(Non) Anonymous

Last night I attended my last-ever Back to School night at our kids’ elementary school. Some of these teachers — including this year’s fifth grade teacher — have had all three Souders kids pass through their classrooms.

After 10 years almost all the faces at the school have become familiar to me — and vice versa. I couldn’t walk ten feet without seeing someone from the school community — the office admins, the art teacher, the PTA president, a zillion parents — stopping me. It was a stark contrast to my first Back to School night in 2013, when every face was new, and no one knew who I was, or expected anything of me. I was Just Another Young Parent at my first-ever Kindergarten rodeo. I saw a lot of those faces last night, but I recognized the look of overwhelm and low-grade panic. I remember in my early days seeing these older parents who were like the school silverbacks, who seemed so at ease, who knew the people working the PTA booth, or the school nurse, or every other damn parent. Last night that silverback was me.

The thing about being in a real community — one where I spend some actual real-world time, and even if I never intended to “join” — is that I cease to be anonymous. I remember moving to Eugene in 1995: landing in a brand new town which I knew would be my home for two-plus years. No one knew me and I knew no one. It was the best kind of lonely. There is a real freedom in that sort of anonymity — being just another face like all the other faces. (There are faces that, because of their color — can’t be anonymous like this! I got a small taste of that when we moved to China.) This kind of anonymous means not having to remember names, not having to mind my behavior, not having to engage in conversations I choose not to engage in. Not having anything expected of me.

Anonymity is frankly kind of addictive. Also probably corrosive to real community. We tried our best to hold that anonymity at arm’s length during the pandemic — with zoom meetings and such — and from a civics perspective that might actually be an improvement! It is much easier to attend (and much harder to disrupt) school board meetings via zoom. But because we never share a space, the barrier to simply step away is very low, as is what is expected of me. It is too easy to ghost a virtual community.

I believe that in the long run real community requires people to physically share a space together. I know all those faces at our school — or in our neighborhood, or at the coffeeshop, or (when I worked at an office in Old Town) on the street — because we shared a space together, however briefly at a time, for many years together. It is no accident that the people I love best are the people who live with me; I believe it is the way humans (as social animals) are wired.