The Scale of Reactive Behavioral Modes

I have two younger brothers. The younger of the two, Woody, is already famous. He’s six years younger than I am. The one in between us, Keith, is a year-and-a-half younger than I am, my Irish twin, if you will.

The Mad Stork goes Keith against the San Diego Chargers.

A volatile amalgam of the most belligerently emotional and political predilections— and the most imposing physical characteristics — of Archie Bunker, Paul Bunyan, and Ted “The Mad Stork” Hendricks, Keith is also one of the most hilarious people I know … as long as you’re on his good side. If not, well, Richard Kuklinski could have given Keith anger-management counseling.

Background

The subject of Keith came up when I was working with my friend, Kevin Hinchey, writer and co-director of the documentary film, Love, Work and Knowledge: The Life and Trials of Wilhelm Reich. While trying to schedule a Hartford premier for the film, we were being put through the King-Size Wringer by the co-executive directors (their self-granted titles) of a theater that describes itself thusly (key identifiers withheld to protect the hapless):

The scene of the crime.

A classic movie palace located on the campus of [snip] in Hartford, Connecticut … a not-for-profit independent film theater with a magnificent single-screen venue, 485 seats, and a much loved balcony. Built in 1935 … with a signature design by McKim, Mead and White, [snip] stands to this day as one of the most highly regarded art house cinemas in the country.

If you get the sense that the place (and its co-executive directors) are a tad snooty and take themselves quite seriously, you’d be uncannily correct.

At any rate, after one particular pernicious working-over, Kevin and I were comparing notes and licking our psychic wounds from the excruciatingly frustrating encounter. I wanted to be able to communicate to Kevin the mixed emotions I was feeling, along with my uncertainty as to how I would react to the co-executive directors.

Since Kevin had never met Keith, I thought a visual aid (as we say in the biz) might be helpful in conveying the range of behavioral responses I was contemplating. So, I created the Scale of Reactive Behavioral Modes that appears at the top of this story.

Storm Warning

To help you comprehend the nature, substance, and potential of each of the modes in the scale, I’ll explicate them here:

• Standby. This is a state of mind and emotions comparable to a holding pattern. With no meaningful stimuli, you’re just sort of hanging around, waiting for something to happen before determining how you might react to something — or nothing — if at all.
• Limbo. As opposed to a holding pattern, limbo is more like a holding cell. It’s Purgatory. It’s the place between Heaven and Hell, in which you’ve experienced enough negative stimuli to feel inclined to react in some way. But since there’s still a shred of hope for some positive eventuality, you can’t really go anywhere or do anything yet.
• Seething. In this mode, you’re royally pissed. You know you’re highly likely to do something retaliatory. But you haven’t gone off yet. And there’s still a modicum of possibility that your reaction, whatever it is, might be reasonable … or, at least, non-lethal.

You could have just bought him a beer.

• Keith. This is the proverbial Nuclear Option. It’s Hell. It’s shock and awe. There’s no game plan. There’s no possibility for anything mitigating or reasonable. There’s no escaping or hiding. There’s no getting around a direct hit, along with considerable collateral carnage. The likelihood of casualties is high. The likelihood of survivors is negligible. This is full-on Keith. God help us.

Since it’s not likely, dear readers, that any of you might know Keith, all of this will, no doubt, strike you as exaggeration. It’s not.

A Closing Anecdote

Some years ago, my father went into a local pizza joint to pick up the order he’d phoned in a little while before. Standing at the counter, he saw a dude sitting by himself in a booth toward the back of the dining room. The dude looked like Rocky after coming up on the short end of his first tiff with Apollo Creed. After a few moments, he recognized the dude as Keith. He walked to the back of the room.

Cut me, Mick!

“What the hell happened to you.”

“I got in a little scrape,” Keith replied.

“What does the other guy look like,” my father asked, his favorite question when he saw someone who looked as if he might have come up on the short end of anything.

“Not good,” Keith said. “And there were five of them.”

In the interest of safety — yours — and on the off chance that you cross paths with Keith some time, you might want to print the Scale of Behavioral Modes graphic above and keep it in your wallet for handy reference.

Kevin had his laminated.