who lived across the landing. I naturally thought, "How nice! They want to welcome me!" I was quickly disabused of that notion by the scowls on their faces.

The woman explained in German that my front door made too much noise when I closed it. They believed that I didn't know how to close a door, and they were going to teach me. She demonstrated by holding down the handle, silently closing the door, then lifting up the handle. Usually when I arrived home, I simply pushed the door shut, and the latch clicked. That clicking noise was driving my neighbors crazy. Their door-closing method avoided the clicking noise.

After that, I tried to be a good neighbor. But once or twice, when I arrived home with my arms full of groceries, I pushed the door closed with my foot before I realized what I had done. Whenever I ran into my neighbors their expressions were dour, and I felt terrible about making their lives miserable with my occasional door clicking.

My next faux pas had a larger circle of critics. A friend stopped by to see me, but couldn't find my doorbell among the array of doorbells next to the ground floor elevator, since the buttons seemed to be in random order, not arranged by apartment number, and were labeled with only the occupants' names. I had sublet the apartment, so my doorbell had my landlady's name.

To solve this problem, I neatly printed my name on a piece of white tape, and pasted it over my landlady's name. A few days later I noticed that the label had been peeled off. I tried again, with the same result. Someone saw me trying a third time, and she kindly told me that some of the ladies in the building were upset, since the labels were supposed to be made using a labelmaker with white lettering on a black background. She suggested that I ask the Hausmeister to do it.

I obediently went to said Hausmeister, who grumbled about the fussy old ladies who made everyone's lives more difficult. He thought it was all very silly, but agreed to make a new label. Luckily he was an easy-going guy, who didn't ask any questions about what might have been an illegal sublet.

Some time later, everyone in the building was notified that the Hausmeister would come to bleed the radiators. Anyone who didn't want that had to tell him in advance. I didn't know what it meant to bleed a radiator, but I had no objection to the Hausmeister doing it.

On Bleeding Radiator Day, another knock at my door. The man who lived across the landing (of door-clicking fame) was frantic. He motioned me to follow him to his apartment. It turned out that he and his wife had refused entry to the Hausmeister, saying they would bleed their own radiators. What I saw when I entered their apartment was an arc of black water that emanated from a radiator, rose nearly to the ceiling, and descended onto their (formerly) pristine white carpet. The woman was trying to catch the stream in a medium sized pot.

The man tried to hand me an empty bowl, so I could replace his wife while she ran into the kitchen to empty her pot and he ran off to collect the Hausmeister.

For a brief instant, I hesitated. I thought, "These aren't my friends. They've made their hostility to me clear. Why should I help them?"

Then I collected myself, grabbed the bowl, and held it under the torrent, standing with outstretched arms in a hopeless attempt to keep my clothes clean. 

Why should I help them? Because I'm human, I'm part of a community, and that's what people do. What sort of world would we live in, if people didn't come to each other's aid in times of crisis?

The woman and I traded places, running back and forth between the living room and the kitchen sink, until the Hausmeister arrived with a wrench. I waited until everything was under control, and then left.

Later that day, when the Hausmeister bled my radiators, he complained about my annoying neighbors who thought they knew better than everyone else, and then ran to him for help whenever they screwed up.

While I knew I did the right thing, I was miffed that my neighbors hadn't even had the good manners to say "danke schön".

A week or two later, in the early evening, another knock at my door. I saw through the peephole that it was the man who lived across the landing.

"What did I do wrong this time?" I wondered. I thought about pretending I wasn't home, but they could hear all my comings and goings.

With trepidation, I opened the door. He sheepishly handed me a very small box that was beautifully wrapped.

I invited him in, and opened the box to find an assortment of chocolates. He, K (my significant other), and I sat in the living room and ate the chocolates. Our neighbor didn't know English, and at that time K and I didn't know enough German to have much of a conversation. We all knew a little French, so that's what we spoke. The man explained that he had picked up some French in Paris in 1942. What a lovely city, and what a great time he had there, he exclaimed in French. Knowing why he was in Paris in 1942, I was sorely tempted to make a cutting remark, but I knew that wouldn't be helpful or wise, not to mention that my French wasn't up to it.

I like to think that my neighbor and I made a tiny contribution towards global harmony, I by taking that empty bowl rather than walking away, and he with the lovely box of chocolates.

Proctoring, Princeton Style

I learned about Princeton's Honor Code one cold, wintry night when I was a teaching assistant for a section of calculus, and the course instructor asked me to proctor an evening exam.

I use the word "proctor" for lack of a better word. I was told that I wasn't actually allowed to proctor the exam, or even be in the room where the test took place, since the Honor Code forbade it. The point of my being there was to answer any questions the students had. If a student found a typo or an ambiguous phrase in the test, I had to deal with it. 

Princeton students came up with the Honor Code in 1893. The phrase the students had to write on their tests was: I pledge my honor as a gentleman that during this examination I have neither given nor received assistance, with the word "gentleman" remaining until Princeton went coed in 1969.

I distributed the exams, told the students where they could find me, and left.

The exam was given in a large cavernous lecture room. My recollection is that the nearest place I could go that was not in the room itself was outside the building. I was bundled up in my winter coat, hat, and gloves, but by the end I was freezing and shivering. Princeton winters could get quite cold, at least back in the early 1980s.

The students came and went as they pleased. If they looked lost, I pointed them in the direction of the nearest restroom. I could hear voices in the exam room, but I wasn't permitted to do anything about it.

The atmosphere in the room seemed to get more boisterous as time went on. That seemed less surprising when I observed an empty six pack of beer being carried out after I collected the exams (by someone who was gentlemanly enough not to leave it there; the room was left in a newly acquired state of disarray).

Princeton was very proud of its Honor Code. Seeing it from the instructors' side, I'm not surprised that it was the students who demanded it. It's hard to imagine faculty coming up with a plan that would leave them outside in the snow while the students partied indoors.

Election Subversion, Math Team Style

My first memory about elections was when I was too young to go to school, and my mother took me with her to the voting booth. She told me not to tell anyone that she was carrying into the booth a scrap of paper with a "cheat sheet" to remind her how to vote on the down-ballot candidates; she said that bringing such a thing was illegal. Was that ever really illegal, or did someone tell my mother that either erroneously or to intimidate her?

Another early memory is that my mother told me the philosophy behind not making it too easy to vote. If it's too easy to vote, then people who don't care about the issues, and haven't bothered to educate themselves about the issues or candidates, will be manipulated by others to vote the way they want them to.

On my high school's Math Team, I was the top scorer in my year. The kids in the year ahead of me were grooming me to be the team captain for my senior year. (In my junior year I was "co-captain", which was like Vice President.) The team expected that I would easily be elected captain.

The day of the vote, a group of guys who were not on the team walked into our meeting room and voted for a guy I'll call the Dormouse. There were enough of them that the Dormouse won.

When the team members protested, the guys asked us to show them a rule that said that only people who were on, or trained with, the team could vote. While we knew this wasn't fair, we had nothing in writing that gave eligibility rules for voting for Math Team captain. I was quite shaken by what felt like a coup.

We never saw Dormouse's posse again.

At a subsequent meeting, someone on the team pointed out that there was no rule that said we couldn't vote again, so we did so, and I won.

I wonder whether the Dormouse arranged to be elected so that he could state on his college applications that he was captain of the Math Team. He went on to become a philosophy professor, specializing in ethics.