If Improv Teaches Us Anything
by Steve Sklar
Scene 1.
A couple of years ago, I’m shopping for a birthday card for my wife, Nikki, in Words Bookstore in downtown Maplewood, New Jersey, when I get into a nonverbal altercation with a young kid. I’ve taken up a position at the card carousel that stands between the checkout counter and the window to the street. I’ve gravitated to this particular rack because the cards on it have that wry and understated quality Nikki and I have tended to favor in the cards we exchange on birthdays and anniversaries. Elsewhere in the store are racks that hold cards featuring literary quotes in block print, “March to the sound of a different drummer,” that kind of thing, quotes that are all well and good in and of themselves but that in the context of a greeting card manage to sound insipid.
As I’m looking over the cards at the rack near the window I become aware of the kid, who looks to be about seven years old. He’s standing near me, also looking in the direction of the rack. I begin to get this vibe from him that he resents my having taken up a position there. But really, this is the good rack and this space is tight; there’s nowhere else for me to stand. This is pre-pandemic, so social distancing is not an issue.
My suspicion about the vibe is confirmed when he reaches over and turns the rack. I haven’t finished reading the column of cards in front of me when he does that but, no problem, I start reading the next column. Then he turns the rack again, and I notice he isn’t looking at the cards.
Okay, I think, I see what this is. This, here, is a contest of wills. And I am not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that this is bothering me. So I don’t look at him, I look straight ahead at the cards while he continues turning the rack. I figure, he’s a kid, what does he know, for all he knows maybe I can speed-read cards.
As he starts turning the rack faster, I think: I know something he doesn’t know — because I’m a grownup and he’s just a kid. I know that time is on my side. My office is just a block away, I’m here on my lunch break, I have a solo immigration law practice and I don’t have any case emergencies this day. As a matter of fact, business has been kind of dead for a while now, and that’s probably made me a bit touchy, but never mind that, what’s important is, I have all the time in the world to ride with this thing here at the card rack. Meanwhile, I figure, this kid is probably here with his mother. With his mom. With his mommy. She’s bound to be his transportation. She’s probably got better things to do with her day than hang out in this bookstore.
Now you may think, why don’t I just say to the kid, Look, could you please stop turning the rack. However, this particular day — like others, let’s face it — I don’t seem to have a middle gear. I certainly don’t want to unleash The Beast. I mean, I could say to him, Listen, you little shit. But this is a family bookstore, come on, I’m not going to do that. So I just keep looking straight ahead at the card rack as the cards go whizzing by.
Soon enough my assessment of our respective strategic positions is shown to be astute because his mother comes and collects him and they walk out of the store. And as they leave and the card rack comes to a stop and I select a card for my wife, I don’t look at the kid and I don’t need to look at him. Because we both know who won that contest.
Okay.
A couple of days later I’m visiting my mother. My mom. My mommy. I tell her the story of the bookstore encounter figuring it’ll amuse her, and it does. I have a great relationship with my mother. We seem to be able to confide fairly freely in each other. One thing I love about my mom is that she’s a straight shooter when it comes to giving feedback. If you have a person like that in your life, hang on to them. Because if improv, which is something I’ve been studying for the past few years, teaches us anything, it’s that a genuine reaction, even one that catches you off-guard, is more valuable than a canned one any day.
So after I tell her this story, I say to her, Listen, mom, I realize that this story doesn’t paint me in a very flattering light. I mean, how petty is that, to get into a contest of wills with a seven-year-old? And, I tell her, it’s true that I’ve often taken pride in the fact that I consider myself to be the designated grudge-holder in the family. And you know I’ve been worried lately that maybe I’m just becoming a mass of pet peeves and petty annoyances. But really, I tell her, the improv I’ve been working on has, I think, enabled me to see fairly quickly that that bookstore encounter is a noteworthy scene. And I think it’s also let me see that I’m getting annoyed more frequently lately, and that gives me the chance to improve my outlook.
What I’m hoping she’ll say to me, after giving me credit for the nice self-awareness I’ve shown in assessing my character in the bookstore encounter as petty, is what she has in fact been saying to me lately: Improv has changed your life, Steve. I think it’s made you a more joyful person.
But that’s not what she says.
She says, About the grudge-holding and the peevishness — you’ve always been that way. I think, she says, that’s just your nature.
Which is not what I wanted to hear.
Scene 2.
A month ago, I’m standing outside the ATM machine in downtown Maplewood, New Jersey, trying to think of a word for something that’s good that rhymes with “Steve.” I’m doing this because I’d started keeping a journal on the little things that bug me during the course of a day. At first I was going to call this list “The Daily Peeve,” but then my younger kid, Mal, says to me, No, a better name for that would be “Steve’s Peeves.” And I love that, it’s perfect.
So I’d started keeping a list of the things that bugged me, Steve’s Peeves, not just my go-to peeve — people tailgating me while I’m driving — but things like the fact that people talking loudly on their cell phones while I’m walking down the street has started bothering me more frequently. I’ve become especially annoyed at people using a voice I’ve started to notice lately, what I would call a bro voice, a bro-ey kind of voice. You know, where they might bray into their phone, MAKE SURE TO CALL HIM TUESDAY BECAUSE WE HAVE THE POINT-OF-SALE MEETING THEN AND WE HAVE TO–
That kind of thing.
I’ll look around to see where the voice is coming from, and invariably it’ll be coming from someone taller and thinner and younger than I’d pictured. That will annoy me, too. Then I’ll look down at their feet, and they’ll be wearing a kind of light brown shoe with a navy blue suit, and for some reason that will annoy me.
I’m writing these things down and also my reaction to them.
Because if improv teaches us anything, it’s that if you can get a sense of what a character is feeling, even your own character, then you have a chance to create strong, empathetic scenes with that character.
However, the whole point of my writing these things down is to improve my outlook, so I begin trying to also become aware of little things that happen during the course of the day that make me happy. And there are some things. Like I’ll pass a stranger on the street on my way to work, and the sun is shining, and I’ll smile at them, and they’ll smile at me, and I’ll say hello, and they’ll say hello back. Then a little while later on my walk to work the same thing will happen again with another stranger.
Accordingly, I’m standing outside the ATM machine in downtown Maplewood, New Jersey, waiting my turn to go in and get cash, and while I’m waiting I’m trying to think of a word for something that’s upbeat that rhymes with Steve. Because I have the name for the negative list, Steve’s Peeves, and I need a corresponding title for the positive list. So while I’m standing there waiting, to help me focus on this difficult linguistic problem I’m scowling down at my feet while I go through the alphabet to come up with a rhyme. A, beeve, ceeve, deeve. I’m up to around “h” when this woman happens to walk by me on the sidewalk where I’m standing. She stops a few feet past me, looks back at me and says:
Are you okay?
I tell her, No, I was just thinking! Thank you! I was just thinking! I’m fine!
Eventually she seems satisfied, because she leaves. It occurs to me then that that was a nice thing she just did there. That should definitely go on the Steve’s … Whatever list. But it also occurs to me, Oh my God, I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before. What was my face giving out that it would stop a person in the street, make them feel like they need to perform an intervention!
Because if improv teaches us anything, it’s that the way our scene partner reacts to us can reveal who we really are.
That question: Are you okay?
I mean, I thought I was…
Scene 3.
It’s 5:19 a.m. when I hear the drilling. It’s loud, and it sounds like PPPPPPPPP!!!! — like a pneumatic drill — but it sounds like someone’s drilling on the other side of the wall of the bedroom, in Maplewood, New Jersey, where my wife and I are sleeping. And I know what this is.
It’s a woodpecker, and he’s drilling on the metal gutter above the attic way up at the back of the house. I know this because we had heard the noise several times in the week previous, though not that early in the morning, and at one point I had caught a glimpse of the bird.
I’m not an early morning person. To be honest, I’m not even a 9 a.m. person. But it’s loud, and I’ve had it, so I drag myself out of bed, pull on my pants, slip on my sneakers, and head downstairs and out the back of the house. I look up and sure enough, way up there at the corner of the gutter I see the silhouette of a fairly large woodpecker. I have a clear view of him and I know he has a clear view of me, because almost immediately after I spot him he kind of scurries off into the sky. You know, like, Ooo, that guy is pissed off. Pffft.
I’m satisfied I’ve made my point. I go back in the house. Back to bed. Twenty minutes later: PPPPPPPPP!!!!.
Out of bed, pants on, tiptoe up the stairs to the attic. I kind of sclathe my way around the worktable piled with the art project works-in-progress Nikki is working on and make my way to the window under that corner of the roof.
I pull down the top half of the window and stick my head out. I look up, but all I can see is the bottom of the gutter ledge. So I yell out into the air:
YOU GONNA KEEP DOING THAT???
Just like that. I’m talking to a bird like that.
I get a broomstick and bang on the gutter. I close the window and go back to bed. The rest of the morning is totally quiet. I go back to sleep.
When I wake up, though, I’m worried, because I realize I haven’t had the gutters cleaned in over a year. I Google “Woodpeckers attacking gutters.” One thing the articles that pop up do say is that the birds may be finding bugs in there. In which case you’ve got to get your gutters cleaned.
The articles also talk about another possibility, though. Sometimes, they say, a male woodpecker will drill a gutter because he’s trying to attract a mate. Apparently, in the woodpecking world this is the sexiest thing.
When I read this, oddly enough it takes the edge completely off my anger at the bird. I realize, he’s just doing his best to take care of his social life.
And once I think of that, it occurs to me, really, how much difference is there between these woodpeckers and the bros on their phones? I mean, the bros are transacting business during the day, they’re prospering, and who can blame them if they maybe want to share that with the public a little?
Or how about that kid at the bookstore? I now remember that Words Bookstore caters to kids on the autistic spectrum. The store owners have someone near and dear to them on the spectrum. Considering that I do, too, how has it taken months for it to occur to me that maybe that kid is on the spectrum? In any event, there’s a good chance that he was uncomfortable in close proximity to a relatively large person staring intently at cards and was just trying to create space the only way he knew how.
Come to think of it, how different am I from any of these characters? Here I am, putting this out there, albeit via a keyboard rather than a roof gutter, putting out stories, a thing I apparently need to do.
I mean, aren’t we all just trying to make an impression on the world, make our presence known?
Because if improv teaches us anything, it’s that listening deeply to your scene partner pays off. That’s not just about hearing the words they’re saying or seeing the movements they’re making. If you can get a sense of why they’re saying what they’re saying or doing what they’re doing, then you can really build strong scenes together.
And so that question outside the ATM:
Are you okay?
I’m getting there.
